Lies

At work today I was told to complete an online self-assessment for a team building exercise on Friday. I had to go to a link and select, from 28 screens of four words each, which word most applied to me in my work day and which word least applied to me in my work day.

So far so good - typical psychobabble. I've completed one of these every two years or so since I first made the mistake of lifting my head above the parapet 15 years ago.

But this one was on line. The first page was 'voluntary' and asked for my gender (I don't have a gender, being a human and not a word), age, race, place of residence, place of work and a few other things. I tried to not fill it in (since it said it was 'voluntary') but wasn't allowed past it without filling in each entry. So I filled it out with make-believe. Then it asked for my name and sex (or it might have said gender again) so it could 'identify me for the purposes of this survey', and I had to fill that out - I mean, they'll hand it out at the team building exercise and when someone answers to all the other names and takes the little booklet, but no one answers to Ernst Stavro Blofeld, they'll know which one is me, right - so I had to fill it out honestly. Then 28 sets of words that I selected at random as being 'most' like me and 'least' like me, and then a page of 'voluntary' extremely personal information that was, at least, skippable. I skipped it.

I don't want to have my easily matched up name and location details in some moron's database. I don't want to have psychoanalysis, however partially-baked, on line with my name and all those other details attached.

I don't even want to do a team fucking building fucking exercise on Friday. But I have to do that to keep my job. I don't have to do the rest of it, on line. Here's notice to you guys who put surveys on line -

I lie. I have always lied. I will continue to lie. Anonymity, or at least Pseudonymity, is the default status of the original internet or whatever it was called before browsers. Gharlane of Eddore wasn't that guy's given name, you know.

Unless its an affidavit or for some other legal purposes, I have treated it as being frivolous. Just so you know, future employer, when you read my Facebook page[1] in years to come, I may or may not be an African-American Australian who collects butterflies and loves Led Zeppelin and geckos. This is notice for you, whoever you may be, in case you find my name attached to a profile of someone who is MOST courageous and LEAST sensitive and MOST diffident and LEAST outgoing  and MOST forthcoming and LEAST informative and so on and so forth for 28 word pairs - I lied.




[1] Lie. I don't have a Facebook page. If someone wants to fake mine for me, be my guest.