Blue Light Special on the WWW December 3, 1995 Big time corporate politics have finally made it onto the Internet. These days it's not just the computer companies with casual corporate cultures, Slinkies, and seemingly random working hours that populate the Internet. Everyone wants a piece of the Internet action, it being the media and information distribution rage of the future.One example of this invasion of corporate politics on the 'net is the recent firing of one Rod Fournier by Kmart Inc., allegedly for placing a link to his homepage on the Kmart corporate homepage, which he was writing at the time. This prompted Rod to use his mastery of HTML to create yet another page, the Kmart SUCKS Page!, which is truly a triumph in the field of disgruntled ex-employee whining. I won't bother you with the sordid details of Rod's story, since he tells it best, but I will summarize quickly. Rod is asked to create a homepage for Kmart. Rod creates an "under construction" page with a link to his homepage on it. Rod gets locked out of the webserver. Rod gets fired. Rod writes the Kmart SUCKS Page!. Life goes on. This whole story sounds like a classic case of bad judgement, management ignorance, and multiple compounding screw-ups. Not too exciting really. However, this story took an exciting turn when Computerworld, seeing this as a classic case of "man bites dog" printed a nice fat story detailing the whole thing. The first mistake in this ugly situation was made by the people in Kmart's management who, after browsing Rod's home page thought that Rod would be a good candidate for creating their corporate webpage. It's obvious from this fact alone that these people had never seen a decent corporate webpage in their lives, and knew nothing about the Web. The second mistake was made by our would-be hero, Rod. In a stroke of unusually bad judgement, he decided that he would add a link to his personal homepage on Kmart's webpage, citing that "On the Web, most good pages have a link at the bottom to whoever created it. So that proper credit will go to those who deserve it." This is patently false. Furthermore, he states in the Computerworld article that "The Web is all about fun and links. You don't go to Web sites that don't have links." Knowing that unless he added some links to Kmart's webpage, they'd fall behind in the links race to Wal-mart, Target, and maybe even other discount retailers, he hastened to add both the link to his home page and a link to the download site for Microsoft's Internet Explorer 2.0. What happened next is a bit of a mystery. The only thing we know for sure is that Rod was locked out of his webserver and fired almost immediately afterward. Unfortunately for the historians, the exact details of why Rod was fired are lost in the mists of corporate bureaucracy and office politics, but the results are clear. Rod gave his buddies at Kmart a good enough excuse to can his ass, and they took some initiative and did it. Little did they know, however, that Rod is a sore loser, and that he wouldn't take being sent to the proverbial firehouse lying down. In a bold move that would do thousands of disgruntled postal workers proud, he retaliated as viciously and swiftly as he knew how. The Kmart SUCKS Page! was born. Not only does the Kmart SUCKS Page! relate his no-doubt embellished tale, it also contains some below the belt shots at Kmart and its management, as well as a cornucopia of email addresses and phone numbers for people Rod would like you to harrass. Now let's assign some blame. Let's face it, Rod is right when he says that Kmart has inept management. Taking a look at Kmart's performance on the stock exchange or walking into one of their stores will tell you that. However, they didn't make a mistake when they fired Rod. He screwed up, got called on it, and paid the price. The mere fact that he has an adult page on the page that he linked the Kmart corporate page was a good enough reason to send him shopping. Fortunately for Rod, he got another job, which is quite surprising. I guess they haven't toured the Kmart SUCKS Page! yet. This episode probably wouldn't have been notable at all, except for the fact that Computerworld decided to grant Rod his 15 minutes of fame by writing a feature article on it. Don't bother looking for the article on Computerworld's website, it's pay only. Instead, look to the Kmart SUCKS Page!. Rod has managed to scan in a copy of the article that made him famous. The only problem is that the article is a whopping 622k (that's what he gets for using JPEG when ASCII will do). The intrepid news scouts at Computerworld really sunk their teeth into this one. Unfortunately for our hero, Rod, he was a tool for this major circulation newsweekly. By covering this story, they were able to make an even greater name for themselves as being 1) hip to the Internet and 2) well versed in the arena of "cyberlaw", an arena made famous by my favorite political lobby, the EFF. As an added bonus, they secured quotes from a founding member of the Webmasters' Guild, a Boston area web design master blah blah whatever group, and "a cyberlaw expert", whatever the hell that is. Ironically, this issue isn't really Internet-specific at all. Imagine, if you will, that a Kmart employee was commissioned to create a sale flier. If, when you called the number the message included, "press 5 for our adult line", you would have the basic equivalent of what has occurred here. Hardcore Internetniks may not see it this way, but I guarantee this is how Kmart perceived it (remember, we're dealing with the same people who toured Rod's home page and liked what they saw). What's the moral of this story? If you're a webmaster, try to avoid making really stupid decisions. If you're a major corporation attempting to create a web-presence, go out and hire a consulting firm instead of assigning this important task to a feebleminded employee who happens to have a home page. If you're a weekly computer trade rag, stick to printing real news. |
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