I know Euorpe is more liberal...but come on!

Sometimes I wonder what the hell am I doing here?

Ok, not sometimes. All the time.

For those that don't know, I'm stuck in a job situation that is, you could say, less than ideal. This is my first paid job in the Netherlands, and I've been working here about nine months now, since the beginning of September. I thought this job would be good because it is in a young company, with young people, and the company was growing bigger constantly (in employees and in profits). Well, I've found out the negative side of this: growing too fast does not give you time to build proper office procedures and infrastructure needed in correctly managing people or projects. Hiring people quickly does not give you time to fully screen a person's personality to see if they a) have some sort of intelligence to be able to make their own decisions b) are counterintuitive and unable to properly function in an adult work environment c) are respectful of other people and d) are children.

These things, added together with mindless production work of copy/paste all day long...can really wear you down and damage your soul. Of course many many people in this world do not enjoy their jobs and go through life like a zombie, day in and day out. I am at that point, for several months already. But when you feel like you will go postal-that is when you know you have to get out. Everything here is counterintuitive. There is no communication or decent management of people (or projects)...and certain people won't even greet each other in the morning and never say a word to each other at all- just ignoring them. But why do I want to come to work to be treated like a I'm in kindergarten and have such strict rules as not even being able to eat what i want at my own desk because it smells, according to some people who never had a problem with it until now.

Well, besides the personnel here, what about the work culture? Is that the same here as in the US? Well, I know Europe is considered much more liberal than the US in general culture, but i can see now a blending of the two, where one world overlaps the other. I work in Amsterdam, known world-wide for their Red light district, legal prostitution, and open views on sex. I didn't think this would ever enter my work world, but it has. And I'm finding the exact opposite idea of professionalism is supposed to be. I guess even in an international company, the roots are still Dutch.

One of the girls I work with is out on vacation for a month. She was helping moderate a contribution based community for extra 'fun things' to put on your product (that this company sells). part of the content you can upload (and then others can download at home) are pictures for this product...for the start up screen and the shut-down screen. In the few rules that have been developed since this launched a few months ago, was that any offensive photos or photos with advertising would be taken down from the community...but, in true laissez faire fashion, they're letting the community do its own thing. If there is full nudity, I take it off of the community. But if no actual parts are showing, like a woman wearing a small small bikini, it stays online. There are no rules yet on how many times something should be flagged before it comes off line (youtube and google have mechanisms in order of course for their user-shared community, obviously they cannot moderate thousands of contributions a day). But for now, we don't have that system in order, so I am moderating it for a reason.

Anyways, the situation today lead me to get rather riled up about this this. I removed two pornographic photos today alone. Another one was left up only because it didn't show the actual body part...it was a woman's behind bent over in a suggestive position, but she had underwear covering the specific area to be covered. It wasn't like a hippie running thru the field naked- this was a suggestive photo. Anyways, this got me riled up because why should I be looking at these photos to begin with, at work?? at 9 o'clock in the morning? And the fact that I am going into discussion about what is hard core and border line porn with my supervisor. He wants to test the waters and keep it up. I think nudity is nudity and all forms of it should be taken off. But I am only one person, and a female, and an underling who they care nothing about and don't even recognize that I am an educated person...apparently I'm not representative of their customer base. But I can guarantee that their US customers will not like it. They may be Dutch, and European, but they have customers world-wide who don't want to wake up in the morning and think they're downloading one thing, but get porn instead. There isn't even a warning screen before saying "some things may be offensive" or not even the word "community-based". But with the company's name attached to it, they are the ones who will be seen as distributing porn. And of course, you don't have to download stuff your product if you don't like it, but having the option to and seeing the thumbnail version of it--you're still submitted to seeing it.

Why am I so adamant about arguing about this with a company I don't care much for anymore? I'm more upset that I have to look at and moderate this kind of material. What I look at on the internet or joke about with friends is something I'd rather do on my own personal time. But I do not want to do it for my job or joke about it with my supervisor. I think this is extremely absurd to be in a 'professional' environment. I could say, I don't want to look at these images anymore, but then they'd give the one extra job of 20 minutes a day to someone else...they won't change how this works because of me. I don't want to give this extra responsibility up. And I gladly wanted to help out in the absence of a co-worker, but I didn't want to look porn at work!

several issues at hand here - not only professionalism, but also the whole completely different discussion of community based content and how you monitor and protect both the freedom of speech and the protection of people who don't want to see this 'offensive content'. but there are other outlets for this, and it shouldn't be on such a widely known and used product that this company sells. there are pay for service websites for that. and if you really want that kind of content on this product, then you probably need some help. i'm sure this will come back to bite them in the butt. it sure wouldn't be good marketing if people knew *** was supporting pornography.

a quote from the movie Austin Powers about the dutch comes to mind: "I don't speak freaky-deaky dutch, you perv-boy!" Hmm, what an interesting image of the Dutch--

And interestingly enough, I stumbled upon an article related to community based content on youtube...whether or not they should change their content rules to prohibit any video supporting al-qaida....no less than 30 minutes after I had this 'discussion' (monologue really since i'm always interrupted and my supervisor never listens anyways) with my supervisor.