Is it your email or their email?

The longest battle ever in the business world. Your company email. Is is yours or theirs? Can you use it for personal stuff or not? Should you? Can they monitor all the stuff you receive? Can you send anything you'd like?

Tricky question. Lots of answers. Now... take a deep breath, 'cause this is going to sting a little.

Look guys, it's their email, even if it has your lovely name on it. It's their damn bill at the end of the day. They pay for the service. Simple. So they have a little right over what you receive, what you send, etc. I know you have rights to privacy. I agree on that point, trust me. But you can save your sorry ass from a lot of trouble if you open a free email account and use that for all your forwards, personal stuff, catalog receiving bullcrap, etc. I can count the hundreds of times I have heard of someone complaining about this. Most of all, about monitoring what you do, say or read. Screw them. Just go to google, yahoo, hotmail... and stick it to the man that way.

What I do mind is when an agency limits what you can read on the net. That truly gets me mad, because at the end, we need input. When we are working on a presentation, the net is the key for inspiration. By setting parameters on what you can or cannot read blocks the hell out of the creative process.

Take one story of mine. I had to do a simple copy campaign a few years ago. I had to be "witty", according to my lovely Account Manager. (Fucking witty. How I hate that word.) Oh, by the way, yes, I was getting creative input by a low life exec. Not by my creative director. Nooo. I can bet my buttcheeks (again) that we all have AE's that determine the lines of creativity. Oh well, what can you do. Retire and open up a Comic Book Store? Um. You could... Damn it.

Where was I? Oh. The Witty Campaign. So... I had writer's block. The worst kind. I was tired and not so creative at that particular moment. So I decided to click my way to TshirtHell.com to laugh a little so I could get my head in the right state of mind. Granted, this website is truly disturbing, but hey, we all get inspiration from the weirdest places, right?

I type the URL. Click. Click again. Click. Nothing. Then, the shittiest thing happens. I get a damn message on my browser. I'm not allowed to read anything with... inflamatory content. What the...? AM I A TEENAGER, for God's sake? Will I go sex bananas if I read this? No way! I needed to read truly funny ass lines in order to clear my brain! Sorry. No access. At the end, I fried my brain and came up with a few lame ass lines and passed the job over.

Conclusion? The email should be theirs, but the net should be ours. No if's or but's. Damn. Can we just get along?

PS: By the way... you should make friends with the IT people. Hey, you might get a heads up if you are getting fired or someone that you know is getting the boot. Why? Lord. Anybody knows that's the first step when you are out of your agency. Email not working? Hm. Maybe you're out the door and you just don't know it.

Yikes.