It is my favorite time of the year, March Madness. Soon will I be able to sit on my couch and watch the upsets and my bracket slowly drown as KU has another year of high expectations. What's even better about this year is that I will be celebrating my 21st birthday during the sweet sixteen. However, not everyone can celebrate march madness.
According to an article on foxnews.com, "American companies could lose up to $3.8 billion in lost wages and productivity due to the men's NCAA basketball tournament." This number is absolutely shocking at first, but think about it. I'll admit it I missed class one day last year because I wanted to stay home and watch the games. Another article states that more that 37 million americans will participate each year in "March Madness." Imagine how many people in America will miss work or just watch the live updates on their computers.
Two years ago cbssportsline.com institued the "Boss Button" on the link that updates the scores in realtime. The pictures below demonstrate exactly what the boss button does. At the bottom of the update screen when you click the link for the boss button, it automatically brings up a bar graph so when your boss walks by it looks as if you're being productive.
Picture from www.prilliman.com/blog
Picture from moneyplayers.typepad.com/blog/images
The start of "Championship week" this week is starting to get me excited and next Thursday I know where I'll be. I now know where a lot of business managers and owners will be, sitting in their offices pulling their hair out and probably watching the game updates as well.
I love that you brought this up because I was introduced to the boss button last year. I had an internship with a worldwide corporation during last year's March Madness and I saw how no work gets done while it is going on. The guy in the cube next to me was so excited to show me that we could keep track of what was going on and use the boss button if we needed it. I found it quite humorous that a thirty-something year old man could get so excited about a boss button. My boss not only had the scores up that she was tracking but she had the games streaming on her computer so she was actually just watchinng the games all during the day. She even told me that she didn't care if our VP walked by she would just keep playing it. This was happening all over our department and I'm sure in other departments. Because of this experience I definitely believe that not much work gets done during March Madness.
Thats funny and so true! Everywhere my boyfriend and i have gone this weekend, he has his phone out, checking scores. I can't imagine how the rest of the week is going to go, when we're skiing!! It's just a really good thing that we can record everything on the tv for when we get back or I know he would be going crazy! We couldn't even eat dinner tonight until the bracketology came out!! I can't imagine how men are going to be at work this week! Ridiculous!