Filling out and Printing Brackets at Work: The Right Thing To Do

Every year, we hear stories about how much the working man's fascination with filling out a pool-winning bracket detracts from office productivity and costs companies monetary figures with lots of zeroes in them.

Every year we fill out our brackets on the clock, and print them there as well. For all the times the printer inexplicably doesn't work throughout the year, employees should be allowed to follow suit every now and then.

The tone of the articles seems to suggest that employees' painstakingly trying to figure out which No. 12 seed is going to knock off a No. 5, while ignoring the flashing red light on their desktop phone is reprehensible.

It's not our fault, we're not sure, and we don't know how Joe Lunardi got that sweet gig as a predictor of "bubble teams" even though about 85 percent of the tournament's entrants are determined without the inclusion of judgment calls.

It's time to put these stories out to pasture and realize that people with jobs need Lolcats and the occasional five dollar buy-in pool to enhance the quality of their professional life. It's a repetitive, often frustrating environment that most people spend the majority of their waking hours in, why not allow them to have a little fun once a year?

Folks realize they need to work, and they do without complaining too often.

Anyone who isn't a professional musician, athlete or writer can attest to the fact that work is not fun.

Regardless of that reality, the American workforce usually comes in and does a good and reliable job at their craft. Not to delve into John Cougar Mellencamp car commercial territory, but employees focus on their work and perform their expected duties to the best of their capability for a very high percentage of time spent at their workplaces.

Whether it be a liquor store or a Fortune 500 company, I believe it'd be a great "corporate efficiency" lesson to simply look the other way and let the serfs fill their brackets out.

It's not like this practice is going to change.

The depth and complexity of most employees' feelings about their jobs are things words can't describe.

Some days work seems tolerable, other days make one wonder if trying to pull a William H. Macy in "Shameless" type scam to get government benefits would be a more rational direction to go in than "career building."

Adult life is supposedly all about responsibility and related qualities which involve not doing what you want.

Perhaps that's why each March after the bracket has been set, feelings of giddiness and anticipation reach nearly overwhelming levels.

The next two days are the best in sports. The chance to snake coworkers out of their hard-earned wages while these days transpire only sweetens the divine mixture of rooting interests, non-stop games and the subtle signs of spring arriving to create a concoction so savory that no human should realistically expect another to be able to resist.

People are going to mispronounce "Xavier", Gus Johnson is going to yell and somebody is going to hit a prayer of a shot that dooms your bracket the same way it doomed the title hopes of the team it went in against.

Thy overseers need to realize this, admit that they're in pools their employees can't afford to enter and that it's OK for the underlings to spend a little time filling a bracket or three out...even if the choices made are done so by virtue of which mascot would beat up the other mascot.

If the articles about how wrong and unproductive it is of America's workforce would simply disappear, surely said workforce would pledge to focus solely on work...until Opening Day.