Suck

for 20 August 1996. Updated every TUESDAY.



	Dream Jobs meets your former employer...
	*on the web!*

	Real-time gossip and a virtual workplace
	for the un- and underemployed, helpful
	loyalty checks and preemptive
	scandal-counterspinning for their former,
	future and current employers.

	Telecommuting and rightsizing have made
	going to work only an option for some, a
	distant hope for others. Unemployment
	benefits, freelance consulting, and
	conference calls can help fill the
	monetary gap, but what of the social one?
	Watercooler.com gives freelancers and
	telecommuters the opportunity to
	eavesdrop on and participate in the
	goings-on of strikingly realistic
	fictional workplaces. A combination of
	dedicated list-servers, CU-SeeMe
	connections and staff pages lets these
	homebodies experience the thrill of a
	dream job without ever requiring them to
	hang up their modem.



	Sponsorship could come from an
	outplacement consulting firm, making
	Watercooler.com a value-add on top of the
	traditional lightbulb, desk, and phone
	offered by other employment brokerage
	agencies. Watercooler.com would supply
	its customers with their choice of
	vaguely familiar new media
	pseudoemployers through a unique
	revenue-generating arrangement with the
	real thing(s): in exchange for the raw
	material available in these companies'
	archived interoffice mail and in-house
	newsletters, Watercooler.com allows the
	companies complete access to its customer
	database, as well as the ability to
	monitor former employees' contributions
	to the "private" discussion forums. What
	better way to ensure the NDA compliance
	of former employees who now float free in
	the industry?

	Staffing consists of a single intern
	to HTML-ize company newsletters and to
	"moderate" Watercooler.com mailing lists,
	starting threads sure to generate
	collective bitching and moaning. Proven
	conversational napalm includes "The
	Home/Office, or: I gave up my family and
	all I got was this lousy paycheck,"
	"Mismanagement for Dummies," "Clean my
	*desk? Wipe this!," "Creatively*
	embroidering your Exhibit B" and "They're
	out of toilet paper again."

courtesy of The Duchess of Churl