rexriepe.com

A funny story has been circulating in the media the past couple years: Employers asking potential employees for social network passwords.

The formula’s always the same: A lede focused on the human interest angle, typically someone struggling in their job search. And then a few scattered examples of companies implementing the practice.

Then people tweet it, facebook it and blog about it. Hey, it’s an interesting story.

Here’s the real story, though: Every now and then, some upper management idiot gets the terrible idea to ask for Facebook passwords in a job interview.

That’s it. This is not a widespread thing. It’s not trending. It’s not growing. Asking employees for this kind of information is outrageously stupid for a variety of reasons, as any HR person, PR person or lawyer will tell you.

So what do you do if a non-story involving your company just won’t go away? Well, if you’re Facebook, you add to it. You go on the offensive and say you might just sue those companies. Confront the non-issue with empty threats and suddenly you’re the good guy. You’re the hero of the village, warding off all the monsters that lurk deep in the scary woods.

I have this to say to Facebook: Awesome move. Someone threw you into the three-ring circus and you learned how to juggle.

I hopped on the bus the other day to head over to the Mission. A young man hopped on right behind me. Unlike me, however, he decided to forego paying, which the driver noticed and decided to address. The driver, a short angry man, yelled at the kid for a full three minutes before the kid finally caved to the immense social pressure of 20 angry pairs of eyes on him. He nonchalantly hopped off. Life went on.

I was mad at this stupid kid who managed to waste three minutes of my time. But then I considered the other people on the bus and realized he had wasted an hour of time– all of it spread across 20 people, frustrated and bored on a bus. What a jerk!

And then I realized web developers do this all the time.

The next time you skip adjusting that lightbox height, or forego styling that button element, remember the extra time your users are going to spend paying for your laziness.

It’s safe. It’s easy. It’s greyscale.

I feel like people fall back on grey too much in web design. I know I used to.

Deciding to contribute instead of just complain, I turned my grey gripes into a website to help other grey users: Stop Using Grey!