Ups and downs of a white-collar institution.
For years now, the NCAA has offered not only online streaming of its March Madness tournament but also an ostensibly sneaky way to keep your viewing habits from rousing suspicion among the corner offices. The "Boss Button," with a single click, can hide your streaming video and drop down a bland, boilerplate image that looks like nothing suspicious if the boss stops by to ask for numbers on the Jenkins account. And as our society has changed, so too has the Boss Button. Let's take a walk through March history.
2006: The First (And Best) Boss Button
Based on an idea from CBS SportsLine general manager Steve Snyder, the original Boss Button display is still the king, for the simple reason that it doesn't look like anything even remotely related to college basketball. It looks like something that almost anyone in any profession might look at. And CBS unabashedly promoted the feature as something revolutionary, risky, and fun:
"Boss Button" - Afraid management is lurking? No sweat. One click of the "Boss Button" and the live video action on the screen will be replaced by a silent readymade spread sheet!
It's never been better than this.
Via: flawlesswalrus.com
2007-2008: The Bar Chart Era
Boring, yawn-inducing charts were the order of the day. Dull enough not to attract attention. Not everyone knows how to use or build bar charts, though. Your boss might wonder where your Excel skills came from. (Bonus: the data purported to portray actual food consumption during the 2006 tournament, but that beef jerky figure always seemed dubious.)
Source: mrexcel.com
2009: The Button Sells Out
After 2.5 million boss-button clicks in 2008, the NCAA moved to make some bucks off this creation, so Comcast came aboard to sponsor the Boss Button, which ceased to look like anything you'd create at work. Instead, users got a blatant Comcast ad with team names encased in colored cells. We can only speculate about all the firings that resulted from this drastic, implausible change.
Source: awfulannouncing.blogspot.com