My company has a public network that is open to all employees and is used to store shared information. The number of folders is quite large and — in an effort to make the search for a particular folder easier — a few people have started adding exclamation points to the front of their file names. This causes their file to float to the top of an alphabetized list, making it show up front and center when you navigate to the top node of the file hierarchy. Now, is this clever or rude?
Screen real estate is pretty important when it comes to web pages and mobile devices — I’ve heard many stories about departments or individuals who fought to have their information appear “above the fold” on a corporate site — but should this approach apply to an internal file network?
One could argue that only critical files should take pole position: emergency procedures or frequently accessed company data. But what happens when Jim from Marketing is just too lazy to scroll through everyone else’s stuff and vaults his file to first place? Is it OK for Suzie in Finance to then add two exclamation points to the name of her file? Does Bob the CEO get to use three exclamation points? Where does it all end?
The whole idea behind a system as venerable as alphabetical order is the we all know how to use it. By circumventing this system, are these people trampling on the rights of others just to gain an — albeit minor — advantage? Is this a trivial act of disobedience or is this more along the lines of cutting in line at the supermarket or parking in a handicapped space?
Discuss.
(In an interesting experiment, I added 27 exclamation points and a few ampersands to my file name … it was deleted.)