Anyone who lands his or her first desk job very quickly learns the three most important lessons about desk jobs: 1) the best thing about desk jobs is the Internet; 2) the harder one works at his desk job the faster he'll climb the corporate ladder (therefore the sooner he'll land a desk where nobody can see his screen); and 3) alt-tab is your friend!

But nowhere in the employee training manual does it say a word about how insufferable the Internet becomes in August—and it really should! Because year after year, the entire workforce endures a month-long occupational hazard as it dutifully tries to go about its day-to-day [...]