Ever wonder what PR people do when things are slow and they have too much time on their hands? I’ve got an answer to that: They huddle in corners and make up fake workplace problems.

I’ve written before about how so many experts seem to come out of the woodwork with “solutions” to problems like romance in the office (around Valentine’s Day), office pools and gambling (around the men’s college basketball tournament in March), and the perils of the company holiday party in December. Although there are some legitimate HR issues associated with all of these events, they get blown out of proportion by way too many PR people who are more interested in hawking their “expert” with an answer looking for media exposure (usually with yet another boring book to sell) than actually addressing a pressing workplace issue.

These issues are the urban legends of the workplace. There is no more evidence of employee productivity losses or other problems because of these events than there is evidence of alligators in the sewers, Elvis living with aliens, or the Loch Ness monster.

Now, in August, there’s another bogus workplace issue to add to the list: employees wasting time watching the Olympics at work. Below you’ll find the press release about this “problem” that we received this week at the Workforce Management world headquarters. The names have been removed to protect the guilty and clueless:

“With NBC boasting 7.8M unique visitors to their website on Monday, along with 15M video streams and 230M page views the first four days of the Olympics, which easily surpasses the ENTIRE 2004 Athens games, the 2008 Olympics are on pace to be the most watched ever.

“How are businesses addressing the effect that the most popular Olympics to date will have on employee productivity and workplace Internet access for the month of August? XXXX County, Maryland’s CIO, (name deleted), is using a product from (Company X) to monitor its 3000+ employees’ web usage, ensuring the county’s critical applications, staff productivity, and network resources don’t suffer as a result of the games.

“Please let me know if you are interested in speaking with (name deleted) and/or (Company X) about how companies can avoid hosting the Olympics at the office this summer.”

Is there a single manager anywhere in America worried about the Olympics cutting into productivity? The only “evidence” I can find, if you can even call it that, is this “survey” that is reported at the “News Lite: It Barely Qualifies As News” Web site. The claim is that 18 percent of workers age 18-24 “say they will catch part of the Olympics while working,” but again, there is no evidence of how this “survey” was conducted, who was surveyed or when the question was asked.

Interestingly enough, I got another press release on workers using the Internet at work for their personal purposes this week from the Kansas State University media relations office. It quotes Diane Swanson, a management professor at the university, who claims that checking the latest score on your computer or taking home a few pens from the office needs to be put in proper perspective. Swanson says: “I’m not dismissing it as a legitimate question but, for one thing, it pales in comparison to the massive highway robbery that has gone on at the top of organizations because of corporate scandals.”

And in case you think that Professor Swanson is making a case for stealing from the office, she’s not. Her memo talks about the need for businesses to talk to employees about striking a balance on these issues when so many are traveling, telecommuting and working from home. Take a read and I’m sure you agree.

But back to watching the Olympics at work: Is this a problem anywhere? Are you worried about it at your workplace? I’d love to hear from anyone out there who thinks this is a big deal (either with a comment posted here or an e-mail sent to me at jhollon@workforce.com), because in my mind, this is just another PR-driven workplace fairy tale.