No doubt the Googleplex in Mountain View, lavishly equipped with massage chairs and snack rooms, is an earthly paradise, at least for engineers who joined early enough to benefit from the company's public offering. Fortune named the search engine giant the best employer in the US, so it must be true. But try telling that to those employees who will on April 1st be recategorized as hourly workers; ordered to take at least 30 minutes off for lunch so that they don't rack up billable time while grabbing a sandwich in their cubicle; and made to get approval for expensive overtime. What?

No big deal, explained a Google spokesman, in an email to Valleywag: "Google periodically reviews our employment and pay practices. We recently completed such a review and we made a number of changes to our total compensation and benefits packages, including making more positions paid hourly and eligible for overtime." And, in announcing the change internally, Google took pains to tell workers they were all created equal in the eyes of Larry and Sergey.

But that's not how the move is seen by Google's second-class citizens, such as the peons who approve Adwords text-ad buys. "All is not well at the plex," says one. The gripes: the compulsory lunchbreak, for which hourly workers will receive no compensation; the effort to limit overtime compensation; and threat of a black mark on the review of anyone who fails to punch in properly to the time-tracking window on their desktops. "Retarted." says our disgruntled informant.