Fired for Solitare At Work 680
schlick writes "The Associated Press is carrying a story about a NYC employee fired after Mayor Michael Bloomberg noticed a game of solitare on the employee's desktop at work." From the article: "Greenwood, who earned $27,000 a year and had worked in the office for six years, said in a telephone interview that he limited his play time to his one-hour lunch or during quick breaks when he needed a moment of distraction. 'It wasn't like I spent hours and hours a day playing, because I had plenty to do,' Greenwood said. 'If I had been working at something exhaustively for two hours, I might get a cup of coffee and play for a minute but then go right back to my work.'"
Not something to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
So? (Score:2, Insightful)
Bloomberg thus joins the ranks (Score:3, Insightful)
Two paragraphs from TFA ... (Score:5, Insightful)
-- and --
"I expect all city workers, including myself, to work hard," the mayor said. "There's nothing wrong with taking a break, but during the business day, at your desk, that's not appropriate behavior."
Yep, workin' hard there, Mr. Mayor. Workin' hard.
Not nearly as bad as... (Score:5, Insightful)
A little extreme, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
When you know the boss is going to be around, with reporters, why would you be playing a game on your computer? I'm sorry the guy lost his job, and yes, I think a reprimand would have been more appropriate, but still, he wasn't very bright.
Only a few minutes? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every good manager knows that employees need a bit of time to themselves. Just look at Google's policy for working on personal projects and what a great benefit that policy is to both Google and its employees.
At my last job we had short Unreal Tournamet sessions one day a week and nakednews.com viewings in the morning, and everybody was really happy with their job. Everybody got a lot of great work done.
Another reason to smoke (Score:5, Insightful)
-Rick
Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean
Re:I dunno about you guys (Score:1, Insightful)
That guy should move to Vegas.
Re:If they enforced this (Score:5, Insightful)
I would personally like to see a study on how many people are compliant with their agreements. From a survey of my cube-buddies; I know we would all fail. At the same time, I don't usually stop for lunch, so I don't see the harm in taking a thought-break - without which, I am sure my productivity would drop.
Re:Seriously, who doesn't do this? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm just amazed that Bloomberg has managed to completely revitalize the lower east side and stomp out crime in all the boroughs, and now has enough time on his hands to wander around snooping on his staff, looking for the evil sol.exe.
&laz;
Re:So? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've worked for employers that didn't understand this. Burnout and turnover rates were astonishingly high. Meanwhile, I've worked for employers that recognized the value of this kind of freedom/flexibility. They also realized the non-value of an employee that needs to get away.
Solitaire/minesweeper/Sudoku or the occasional "why don't you go home early" often translates to a refreshed and more productive employee tomorrow.
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
Not NYC - Albany (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Two paragraphs from TFA ... (Score:3, Insightful)
-Chris
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
The frickin' MAYOR is coming to your office. Not of Paducah, KY, but of New York City. He probably hasn't been there for three years. Don't you think you'd better make yourself a little more presentable?
Unrealistic expectations (Score:3, Insightful)
The human mind is not designed to stay on one task for hour after hour without a few minutes of mental downtime, and failing to recognize this and not to simply expect productivity, but blind mechanical function in a sentient being is not only wrong but fails to deliver the intended results.
It's a sad state of affairs when you realize that many people in their position tend to have a more anthropomorphic view of their pets than their employees.
Smokers...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bloomberg thus joins the ranks (Score:5, Insightful)
And to the GP, you will find if you pay attention, that most rich people who's names you know have worked very hard.
Re:The real question is..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If they enforced this (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
It really is unreasonable to have such policies without some kind of technical help to enforce them. It doesn't need to be bullet proof - it just makes things easier for the employees honestly trying to follow the policy.
A related issue is the monthly limit on total bytes transferred with my cable company TOS. I wouldn't mind it, if only they provided a meter on their website somewhere where I could see how much I had left for the month. Without that, I am just guessing and hoping they don't get strict on me all of a sudden. I know I could build a system to track it myself using iptables - but haven't got around to it yet.
Re:So? (Score:2, Insightful)
This worked better when I was in more of an office setting. Now I'm doing field service, and even though I know I need a break, I can't let the client see me walk away from their BSODed server to go have a smoke and play Bejeweled -- even though I know that's just what I need to get a better perspective on the issue at hand. This has happened once already, recently, and I ended up chasing my tail for four hours, with a headache to boot. I should have just taken the fifteen minutes.
Re:Terms of use (Score:3, Insightful)
Whereas it probably also was made clear beforehand that playing games during businesshours was prohibited in the case of the NYC employee, there could at least have been a 'final warning' or serious discussion: What this guy did is purely covering his own ass: -HE- wanted to be a publicity whore, he'd better prepare and sterilize the grounds he's doing that on beforehand (eg. don't give people priviledges to play/install games).
On a side note: I am too tired to dig up any past Slashdot articles, but I clearly remember one research that stated that having those little game-breaks/walk-breaks stimulated productivity overall in the end (the mind being more clear/just having something to get distracted from a few minutes).
It's measuring with two sizes (if that's even a valid expression) if people -are- allowed to have their watercooler breaks, but aren't allowed to have a 'game-break'.
And of course, one should not be playing Solitaire all day at work... or reading Slashdot for that matter. Get back to work!
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds to me like it's time to get a new job.
If you are good at what you do, then why are you putting up with these kind of working conditions?
My recomendation is to quit NOW
Re:The media goes political again, Go figure. (Score:2, Insightful)
>
>
Re:Terms of use (Score:1, Insightful)
I worked at an AOL call center and I could not deal with the pressure and handle time requirements. I go to school and there is a shortage of jobs where I live in Florida. No industry. So I suck it up.
I used to have much better jobs before moving hereeee. It is silly I am being paid 9/hr and I service over 1000 computers and some of them are required for ride operation. But I bet he thought I was a minimal wage guy just clearing trams because of my outfit on did not say IT because I was not working in that department that day. I would have been termed if I told him I refuse to pick cigarette butts because I work in IT. I mean if he asks someone if you like your job you better say yes. Otherwise its onsite termination. He did that too but my guess is he had a good reason to do it. You dont double cross the CEO.
Re:The real question is..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:3, Insightful)
If you work in a public office, you've got people coming in and out all day, many of which are ordinary citizens. All it takes is one person to notice and say, "Oh, I am paying for that guy to play Solitaire." Something like that may come out against you in an news article or in your re-election campaign.
So yes, he looks like an asshole, but then again, he also looks like he's stongly protecting the use of NYC's tax payers' money. Of course, neither, either or both may be true.
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
No, Ayn Rand, it's not in your job description, but it's precisely in almost every state's labor laws.
lol (Score:2, Insightful)
Also that office was getting downsized.
That was just the icing on the cake. He was not fired unjustly.
Boy to people overreact
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
The grandparent poster was talking about someone who was doing the job he was hired to do.
Employees and employers both have extensive rights and responsibilities that are enshrined in job descriptions, employments contracts, and state and federal laws. Working isn't a right or a privilege--it's a mutually beneficial arrangement extensively regulated by contract and labour law.
An employee who complains because the employer isn't holding up their end of the contractual or legal obligations shouldn't face sanctions (unfair evaluation practices as described by the grandparent poster, for instance).
The term of the day is "At Will" (Score:3, Insightful)
And good luck trying to prove wrongful termination in court without blatent supporting evidence.
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
If a big-time politician came wandering through my cube, (and a couple have) you have two obligations: clean up your desk, and greet the distinguished visitor with a smile. If your boss asked you to work during the tour, let's not be an idiot about it - find some work, or at least repeat some work you've already done. The VIP doesn't know the difference. "Sir, I'm working on an analysis of the workload levels of the T&M contractors the city hires to see if we're getting a good return on our contracts." Never mind it was something you did 3 months ago.
Oh, and don't act like you aren't the BOFH that opens up old network statistics charts or network snoops, pouring over them when the big boss comes in. "Sir, I'm tracking through some anomalous network activity our SOA layer got during last night's advertising during the Olympics opening ceremony."
Anybody caught doing something stupid when a VIP is in the room deserves what they get. It's like seeing a cop in the median a mile ahead and then getting the bright idea to shift four lanes of traffic and pass on the right. You're begging for it. "My cell phone rang and I was just trying to honor good road safety rules, officer." Yeesh.
Re:If they enforced this (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If they enforced this (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been immersed in this culture my whole life, and it takes a short shock of outside air to look at it anew. We've a country that hates "socialism" so much that they organize to keep inions OUT of their workplace. The salaries shrink, pensions disppear, healthcare is repeatedly slashed for current employees and denied to new, "temporary" employees who never will become permanent. And they will side with the employers every time.
There's a book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", which, altho not really being about Kansas, addresses this all-pervasive phenomenon here in the south. Wage slaves vote against their own interests, and those of the families, because of their distaste of "socialism" and "big government".
It's a waterfall to the bottom of the gorge. The center ain't holding, and we're all being flushed, except for the very tippy top of the social scale, which is swimming in money and will pretty much own everything.
Got any room up there for expats? I'm thinking WAY up north, given the warming to come. A place without cameras on every street, a scenario the Mayor of Chicago is bringing to fruition. Our new transit passes will track our movements, we're to be watched at all times, they're reading our email and listening to our phones down here. I didn't waste all that time growing up to live in a prison populated by cowards overseen by the paranoid and greedy.
Re:like a teenager and a car... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or possibly the reason they were hired in the first place. Honesty doesn't make higher sales.
Re:Good! (Score:4, Insightful)
Me.
I guess I'm unusual.
Terry Pratchett once observed that cows are herded by men that, if the cows every thought about it, the cows could convert into a damp smear on the ground in two seconds.
But the cows never think about it. They are cows. Rebellion never crosses their minds, so they let the pink monkeys herd them into slaughterhouses.
(plaitive tone) why are we all cows? people died for over a hundred years to create unions so that employers couldn't treat people like peons on a feudal estate. Why do you hate yourselves so much?
Re:If they enforced this (Score:4, Insightful)
-nB
Working is not a right? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who the devil thought up that idea? When it becomes somehow politically correct to question a person's right to work, that's on par with attacking a person's right to speak his mind, maybe even worse.
I'm not asserting that everyone has a right to a plush job where they don't have to do any work. I'm not even asserting that anyone has a right to a specific job. But questioning a person's right to work when management can't find a reason to fire him other than clashes of opinion? That's the attitude of a slave. Shoot, clashes of opinion are often a company's most valuable resource.
People who are prevented from working lose a part of their humanity. Creating an artificial shortage of material resources is cruel enough, but an artificial shortage of work, that is just plain the worst sort of greed there is.
Uninstall?? (Score:5, Insightful)
2 cents,
Queen B
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Terms of use (Score:3, Insightful)
According to who?... Oh yeah the person who got fired; Of course he'd tell the truth if he was playing at the time, right? Really, how many people leave Windows applications up that you aren't using? If you're not using it, it should be minimized. Windows doens't have enough screen real estate otherwise, and it blocks your access to the desktop.
So in short, I think the guy is whitewashing his story. Getting canned for playing a game is harsh, but you should know better when a VIP comes to visit.
Re:Bloomberg thus joins the ranks (Score:5, Insightful)
It fucking well will be in real life. If you can't spell or put together a proper sentence, you will go nowhere fast.
Any job application / report to a customer / business proposal instantly loses its authority in the eyes of the recipient if said recipient detects a spelling or grammatical error. Think about that before applying the sarcasm on with a trowel next time.
Re:If they enforced this (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway, as far as the RUA, I think that everybody could get fired--if it was enforced. It's never enforced until it's needed.
How many of you admins pass over the receptionist's Christmas shopping on company time?
I'm seeming cocky here, even trollish, but, isn't this a case of 'you gotta go'?
Re:If they enforced this (Score:5, Insightful)
Ridiculous (Score:2, Insightful)
Even the most concentrated employees have to look up Slashdot or their favorite news site at some point for some well-earned distraction. And why? Because it makes you work better afterwards!
I do this often and I'll thankfully never be fired for it, given the size and type of the company that I work at (graphic design and web development studio), but I don't think that company size has any correlation to the usefulness of a little bit of distraction every now and then.
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm fine with laws that protect people from each other. I'm against laws that attempt to protect people from themselves. Seems simple enough to me.
at least smoking tends to kill quickly.
Emphysema and heart disease are slow enough.
27k in NYC? (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry it's 5am, I've had no coffee, and I'm very bitter from dealing with a solomon M$ problem over the course of the last 2 days, CRAP.
-j
Re:Entrapment? (Score:2, Insightful)
goverment allows me to have a car that goes 130mph, but busts me when I do so on 55mph zone.
I'm allowed to have a gun, but get busted doing something illegal with it.
I'm living in a free world, having free will. If I know something to be illegal or against policies it is up to me to choose what I want to do. I may break the law/policies as much as I want to, but I have to face penalties if being coucht.
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it is neither. It is merely the matter of a contract between two parties.
Re:evolved culture, identity politics, immigration (Score:3, Insightful)
These elite shape our culture over decades to make it suit them. They are capital. We are labor. Our interests are for the most part, directly opposed.
This is only in a society where there is enforced stratification, which isn't the case at all. Anyone, with proper application of willpower, can bring themselves into the level of the so-called elite. No one has a magic barrier preventing this. Only people who refuse to raise themselves up are stuck.
And anyway, if you thinks American culture is driven by a so-called elite you obviously haven't noticed any popular entertainment over the last fifteen years.
Re:Smoke breaks always pissed me off (Score:1, Insightful)
Smokers usually take 3-4 or more breaks a day for a cigarette and no one ever complained... When did they earn special privilege for essentially slacking off?
They earned that privilege at the same time nonsmoking assholes got most offices to be non-smoking. Next time you have a problem with it, tell your manage you want your cube/office to be the new smoking room, so smokers don't have to "slack off" outside. Until then, shut the hell up.
Re:Terms of use (Score:2, Insightful)
Dude, what's your fixation with cigarette butts? I work in I.T., make a *lot* more than $9/hr but I still do my part to keep the workplace clean. If I see something on the carpeted floor in our office area, I pick it up and throw it in the trash.
When I am in one of our hospitals for a meeting or to fix something in one of the data centers, I still do my part to keep the place clean. Just like your employer, we provide a "service" to our "customers". And one of the things that they expect when they visit our facilities is that the place is clean.
When I was in college (which was almost two decades ago - yikes!), I used to work at a "water park" for $3.50/hr. Yeah, we were expected to sweep up cigarette butts and other grunt work like that (just like your job). But I also noticed that the guys who owned the water park (who had more money than God) would also stop to pick up a cup, hamburger wrapper or cigarette butt. Hell, I saw one of the owners stop to pick up a nickel or dime once.
You shouldn't look at your "cigarette butt" picking at some sort of punishment. Yeah, it may seem demeaning but as one of the employees of that organization, you are expected to pitch-in and make the place look nice. As I mentioned above, I do the same thing at my place and our customers come to us for a totally different reason. But they still expect the place to look nice. And they deserve it.
Re:If they enforced this (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:TURTLES ALL THE WAY DOWN (Score:1, Insightful)
First, ad hominem argument (attack the person)...
Second, ad baculum argument (threat -- blood splatter)...
Third, semantics (battle of definitions)...
Fourth, argument by extremes ALWAYS/NEVER/TIMELESS/IMMUTABLE... (your caps)
Fifth and final, argumentum ad lazarum... look it up...
Whose strong rhetorical logic? Whose feeble mind?
Re:Terms of use (Score:3, Insightful)