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.'"
Terms of use (Score:5, Interesting)
Rules (Score:5, Interesting)
That was a scumbag move of the mayor, firing him without even talking to him.
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, one could make the argument that, since the game was installed, it was 'approved' for use....
Evil breeds evil... (Score:3, Interesting)
On a related note, back in Law School, most folks used laptops to take notes. The Dean used to walk through the back of class from time to time. If he was in a particularly bad mood, he'd signal the professor teaching to call on whoever was playing solitare. Getting "called on" in law school is often just as unpleasant in real life as it appears in movies like "Legally Blonde." More so when you're playing solitare and not paying attention. It was evil, really.
Nobody ever got kicked out of school for it though.
Re:Heh. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a person at a company I work for, that gets the mandatory levels of productivity needed to keep the job. They are also very outspoken about company issues, which disagree with the current practices (union and so on). So every time he gets audited (monthly process) they purposefully find his worst interactions in the hopes that he'll be below standard and they can fire him. Some people didn't believe this so he purposefully made a small mistake in one interaction and wrote down the ID of that interaction. The next month, that was the one audited. This has been shown more than once, and they're just waiting for an "approved" reason to terminate employment.
This kind of discrimination does exist, they just hide it behind protocol and procedure.
like a teenager and a car... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep. It's like my parents and I when I was in high school:
Mom: "Okay, what car are you taking?"
Me: "My car."
Dad: *COUGHAHEM*
Me: "The car which I am permitted to use."
Dad: "Have fun!"
I see it all the time- employees get very posessive about their computers. The word "my" is thrown around very casually, they get attached to them, etc. Hell, I worked at places where people (almost exclusively sales staff) would take laptops with them when let go, and they'd act REALLY pissed when we called them and asked for them back. Some we had to literally harass the CRAP out of, to get machines returned- and when they were, they'd invariably be damaged, usually the keyboard and mouse/trackpad buttons; it was clear they whacked the shit out of it with a shoe or something just to piss us off.*
It's equipment. Capital. I don't see a machine shop operator getting pissed when he's fired and he can't take the mill home with him...
*I've also had to lock sales people out of databases WHILE they were getting "The Talk", because in the past, every single one of their predecessors had immediately logged in to the customer database from home and dumped it... un frigging believeable. Never had more trouble with terminated/let go employees than with sales dweebs/bimbos. ZERO morals, which I'd like to think was part of the reason they were fired.
Re:So? (Score:2, Interesting)
It's akin to giving a deck of cards to every employee as they are hired and then firing anybody who uses them at work.
Re:Terms of use (Score:5, Interesting)
I do I.T. work at an amusement park but I also drive trams when its busy because its what I did before I got promoted. Anyway the CEO here has fire d people for sitting down at work and for even using a cell phone in a private break area away from guests. No cells allowed nor is looking like your not working in front of guests allowed. Cells outside of the public are allowed but its different when he is around. Even though I work in IT, I was asked by him why I was not picking cigarette butts where I was volunteering to work (clearing trams). I would have been termed onsite and to me its silly but that is just business as usual.
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
The bottom line is that if a company does not want an employee to use a resource, then they company should not supply the resource, or limit the use. For instance, reading ponography at work is probably also frowned upon, but would a company have a case if it provided that SWANK in the library, and then fired employees that chose to utilize it?
Now, one might say that employers provide the internet, and that can be used for ponography. The thing is the employer does not actually provide the ponography/ In fact, if the employer was smart, filters would in place to limit access to these sites, and employees who tried to circumvent the filters could then be fired.
In the end firing this guy is like firing a guy who picked up $10 from the ground. Sure one could say it was theft, but it might also be entrapment. Hiring and trainine employees cost a lot of money, and one does not fire them friviously. Unless, of course, one is borrow and spend republican.
A similar story... (Score:5, Interesting)
"But Mr. Ford! You can't fire me!"
"Why the hell not?"
"I don't work for you! I work for the phone company!"
Re:Terms of use (Score:1, Interesting)
It seems this poor sap was just a victim of being ignorant of his surroundings. There is more than enough surfing the web, making private phone calls on public time, and other mis-use of state resources than I can shake a stick at, and no one is ever even talked to about it.
It seems he is either being made an example of, too stupid to realize "the mayor is standing behind you, dude" or someone just had it out for him. The unions have so much strength in a state agency while representing their workers that you need at least a dozen different complaints filed against a particular individual before you can even address the issue with their supervisor's manager.
Bloomberg is on the news where I live every day. How can you fail to recognize he is standing directly behind you, even when you are truly engulfed in a compelling round of timed solitaire?
Re:I dunno about you guys (Score:3, Interesting)
Alternately, you'd be surprised what you can live on. Here in CT minimum wage is 7.55/hr. That works out to 15,704 dollars per year. Absolute crap money pretty much anywhere.
Rents can be found as low as 500/mo if you really look hard, realistically 600-700 is the lower range for a studio or smallish one bedroom(working on moving out ATM, so my info is fairly current for the New Haven area). Get fond of ramen and Goodwill stores, and you can survive on minimum wage. You will have a pretty shitty life, but you wont' be homeless, and you won't die of malnutrition(some malnutrition related illnesses are possible, but not likely to face a lethal problem in the short term).
Granted, NYC is a lot more expensive than the ghettos of CT that I'm referring to here, but 27k is also a lot more money than 15.7k. I'm sure most people can survive on that much in NYC if they are willing to be ruthlessly frugal. Not a life many would want, but it is possible.
This isn't even accounting for various welfare programs which can make living on shit wages much easier, such as Section 8 housing which fixes the max rent you will pay to 1/3rd of your income(run the numbers above, that minimum wage in CT scenario leads to well over half of your income going to housing).
Re:Back in the day of Windows 3.1... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:A similar story... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ford was definatly a genius, but with genius comes serious eccentricities. He held very firm beliefs about the "working class" and how they should be treated (and in return how they should act.) An extension of that feeling was his belief that the "international jew" was conspiring against the working man.
He was also quite shrewd. Read the fine print about the "five dollar day." You didn't just get a job, work a day, and walk out the door with a five dollar bill. You had to be a clean living family man (by Ford's standards) and even then, you still made the standard factory wages (two-ish dollars a day). the "Five dollar day" came from the bonus you received after a set period of employment. A bonus that usually spent on....the purchase of a Ford vehicle.
It didn't help that Ford was effectivly senile for the last ten or so years of his life. Fascinating man, but also bat-shit insane.
Re:The real question is..... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Another reason to smoke (Score:3, Interesting)
I do believe I had one boss try to claim that was different because "smoking is an addiction". My response was on the order of "well... reading is my addiction."
Re:Terms of use (Score:2, Interesting)
Additional point: If use of this app is against policy why did IT leave it on the image? If is wasn't there is wouldn't be used. If NYC IT needs help in this area I am available for US$5000/wk plus travel, two meals/day [my choice of which meals and where], a room at the Trump for the duration [Park View w/jacuzzi] and tickets to Spamlot...
= ; ^ ) >
My worst boss ever... (Score:2, Interesting)
I will never by my own boss again, I'm an asshole.
Literally... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If they enforced this (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Back in the day of Windows 3.1... (Score:3, Interesting)
Your boss was absolutely correct in questioning why a programmer was in the data center.
How the hell... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is so trivially easy to remove or disable access to this sort of software, that it boggles the mind anyone would even consider trying to make an issue out of it.
I got reamed for Freecell (Score:3, Interesting)
The company got bought out. He kept his job; I ended up homeless.
Re:Another reason to smoke (Score:3, Interesting)
Now I work at a better paying job where there is no time clock and my boss smokes more than me. When I take a smoke break, it's usually with my boss and we discuss work related issues. It improves our productivity (and we're sticking with that story).
Re:Not something to worry about (Score:3, Interesting)
Mayor was right (Score:1, Interesting)
It's freekin' Bloomberg dude! Not only is he the Mayor, but he's a billionaire. And you can bet your ass that he didn't get there by playing fucken solitare on the PC. He got there thru hard work, on his part, and that of others (probably mostly others), and by keeping costs low.
Now someone playing around when they're being paid to work isn't working hard, and isn't keeping costs low. It's fucking around and costing the taxpayers money.
Since the Mayor is *SUPPOSED* to be the guy who has a fiduciary responsibility to the tax payers - he did the right thing in my book and shitcanned the guy.... Good riddance I say - and maybe the rest of the morons in the room will think twice before playing around...
Is this good for morale? Probably not, but hey - it sure as hell gets the point across... Lord knows that I've had some schmucks working for me who I know play solitare when they're supposed to be working and flat out lie when confronted with the evidence of usage... We have an agreement that the employees sign stating "NO GAMES", and they still do it... We tried fooling around with the warnings... didn't have any effect. What did have an effect was firing one violator... interestingly enough, after that - no more violators..... oh yeah, Bloomberg was spot on...
Re:A similar story... (Score:4, Interesting)
evolved culture, identity politics, immigration (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do our domesticated cattle walk into our slaughterhouses, whereas their wild cousins will run from us?
Two major factors:
1. Our American culture is an evolved organism, evolved by elite propaganda to serve the elite.
This deals with the idea that a major part of what is inside the human brain is learned after birth. A large part of this learning is culture. Culture is therefore a large part of each human.
Culture is a set of ideas about what the world is supposed to be and how we are supposed to behave, among other things.
Culture is not necessarily a product of random chance. In fact, culture is like an animal in an ecosystem. Over generations, that species is shaped by environmental forces. Jsut as domesticated animals are evolved by humans over generations.
Hypothesis: American culture is a species of domesticated culture shaped and evolved by elite forces. Elite forces are force vectors in the form of ideas that are inserted into our culture by those entities and persons who are rich and powerful. The elite might be politicians, large corporations, political lobbies and interest groups, rich people, think tanks, large nonprofit foudnations, and mass media figures.
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.
So our culture has been domesticated by them to suit them, to be friendly to them.
The wolf would bite you or me. But your pet dog Rover will not.
This domestication of the american culture has mainly been effected though tv and radio.
And you see on this thread that Americans are on the side of the elite now. They are OWNED by the elite, ideologically.
Also, two other factors that help the elite control AMericans, mostly white Americans, is White Hating Identity Politics (WHIP) and Mass Immigration of Third Worlders (MIOTW).
The political left in america is controlled by the elite. It has been domesticated by them. It has been used by the elite to drive the largest bloc in America (the white lower middle class in general) away from leftism. They did this by foundation grant to liberal activists and writers etc that focus on identity politics, especially of a type that sees white people as irredeemably racist, and sees racism as something that is only associated with whites. Thus, whites, esp. lower middle class whites, are, by the tenets of WHIP, evil.
WHIP antagonizes whites against the Left, and drives them into the arms of the Right, which is the main tool of the elite.
Also, the Left in Ameica (actually the FAUXleft) has operated in conjunction with the Right to bring in large numbers of immigrants from third world nations with who look very different from white Americans. This is causing rapid change in America.
Rapid change causes people to react.
White Americans feel as if they are under siege. THey are circling the wagons. And thus they are more vulnerable to seduction by elite ideology.
That is why America has moved to the right.
I am making a documentary on this general subject.
See my sig for more....
Perception more important -seen this (Score:2, Interesting)
Unfortuentally, his desktop could be seen from the hallway and it happened the owner saw this game being played a number of times. He was reassigned away because "he did nothing but play computer games."
A short time later after getting an amazingly bad performace review I left the company and they hire 3 people (kid you not) to do my jobs (and kept me as a part time consultant for 6 months).
Re:If they enforced this (Score:4, Interesting)
NYC will loose this one (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If they enforced this (Score:2, Interesting)