Report Indicates Workers Play A Lot of Games On the Job 97
A report released by casual gaming mecca PopCap Games indicates that white collar workers play games constantly throughout the day. The study indicates that as salaries and titles improve on the organizational chart, the amount of gameplaying in a given day increases substantially. "Considering that the casual games market is around 200 million people, PopCap estimates that the executive crowd is very much into casual gaming, with about 80 million 'white collar' workers playing. 24 percent of the 'white collar' employees said they do play at work, and that number jumps up to 35 percent for CEOs, CFOs and other senior executives. 98 percent said that they play casual games at home too." What's your favorite on-the-job casual title?
Game playing by posters. (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmm, auto mechanic slack off. Hmmm, janitor slack off.
"I have no respect for any scumbag that gets paid 16 to 30 bucks an hour, and slacks off."
Would you respect me more if I told you I made below minimumn wage and slacked off because you were a cheap bastard?
"But see, I include a nice clause with my "employees". I don't hire ANYONE that has ever claimed unemployment, unless they have a REALLY good explanation and can deliver it with a straight face."
You mean like after 9/11 or Enron?
Re:Game playing by profession (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand the argument, but it does not account for reality.
Some of us simply do not have anything to do. If you agree to pay me for 40 hours per week and just don't give me any work to do, it's your own fault. That's why I'm typing on Slashdot as we speak... I'm waiting for signoff and access to the platform.
It's nice in principle to demand eight hours of solid work per day, but in reality, there are occasions where there are only six or seven hours of work to do, or over the last week or so for me, zero to one.
Re:Game playing by profession (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't hire ANYONE that has ever claimed unemployment, unless they have a REALLY good explanation and can deliver it with a straight face."
WTF does one have to do with the other? I guess you wouldn't hire me, then, because I've drawn a whole six weeks of unemployment (3 in '91, 3 in '01) over the last 20 years of my full time working life, which in total didn't add up to the amount of taxes I've paid this quarter alone. I sympathize with you on someone stealing from you (even trivial stuff), but wow.
I suppose, given that you seem to have minarchist libertarian to anarcho-capitalist sympathies from what I saw in your journal entries, that you regard taxation as theft, and by extension, drawing unemployment as theft. Fair enough, but I recommend reading Dr. Walter Block, a dyed-in-the-wool Austrian economist as there ever has been, who would probably see it more as reappropriating what has already been stolen.
Re:Game playing by profession (Score:5, Insightful)
It sounds like you are a micro-manager who just wants people to look busy. My thinking on the subject couldn't be more different.
Ideally, their work translates into your money. If Alice completed the same amount of work as Bob at the end of the day, and they have the same job, with the same pay, what does it matter that Alice shopped for shoes because she finished early? As long as Alice is discreet about it, her slacking has no effect on your bottom line. Efficiency should be rewarded, not punished. Either give her more work and a raise or simply turn a blind eye to it and hope Bob learns a thing or two.
The exception, of course, is if one has no way to evaluate their productivity in an objective sense. Then, in my opinion, one is are unqualified to manage them. Yes, it's an art; not all business is reducible to some integer quantity of work done. But subjectively evaluating workers is pointless, because you are not paying them to look busy.