20 people got fired at work for inappropriate internet usage

[Chaotic42]

Originally posted by: AmusedOne


You've never owned a business, have you? In my experience, without hard and fast rules, the employees ignore the customers or their job and goof off. Even the acceptable ones will quickly go down hill if they are not kept in line. Making rules about personal phone calls and internet usage is not breathing down their necks. It's setting boundries on behavior.

No offence, as you are one of my favorite posters here, but you must have some crappy workers.

You mentioned that you owned a sandwich shop. I used to work fast food (McDonalds), and we've had some really terrible mangment, and we kept the place going.

One time my opening manager was smoking crack in the bathroom, and we were two openers short. My roomate and I busted butt and got the job done. I then walked out when the store manager came, telling him to hire some decent managers or pay me more to do their job

I think that if you have to ride someone's behind to do their job, they need a new job.

 

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: toant103
I was playing warcraft today at work with 4 of my co-worker.

:0

nice lol . . . helps if you're the CEO of the comp too. Bet you Bill Gates can surf for Porn at work and no one would say anything.

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: AmusedOne


You've never owned a business, have you? In my experience, without hard and fast rules, the employees ignore the customers or their job and goof off. Even the acceptable ones will quickly go down hill if they are not kept in line. Making rules about personal phone calls and internet usage is not breathing down their necks. It's setting boundries on behavior.

No offence, as you are one of my favorite posters here, but you must have some crappy workers.

You mentioned that you owned a sandwich shop. I used to work fast food (McDonalds), and we've had some really terrible mangment, and we kept the place going.

One time my opening manager was smoking crack in the bathroom, and we were two openers short. My roomate and I busted butt and got the job done. I then walked out when the store manager came, telling him to hire some decent managers or pay me more to do their job

I think that if you have to ride someone's behind to do their job, they need a new job.

Where did I say I was riding someone's behind? I simply lay down ground rules. I know there are employees that will not abuse the phone, but there are employees who, although they are otherwise good, WILL abuse the phone. For many of my employees, this is their first job.

There is a HUGE difference between riding my employee's behinds, and making ground rules. One of those ground rules is no personal phone calls while on the clock unless it's an emergency. YOU hire teens, and tell me you wont be making that rule DAMN quick.

 

[ElFenix]

porn, gambling, hate... and there was one other i'm not allowed for. pretty much anything else i can surf as much as i want. only prob is that computer at work has all of 128 megs of ram so that i'm up to about 150 with just stuff i need to have open on win 2k.

 

[TNTrulez]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
porn, gambling, hate... and there was one other i'm not allowed for. pretty much anything else i can surf as much as i want. only prob is that computer at work has all of 128 megs of ram so that i'm up to about 150 with just stuff i need to have open on win 2k.

Sucks to have a crappy comp at work.

 

[Sketcher]

There is a HUGE difference between riding my employee's behinds, and making ground rules. One of those ground rules is no personal phone calls while on the clock unless it's an emergency. YOU hire teens, and tell me you wont be making that rule DAMN quick.

!!!! Agreed.

 

[skace]

We lost our best network technician to a similar incident. He was working 60+ hours a week, still hasn't been replaced, and our network has gone to hell in a handbasket since hes been gone.

I think setting rules is very important, but I think execution of those rules under a zero tolerance type enviroment is in very bad taste. Sometimes I wonder if my internet use will get me in trouble - browsing anandtech for random computer facts / what have you. But right now I am working 3 jobs for the price of 1 due to recent layoffs, so I need to do something every once in awhile or the stress would overwhelm me.

 

[txgixer]

We fired two Sr. VP's at my previous job for looking at the wrong stuff at work . . . . . and that was in 1998

 

[gigapet]

Originally posted by: TNTrulez

Originally posted by: ElFenix
porn, gambling, hate... and there was one other i'm not allowed for. pretty much anything else i can surf as much as i want. only prob is that computer at work has all of 128 megs of ram so that i'm up to about 150 with just stuff i need to have open on win 2k.

Sucks to have a crappy comp at work.

yes it does, try doing webdev and some graphics things on a pentium 1 166mhz 64 mb ram, running on win 95.....nightmare!



I would have to say that if your employees are not performing then fire them but dont harrass them about what they do if they are still getting a quality job done. We are not machines and shouldnt be expected to rigorously bang out computer tasks 8 hours a day. Whats teh difference if I'm surfing the web or just pretending to look like i'm working? Surfing the web can at least lead to the acquisition of knowledge of some sort or spawn creativity. I would have to say constant gaming, gambling and pr0n are probably the exceptions as the company have to watch their a$$ and protect themselves from employee lawsuits.

 

[Jzero]

YOu need to have a clearly defined usage policy, and it needs to be fairly and evenly enforced. AmusedOne, your strict stance is good but is counterproductive for salaried employees. Where I work, we expect our employees to get their work done. We're expected to stay after-hours or come in weekends, or be on-call. We don't get paid a penny extra for this. If the company is going to expect us to donate our personal time for company use, then the company is going to have to concede that there are times when people will use company time for personal use.

Now, inappropriate use? Sure, that's one thing, and depending on the offence, you may not even get a warning.
But just general use? Why?

Here's the conundrum:
You can regulate usage of resources, but you CANNOT regulate SLACKERS. I have said this on ATOT before:
SLACKING is a MANAGEMENT issue. NOT an IT issue.
You can regulate internet and phone usage all you want. The only people you're really hurting are the good workers who need to make some personal phone calls sometimes, or want to take a break from the grind for a few minutes.
If you forcibly ban a slacker from using the net or the phone, they will just find other ways to slack--napping on the can, smoke breaks, strolling around the office carrying a stack of papers so they look busy, talking on the cellphone so it's harder to monitor.

I hate it when lazy managers try to use IT people to push their employees. At my office we recently banned IM apps, because they constitute a security hole.
That's fine, as long as that's the reason, because I'm warning you now: If you're boxing up IM because you think it's going to increase productivity, you're dead wrong. The people like myself who are productive are ALREADY not using AIM. Those who are using AIM will just spend more time on hotmail having "conversations" through e-mail.

 

[skace]

Very true Jzero, from what I've seen most slackers don't even bother with phone calls or the internet. They usually spend their time reading books or sleeping in a quiet office area. 90% of the time they will be anywhere BUT their desk. Everything from talking to others, smoke breaks outside, hiding in someone elses work area in another building, or coming up with a million excuses to take a day off. These slakcers are the ones that get away with it for extended periods of time because no one has the balls to put an end to their habbits.

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: AmusedOne
Well, you all can hate me...

But my position would be this: I don't pay you to surf the net, therefore any net surfing not directly related to work would be 100% prohibited. Just as personal phone calls are banned or severely restricted in most places, so should personal internet surfing.

I wouldn't have a problem if you did it on your time with my equipment so long as you didn't abused my bandwidth. But then, someone would and I'd be forced to cut everyone off.

Think about this, what would you do if your gardener took an extra hour working at your house each week but all he did was use your computer to surf the net and send E-mails... and he charged you for that extra hour?

What would you say if your auto mechanic pulled your laptop out of your car, surfed the net for a few hours, and charged those hours as "labor" on your repair bill?

I agree with you, but it seems that some people can't use the net even when they're on lunch break or whatever. That seems a little unfair (as long as the person isn't doing anything illegal with the company equipment).

 

[Ultima]

Originally posted by: Chaotic42

Originally posted by: AmusedOne


You've never owned a business, have you? In my experience, without hard and fast rules, the employees ignore the customers or their job and goof off. Even the acceptable ones will quickly go down hill if they are not kept in line. Making rules about personal phone calls and internet usage is not breathing down their necks. It's setting boundries on behavior.

No offence, as you are one of my favorite posters here, but you must have some crappy workers.

You mentioned that you owned a sandwich shop. I used to work fast food (McDonalds), and we've had some really terrible mangment, and we kept the place going.

One time my opening manager was smoking crack in the bathroom, and we were two openers short. My roomate and I busted butt and got the job done. I then walked out when the store manager came, telling him to hire some decent managers or pay me more to do their job

I think that if you have to ride someone's behind to do their job, they need a new job.

McDonalds is one of the worst jobs you can have (speaking from personal experience). :frown:

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: Jzero
YOu need to have a clearly defined usage policy, and it needs to be fairly and evenly enforced. AmusedOne, your strict stance is good but is counterproductive for salaried employees. Where I work, we expect our employees to get their work done. We're expected to stay after-hours or come in weekends, or be on-call. We don't get paid a penny extra for this. If the company is going to expect us to donate our personal time for company use, then the company is going to have to concede that there are times when people will use company time for personal use.

Well, J, that's what I was talking about... hourly employees. Only my managers and area managers are salaried, and I don't HAVE to lay down these rules for them. But curiously, THEY are the ones that support and enforce these rules for the hourly workers, not me. Could that be because they have to deal with them every day, and know better? Probably

 

[AT]

My old boss, actually CEO of that company, had to have his laptop reformatted and Windows reinstalled after it started acting weird. His only instructions to the IT guys were that do not do anything to my E: partition because my girlie pictures are there. He had hundreds of megs of high quality centrefold scans there.

Strangely enough one his greatest decisions was when an over anxious IT guy wanted to install a logging Internet proxy that in this company Internet usage is not monitored and never will be. Since the company was a tech startup with committed people everyone was pulling long days and getting things done regardless of what they might have used the web for.