Slashdot Mirror
Games in the Workplace?
Anonymous Coward asks: "Back in the day it was not uncommon for games to contain 'Escape Buttons' and other commands to quickly exit a game. These games appealed to the Geek at Work as he could fill in his Friday afternoon and as soon as he heard his boss' shoes approaching, he could escape from the third dungeon and return to his spreadsheet. Yet games today are not allowing such activities to occur. Most games are requiring so much dedicated action that it is impossible to play a game and still switch back and forth without long delays. Where are the games for the worker?"
Doesn't sound like a very good management system which hires 15 people to do the work of 3.
creation science book
I was in pretty much exactly the same situation as the parent poster. You are making some assumptions about the functioning of the call centre. The place I worked -- a large, blue corporation-- offered 24/7 tech support. We dealt strictly with business customers. My shifts were from 9pm to 8am, and I would take 4-5 calls during that period, usually at the butt-ends of my days. Occasionally a call would come in in the middle of the night. What was the cost to the corporation? The salaries of 3-4 guys overnight. Don't you think that that measly sum is worth the ability to boast 24/7 coverage? Don't assume that staffing levels are as high as during peak periods. We had 60-80 guys on during business hours. It would be "bloat" to have that many on the night shift, I agree.
It's entirely cost-effective for them to pay us to be there doing nothing. What else should we have been doing? Cleaning the floors? Dusting monitors? Coding new software?
We played games; it was the sole benefit of working ungodly hours. I liked it.
Letting your staff waste their free time 7 hours (or whatever) a night of vid game playing is a corporate strategy that will eventually land your company out of business, and all of your happy nightshift guys out of jobs.
One of four things will happen to you.
1) your client will tighten their belt, and go with a strategy that only has the 3 people working, and deal with the reduced customer service level.
2) your client will hire a smaller group of people to handle the business themselves, and bring it inhouse
3) another company who staffs 15 people will make a bid to only charge your customer for 4 or 5 people, and your customer will leave.
4) your customer that is stupid enough to pay you for bloat staff will go out of business