Slashdot Mirror
Fired for Solitare At Work
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.'"
If they enforced this I think about 99% of the slashdotters would be fire. I know I'd be 0wned
I got you an Andes mint, but it melted in my pocket
What was his computer policy at work? If I do it, I'm fired if they want to enforce it.
Why are women so complicated? Find out how little I know here.
Topic hitting close to home - or am I really first?
Why is it that yakking at the water cooler (and disturbing others, thank you very little) is acceptable but playing games on a computer isn't?
Ya right. Thats his side of the story. That was probablily the last straw, you gottaa be a f*up to lose a gov job.
If you can get fired for playing solitaire, then you can (and most likely will) get fired for anything. Some employers randomly fire people. It's unfortunate. Solitaire is just an excuse though. Excuses are easy to find.
that get posted to the front page of slashdot.
In other news, earth is round.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
Really now, don't you know that what you do at work WITH COMPANY RESOURCES is up to the (shock) COMPANY?
After 6 years on the job. Sounds like he was already pwned
Most of Bloomberg's job consists of what in most jobs would count as taking a break (shaking hands, taking photos and telling people what he thinks).
of the rest of the undeserving rich who haven't the slightest clue about how work gets done.
"The workplace is not an appropriate place for games," Bloomberg said. "It's a place where you've got to do the job that you're getting paid for."
I'd cut him a little more slack, if I didn't know a few bosses just like him that managed things so poorly there was plenty of downtime. Of course, I suppose uber-capitalists like himself would say that whenever that occurs you're supposed to clock out so you can save the company your wages...
If he was playing on a break or on his lunch time, i dont see an issue. If his job wasnt getting done fire him..
That was a scumbag move of the mayor, firing him without even talking to him.
Office assistant Edward Greenwood IX was going over some papers at his desk as Bloomberg made the rounds with his photographer, greeting workers and posing for pictures. When the mayor reached him, Greenwood stood, they shook hands and the photographer snapped a photo.
-- 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.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Smoking. Co-workers that smoke use up far more time than those that blow off steam with Solitare. When you see an employee playing Enemy Territory, *then* you need to worry.
Someone got fired... so what? Really, why is this news?
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.
But I'd never vote Bloomberg after that (not that I live in New York).
;).
Had Bloomberg had the balls to walk up to the man and fire him in person it'd be one thing; but to fire a $27K secretary for playing a game of Solitaire, later, via your secretary: What a useless jerk.
For $27K you'd never find me racking my brain for 40 hours a week
And the idiot still likes Bloomberg...
Lighten up guys, jeeeeeeeez!
Anyone wonder what happens if an employer sees you on slashdot at work?
The only question I have about the story is what kind of crappy job is there in the Mayor's office - that pays less than 30k a year - IN FRIGGING MANHATTAN? I guess he'll have to change jobs - and get to STOP EATING TOP-RAMEN.
than to work continuously without taking any breaks. On the other hand, if a worker can goof off all the time, you have to ask yourself what kind of manager does he have if the manager can't tell if the worker is productive or not. Looking like you're working isn't the same as being productive.
... must be a Freecell fan.
Since when is "plenty of work" a guarantee that an employee won't play plenty of solitaire? Maybe he just didn't give a damn about his work.
And soon after that, Mayor Michael Bloomberg went back to his own pc and started a game of FreeCell.
Kaetemi
Taking a break from your work will do wonders. Sometimes you need to clear your mind and get back to your work refreshed... especially if you're stumped on an intense problem.
Can we all agree that this guy is lying. Of course he played for more than a few minutes. We all have our necessary distractions. I browse Slashdot. My boss downloads hockey fights and forwards me Nigerian email scams (I kid you not!).
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.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I downloaded this onto me boss' computer: ~46MB of Lesbian Strapon double-doggy-style pornography, available here at this Rapidshare URL
To confirm you're not a script,
please type the word in this image: cockthirst
We were in the process of replacing our beloved VAXstations with high-end (60 MHz!) Pentium PCs running Windows 3.1. One of the big wigs was walking through the data center, and noticed a programmer playing Solotaire. He asks, "What is she doing?". A co-worker in the neighboring cube notices the situation and defuses the crisis by spewing a load of BS: "She's doing mouse calibration; they have you use this program, so the pointer on the screen can be aligned with the roller ball inside the mouse. It only takes a few minutes and it lines up the pointer for you."
Smokers take their 15 minute morning and afternoon breaks. And they will band together to ensure that no one imposes rules against them. Hell, unions have even been used to protect the glorious smoke break. But what about non-smokers? Ever since I quite smoking I have also quit taking 15 minute breaks. Now, when I need a break, I hit slash dot, check my email, and try to let my brain relax. So yeah, some hard ass could can me for "abusing web privledges", but I can point out to him how my web browsing is inplace of smoking, and by browsing the web I am saving him thousands of dollars in sick time and increased health insurance premiums.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
So let's get this straight. The guy works the same menial office job for six years, his salary was only $27,000, and Mayor Bloomberg fires him for taking a break during the workday at his desk, which according to the mayor was "not appropriate behavior."
... would you cry about it? I can't think of any greater favor Bloomberg could have done for this guy than to get him the fuck outta there.
I mean
Breakfast served all day!
IMHO, there is always more to the story. Rarely will an employer blow his top and let go a valuable employee because of a seemingly minor offence, especially if the employee has the longevity of 6 years.
There's more to the story than we know, the media is only framing the most entertaining situation to gain readership. Most likely the solitaire game was the last straw in a series of events over a long period of time. People don't just let people go at the drop of a hat. Don't get bent out of shape or scared by this story.
Cry more noob.
I worked in a call center for more time than I would like to admit, and every month or so a new policy like this would come down the pipe.
As an act of civil disobedience I made solitare my wall paper, and removed all my icons.
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
The guy didn't work in New York, he worked at the Albany city legislative office. The median income for a male living in Albany is ~$31,000.
Breakfast served all day!
Why didn't their IT department remove the games if it was so against policy (even during lunch breaks)? To me, you can't justly enforce a policy unless you make a resonable attempt to prevent the behavior. No drinking at work, but keep the fridge stocked with beer?
$30K in Albany isn't nearly as bad (although it still sucks)
Nobody ever gets fired for playing tabletop role playing games at work. At least, nobody I ever heard of. Surely this is because computer games are so much more detrimental to productivity.
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.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Fired For Reading Slashdot Article About Worker Who Was Fired For Solitaire At Work
Trust not a man who's rich in flax / His morals may be sadly lax
This is not a question of whether the company has a right to fire its employees for any reason. Bloomberg did nothing illegal, and everyone knows that. Can Bloomberg fire any of his employees for Solitaire breaks? Absolutely. Should he? That's another question.
A "right" or accepted permission does not justify an action; it merely allows it.
mnemonic_
"...The Republican mayor stopped by the city's legislative office in Albany a few weeks ago ..."
Cost of living in Albany is considerably lower than NYC. Original article also implies this guy had been reminded of the computer policies in 2004. Sounds like a repeat offender, and moreover he embarrassed the boss in front of company.
Guy in cubicle, not looking up: Minesweeper
Man wearing suit: Are you winning?
Guy in cubicle, not looking up: Going for four in a row
Man wearing suit: That's pretty good, isn't it?
Guy in cubicle, not looking up: Yeah, it's great for Minesweeper, but I've gotten lots of practice
Man wearing suit: How much practice?
Guy in cubicle, not looking up: About six years
Man wearing suit: How long have you worked here?
Guy in cubicle: About six years.
Guy in cubicle: Say, you look just like the Mayor. Hey, don't take it the wrong way or anything.
Yeah I think he was fired for other short comings outside of Solitaire.
We fired a guy for taking home a 6 pack of beer home, the truth was it was an excuse to get rid of him - he was highly paid, unfortunately he was also highly incompetent and lazy.
He created an office setup, which he repeated at City Hall, where everyone sits together in an open-air environment
hmm, talk about boss looking over your shoulder with a stick in hand, mighty motivating
the mayor said. "There's nothing wrong with taking a break, but during the business day, at your desk, that's not appropriate behavior."
yeah right, employees should go out for golf to take a break
I don't know about NY, but I live in Michigan which is an "at will" employment state. What does this mean? My employer can fire me at any time for *any* reason. At other employers people have been very publicly fired for being a smoker, even though they don't smoke at work, because they raise insurance costs.n ews/main670168.shtml
;) )
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/28/evening
The only protections are for gender, religious or racial discrimination.
Personally, I would *NEVER* play a game at work, (unless it was against the boss
A NEW YORK CITY EMPLOYEE. I certainly don't want my tax dollars (if I lived there) to go to waste. It's a little kinda over-obvious that he's lying, as we all know how slowly wheels turn. I'll bet solitaire is the leading cause of bureaucratic slowness. (endjoke)
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I bet if every second of Michael's "work" hours were videotaped, he would too be caught playing games, making personal phone calls or staring at his scantly clad secretaty. We need new Republican scandals badly...
You're missing the point - its not IT's job to track down every single piece of unauthorized software. You sign an agreement not to screw around, and if caught doing so, get the shaft. IT doesn't have time to track down every game loaded on your PC.
The problem is that some employers fail to recognize that eight full hours of productivity isn't a realistic goal.
If you are paid to *work* for 8 hours, rather than just be present for 8 hours, then it is an entirely realistic goal. If you need extra breaks be prepared to stay longer.
It's Edward Greenwood IX (the Ninth). I figured with a pretentious name like that he'd be all rich and powerful. Instead at $27,000 a year he comes across as that office's Milton wannabe. I can already hear his excuse:
Edward Greenwood IX: I told Bill that if Sandra is going to listen to her headphones while she's filing, then I should be able to play solitaire while I'm collating so I don't see why I should get fired because I enjoy playing solitaire during my one-hour lunch or during quick breaks.
What's next? Is he going to burn down the building?
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
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.
Please help metamoderate.
Given the intelligence of some of the bigwigs these days, I think that load of BS might still work. Grunt: (load of BS) Bigwig: Ah, excellent work. I had wondered how we would solve that problem. Glad to see you're all on top of it.
Anyone that has worked in Government (as I do) can read between the lines. These are rarely the case of an employee just getting socked for something out of the blue. Do you realize how hard it is to fire people from Government? It's clear this was probably what we call 'lifetime achievement awards', where you have been walking the line for a while now and all it took was one more thing to move a person out.
What a BIG MAN Bloomberg is, I mean, how could anyone possibly fault him, right?
There's a special place for people like this in hell, at least that's my fondest hope.
Karmas a bitch.
*Fortitudo, aequitas, fidelitas.*
If you get caught playing games on the clock, you can expect these things. This is NOT news. When I worked at a small software company years ago, I was instructed to remove ALL games from ALL computers in the building. Anyone caught playing games would be removed. Of course they were all hypocrites since they (management) let me play Tribes and StarCraft with them for my entire shift some days... I guess it's good to have friend in higher positions.
i play far cry and unreal tournament 2004 at work - i think i'd be sentenced to prison if they caught me. luckily my buddies are the system admins. :)
in all seriousness though - if the company has a legal "contract" with you that you don't play ANY games at work, they have a right to fire you. it's their rules. do i think they should've given the guy a chance? of course, but it's not my show - it's theirs.
A couple of people play solitare all day long instead of doing productive things. They don't have any immediate work to do, but they could sure as hell stand to improve themselves in things other than playing solitare. A couple of people even have FPSes installed on their computers.
"Greenwood, who earned $27,000 a year and had worked in the office for six years" That's a crying shame he lost that high-paying job, maybe he can move up in the world and get a job at McDonalds. Seriously though, 6 years and he's making $27,000 and still has to deal with crap about playing solitaire once in awhile? Bloomburg needs to lighten up a little.
Fired for playing solitaire on the clock? Before you know it cats and dogs will be running around together and they'll start firing people for reading the newspaper on the toilet in the morning.
She was fired for some other reason - the Solitaire thing is a transparent excuse. Apart from the shining utopias some people here like to pretend they inhabit, most workplaces are run this way: the rules allow anyone to be fireable at any time, and are selectively enforced. The constant fear of losing their jobs is what keeps peons productive.
Somehow I doubt the managers who love to fire people for "time-theft" of this nature are busy 100% of the time they are at work, and aren't the kind who take 2 hour lunches and skip out early on Fridays when they please. The more management creates and enforces rules against the most minute off-task behavior, the more their flagrant flaunting of such rules negatively impacts morale.
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.
... are allowed to take a 5-10 minute break every hour in order to get their fix? Is someone waiting outside to fire them for wasting time?
Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way...
after 6 years of work for just $27,000, it's time to move on! not to mention that employee's are allowed by law in all states, fair break periods.
now the computer use policy is a binding labor contract(if signed or whitnessed) but a warning is generally considered necessary before termination!
anyway, $27k isn't enough for 6 years of experience.
> The Republican mayor stopped by the city's legislative office in Albany a few weeks ago when he was visiting the state Capitol to hear the governor's State of the State address.
There are 3 sides to every story: his side, her side and the truth. Now what that politics is involved, I can't beleive this story as truth.
"But Mr. Ford! You can't fire me!"
"Why the hell not?"
"I don't work for you! I work for the phone company!"
Why did they have the games installed on the pc in the first place? This is an office computer, correct? Then only have the packages installed that you need. I usually unistall Games, Mouse Pointers, MSN Explorer, Outlook Express, and Messenger when I deploy systems. If there's no need for the software then it's not installed.
We should be asking these questions to the NYC IT staff.
-Nick
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I was walking down the street here in NYC and noticed a police van with the door open. Looked in and saw one of those nifty in-car laptops...
Yup, they had left their Windows Solitaire game up on the screen.
Your just a looser who is jelous of someone that worked thier way to the top
I fine example of American spelling.
It has been proven time and time again that becoming too draconian at work about personal computer time costs more money than it ever saves. Would you rather have a person take a day off due to stress, to find a nanny, to pay a bill, to have an important conversation or to write a letter because that is what they must do. We are talkings nearly a week of lost time a year that could be saved and a huge benefit derived from reduced stress levels. In addition, people tend to leave their work space when they cannot take a little personal time on the computer. That means no one to handle an important task, answer a call or message. The problem is that supervisors often ignore the benefits of personal computer use while pointing out all the so called wasted time. It always better to have someone at their stations whenever possible and the less time taken off for things they can handle via a IM or e-mail the better. Any good supervisor can tell when something is not getting done as fast as they should be and deal with it but too many are downright pathetic control freaks or worse have this vision that work is all about pure labor the entire time one is in an office as if they have ever done that. The other thing that gets me is owners want to pay chump wages for jobs but then expect the person to work 100% of the time. I am talking about titles like receptionist. I often hear things like instead of playing games go make copies, clean your desk, or make coffee. Now that is all fine and dandy so pay the person to be the cleaning staff and your personal waitress too otherwise shut up and be glad you are getting away on the cheap.
BTW: I have been a supervisor of development groups in four countries for the past five years, I know of what I speak. People who manage this way are fools. In fact, I find that when you start to hear a generalized complaints about people wasting time you need to talk to the supervisors as the problem will be them mishandling time and tasks and is almost never with the staff who are goofing off. I think in my entire life, I have only found one person that truly was a problem user, and even then I had to ask myself why was this person hired in the first place.
Has a secretary with playing solitare at her desk which is covered with a bunch of playing cards.
She says, "The computers broke down so I had to to my work manually."
Now the guy has plenty of time to play solitaire.
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
What Bloomberg did costs NYC. And not a small amount. They'll have to find, hire, and train a replacement. They'll lose whatever undocumented knowledge is in the fired guy's brain. And Hizonner lost the goodwill of any co-workers who thought they guy got a bum deal.
"Zero tolerance" is by and for idiots. You catch somebody in a minor infraction, you take them aside and give them a talking to. You don't get really nasty until it becomes obvious that an employee doesn't give a shit for the rules. Any other approach makes you feel good, but runs your operation into the ground.
I'm not a huge fan of Rudy Giuliani the person, but as a mayor and what he did for New York (I'm not talking about 9/11 I mean how he cleaned up the sesspool that was New York) he was a great major. He makes Bloomberg a cut rate second class salesmen IMHO. I believe this guy played a lot more Solitare (or done other things) than he claimed, but he should have been reprimanded as he noted rather than just flat out fired. Of course, this where were people like Bloomberg come from. There business sense is win or die trying. Those that don't give 100% all the time are hurting the business. I admit, type A people (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, the Google guys, etc) are more apt to succeed, but not everyone is type A. This guy has a small baby and Bloomberg just cans him with *real* cause. It's a shame, but this guy is better off. $27k isn't that much. He should be able to do better with some initiative. I couldn't imagine this guy living in the NYC area and surviving on $27k with a toddler....
Did anyone else get the sudden urge to open Klondike when they read the headline?
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Back in 1998 I was working in a helpdesk and a user who was known to be a chronic complainer called saying that she couldn't do her work as there was something wrong with MS Word. We were able to remote control workstations without users having to give permission so I connected to her workstation and what did I see?? Solitaire. Rather than let her know I could see what she was doing I kept asking her about her screen and what she could see on it - all she was doing was giving me ficticious error messages and she was actually continuing her game while she was talking to me. How I resolved the problem was to move her cards around for her and then open MS Office. Once it was open I asked her if there were any other problems she wanted to talk about. After a long silence she said "No- thank you for helping me" and hung up the phone. Needless to say we didn't hear anything from her for a while.
Selling your life away one year at a time for $27,000 -- is that worth it? Hell no. Fuck Michael Bloomberg and other employers. Workers, it's time to revolt.. this shit can't go on.. the owners and business runners are fucked without us.. it's time to get better pay and better rights or forcibly start this all over. Don't become apathetic and say "oh well it's not THAT bad," because it fucking IS that bad.
... when I stare at code too long. A change of pace can freshen my perspective. Yeah, I'm being paid to work but this ain't production work. There's no standard idea rate. You can work for hours or days tracking down a bug and then, in a sudden burst of insight, find it. That's the nature of the work. It tends to come in fits and starts.
Now that computer work has "matured", there are people with the same mentality as grocery store managers becoming IT managers and trying to improve efficiency by cracking down on goofing off. They succeed in turning the workplace into a pressure cooker.
Where is the new cutting edge field where a geek can be a free spirit?
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Best. Support. Story. Ever.
And I don't make MPU posts hardly ever.
That's showing em /waves fist/. Make sure they don't take your Swingline.
Perhaps there is more story than this, but with limited budget on the rise for NYC, perhaps this was just a sorry ass excuse to cut down on some of the spending by the Office. After all, NY is "hire-at-will" state. Another word, you don't need a reason to get fired in the state of New York.
But most importantly...
Rather you are productive or not, what make you think, you are not a disposable worker at your work? We all are. Human Resource is just another asset to the company, and it can be bought and sold just like everything else. Don't be fooled by the words like "Teamwork" and "Loyalty." Our career is not defined by the company, but what we do for the company. Last thing you want to do is like Greenwood, "I should have been warned, not fired for first offense..." If you are fired, well then fuck them. Get a better job, take your experience and move on. Attachment of emotional feelings like "Loyalty and Teamwork" only makes us a better target for practice screwing by upper management. I am not at all being disgruntle, but being realistic.
A job that treats you like an asset that can be bought and sold, you should return the favor by treating it like a temporary housing you just can't wait to get the fuck out of.
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
... what kind of job pays $27K per year in NYC?
... ... or slept in the office.
Can a person even LIVE on that?
I was under the impression that it was kinda expensive to live in the Big Apple.
But maybe he commuted in from Westchester or Connecticut
Those who think Bloomberg is right, will mostly be business owners. Not managers, owners. Those who think Bloomberg is wrong, are /. regulars.
What the Wikipedia summary does not describe is that the original two scriveners have work problems. I can't remember which way exactly, but one scrivener couldn't do any work before eating and the other one got sloshed at lunch so they essentially traded productivity in the morning and afternoon. Now Barleby did no work at all. It's those kinds of people you have to watch out for.
Couple of summers ago, when i had a working laptop, i played over 875 games during a summer. Had an hour rail trip to and from work for the summer. Over 600 wins. The statistics screen scared me at the end of the summer. Now, same trip, gameboy micro... now i play too much jeopardy...
...He'd have the IT guy's head for allowing Solitare in the first place. If it's that mission critical not to have games in the office, it should be the job of the IT head to insure that only authorized apps get installed.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Then again, it could be that he was just embarrased that an employee so low on the totem pole messed up his dog and pony show.
Working in a DevOps shop is like playing in a band made up entirely of keytarists.
Besides, he got fired from a 27K job, in New York. How hard could that be to replace?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
in other news, he's not SO bad. an anonymous donation of 100 million dollars was just leaked by AP to have come from the mayor of NY himself. in the past, he's given another 100 million not anonymously, and other anonymous misc. donations of at least 10 or 20 million.
not *such* a bad guy afterall.
Why is this news? Every employer I've ever worked for would have fired me for playing games on company time.
as being expelled from school because you printed a newsletter, tho'.
I also lost an office job a long while back. They never gave me a reason when they told me it "wasn't working out", but I've learned the details about it recently. Turns out the reason was because the logs showed that I surfed the Internet "three times" in one day. Non-coincidentally, my two coffee-breaks and one lunch break add up to having a break "three times" a day.
It's such total BS that I'm tempted to call the union, but I won't. The job sucked, and I'm glad to have it behind me.
In my office, there is a guy who has a really good job security... being friends with one of the owners. This guy has solitaire up on his computer so often it's the running joke in the office. It's really shocking to walk by his open office door without seeing solitaire up on his screen.
Um, clearly a n00b that didn't even know about the BOSS key? /laugh
hes playing solitaire at home.
The mayor should first fire himself,
for having a lack of understanding and control over his cities I.T. infrastructure.
Many companies I know have Windows and office on the PCs, with everything else locked down.
No games, no downloading of programs or toolbars, and many PCs have zero internet access.
The Mayor is the one who should set policy for IT system deployments.
Instead of point a finger at one man, the Mayor should figure out just how much of a techno-dinosaur he himself is, and ask questions.
What's next? Will the mayor get Mohammed cartoon T-Shirts for all of his staff members?
Mayor = DOLT
Former Employee= Better off getting a real job (with better pay!)
Also = should sue for discrimination and hate crimes, like this ONE guy is the only employee ever to play solitare? come on... Feel the discrimination!
....employees leave promptly at the end of their eight-hour work day, having faithfully taken the prescribed 15 minute break every two hours, the full sixty minutes for lunch, and a bathroom break as often as possible.
This sort of policing is much, much more trouble than it's worth in the long run. Instead of staying late, taking work home, and so forth - employees determine what they must do to keep their jobs, do ONLY that, and nothing else - ever.
I am waiting for the "man fired for reading \." article ...
This guy is an idiot. Every single place I've worked at has a very clear computer policy, you know what consequences you face if you disobey it.
And I seriously doubt his few minutes here and there were harmless. For one thing, it was probably a significant amount of time. I just timed myself playing solitaire, it took me 60 seconds to get stuck. It takes a fair bit longer than that to win most games. He was probably wasting a significant amount of time. Also, the federal government mandates that we get periodic times to goof off, they're called breaks. If you need more than that, something's wrong.
As for the people saying it's impossible to be productive 8 hours a day...I call BS. You're trying to slack off. Come up against a wall with one project? Work on another, don't goof off. Get caught up on your filing if you need some time away from something that's frustrating you.
Earn your money, people.
He's undeserving because he does not act in a manner befitting the power and wealth society entrusts in him. When you reach a certain level of wealth it ceases to be material goods and becomes raw power. Bloomberg has reached that stage. In a functional capitalist society those entrusted with such power are responsible and even-handed. In America they fire people for 5 minutes of solitare.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
To bad the didnt say the whole story . It was in newsday. HE was underperforming.
Also that office was getting downsized.
That was just the icing on the cake. He was not fired unjustly.
Boy to people overreact
not just owned, but FUCKIN PWNED!
When I was an independant consultant I had the worst boss I've ever had in my life. I got no vacation days, he made me go to work when I was sick, and the bastard was on my ass all the time to find the next gig before the current one was up.
I will never by my own boss again, I'm an asshole.
harrased the crap out of them? That must be messy!
If you're going to get in trouble for playing games at work, then don't have it be Solitaire. As Maddox said, Solitaire is a waste of time. It's a mindless boring game.
I mean, at least do something brain-building like Minesweeper -- that way if you're caught you can say that you're improving your analytical skills or something.
Like I said . He was going to get laid off anyway. THe solitaire made it happen quicker.
I take a 30-minute break on the crapper, got no trouble with Bloomberg busting into my - er - cube.
I don't have a separate interface for cable router at home. I identify incoming cable traffic by MAC address of the router (regardless of source ip), and outgoing cable traffic by dest ip. Those two rules have packet and byte counts that are exactly what I need - except that they get reset whenever I tweak the firewall. There is a way to preserve the counts for just those two rules (or everything except the rules I changed), but it is not trivial. If there was an simple way to save the counts for a specific chain/table - that would be easy to work in to the firewall.
Where I live in the Dallas-Fort Worth area the rental rates are similar. I pay $765/month for a *very* modest 3 bedroom and it's an absolute steal, but minimum wage in Texas is only $5.15. Unfortunately that's what I'm making right now until I can find a real job, so I'm quite familiar with the frugal life.
I have found there are just two ways to go.
It all comes down to livin' fast or dyin' slow. -REK, Jr.
At my job the IT guy had to remove ALL Windows games before he gave out our "new" computers. The games would slow productivity was the thinking. Its bad enough that he could only gives us guest priv for the computers we worked on everyday to "prevent someone from doing something bad to the computer". Oh yeah we also only have dial up at an amazing speed of 28.8 on a good day. Its not our IT guys fault he does what he can to keep his job.(Yes only1 person in our IT) I usually have to deal with large files inline so I just go home early (cable) and down load. So I guess its not to bad....
*Waves from his Paducah house*
Sig: I stole this sig.
Policy or not its an At Will state just like most of the rest of the country and since the firing isn't because of any protected reason (race, sex, age, etc) then he's out of luck. Shit they could have fired him because they thought he talked too much or they didnt like the way he was looking at them. Right or wrong doesnt really matter when at-will rules the workforce today. Doesnt matter if there was a computer use policy or not. Sucks but its the law of the land for 49 states...
And good luck trying to prove wrongful termination in court without blatent supporting evidence.
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
Ill make a program that will find the process of solatair and kill it, there by
preventing any of those games running. I will then sell it to the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies
for $40/workstation/year licence.
OT: How many times do CEOs waste doing nothing, playing golf, having 3hr lunches. They are the real
wasters, getting $1000/hr but not showing anything for it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
did this employee survive in NYC with 27K a year??!!
Dear Mayor Bloomberg,
I play Sim City 2000 all day and I think its bad what you done.
Sincerely,
George W
Oh please....
"...programmer....She"
Whatever!
Man, where can I get some of that ponography? Pornography at the workplace is becoming a bore.
... Terry Tate 'Office Linebacker'.
... it's pain time, baby! WHOOOO!"
"When it's game time
The Computations of AdamR
http://www.adamreyher.com
...anyone got any incriminating photographs of said major in compromising positions? :-)
Solitaire is always going to get you in trouble because it's so recognizable.
In my job, I work at an Air Force facility. Besides doing my Unix stuff, I and my cohort also deal with Windows PC's for training classes. Besides loading the standard S/W on the machines such as MS Office, we also go through and remove any and all games. No hearts, no solitare, no freecell, no ... you get the picture. There is also a strict Internet policy as well but they aim their enforcement towards porno which I can understand. Our company recently sent an e-mail out talking about appropriate use of Internet resources. Word got around that someone was surfing not only porn but child porn !
This is the crap that not only gets you canned but also arrested and eventually have to register as a sex offender along with loss of rights. The trend these days is cracking down on sex offenders such as banning them from living within a certain number of feet from schools, parks, trails, swimming pools or other areas where children congregate at. In fact some places, sex offenders are forced to move when new laws are passed. Also, even if you live far from places like parks, you are not allowed to use them or get near.
...make it! Thats what one of my friends who recently worked for Cessna did. He was a flight test engineer and would have stretches of time when he would have nothing to do. Textron (Cessna's parent company) had their IT people remove games from workstations. However, his computer did have VB installed on it, so he made Minesweeper. When he finished that, he made Solitaire. When he finished that, he quit and came to work with me instead.
But Bloomberg will benefit politically from his hardass behavior: the taxpayers will approve of his tough stance on those lazy City employees.
Yup, pitiful they hated you so much that they canned your ass for playing solitare at work. Obviously an irreplacable asset to the company...
Studies show that people who socialize are more productive -- even if it's through taking frequent smoke breaks. Why? Because their morale is much higher after they have had a social break, so their quality of work is higher when they return. Non-smokers often spiral into gloom and doom when sales are down, while smokers are optimistic -- they smoke even though they know it will kill them! We're all going to die anyway, might as well die happy -- right? ;-)
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Get the fuck out then bitch.
Your kind have been moaning for the past 6 years about this 'exodus to Canada'.
WELL FUCKING DO IT. WE HONESTLY AREN'T STOPPING YOU AND WOULD BE PLEASED IF YOU LEFT!!!
P.S.: Alot of that stuff you listed as your grievances are currently taking place in Canada as well, so... Cuba for you I guess?
Blow that attitude.
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.
Wow, what a dick. Pay people 27k a year, forbid any sort of 'non work' activity with an opressive work atmosphere, and employee morale will be super high! They will all be be super psyched to keep their skills up and do the best job they can every day!
NOT. They'll stare blankly at an excel spreadsheet and bail out of there at 5'oclock sharp.
If there is software he's not supposed to be using while he's at work, why is it even installed? It is quite simple to supress the installation of all of the "Games". How's this for logic, Mr Smarty Pants Mayor...If you don't want your employees playing games, DON'T INSTALL THEM....DUH!!!! I really don't see why an employee should be fired for using software that you provided him with, even if it is a game.
2 cents,
Queen B
HDGary secures my bank
The mayor is a billionaire. That entitles him to shoot to kill if he wants to. This guy is lucky that the mayor forgot his handgun.
Now get back to work!
Mr. Mayor doesn't know employee diligence when he sees it. Or the other thing.
I worked at a multinational tech company in the late eighties that had money to burn. Our supervisor was a very nice guy who liked fixing computers, but was forced into supervising a group (ours) where everyone was competent and no one needed supervision.
So, he played Solitaire.
He was the sort of guy who never gave up on a game. If he started to lose, or got stuck, he would keep pressing Undo (on the Mac version), and try something different, again and again.
One day, I stopped by to ask a question and he had the "Player Stats" window open. It indicated that he had won more than 2,200 games.
Now, THAT is excessive Solitaire, Mr. Mayor. So tell that poor guy he can come back.
What happened to the good old "boss button" that would throw up a screen shot of a spread sheet or code at the touch of a button?
That should be manditory in all games.
Actually it should be a feature of the OS *hint* *hint*
Wax on, wax off baby!
if you want the ox to do any useful work.
I was all gung-ho for a company that was looking for programmers willing to telecommute. But when I told the vp I was ready to go to work, he asked me why I didn't say I _wanted_ to work for them. In the process of the discussions while I was trying to figure out if I could communicate well enough with them to bet a few years on his company, he said he wasn't intending to pay me to think.
You can bet I backed out of that one fast. I'm sure he didn't mean it that way, but it's no good trying to work for someone when you can't agree on how to even talk about things like this.
It's the same thing. Solitaire? Water cooler? Sitting back and staring at the ceiling for more than a few seconds? Failing to put the right cue words in a work report?
The employer needs to understand the meaning behind the words and the deeds.
Hi -
On this subject, here is a classic story about the attitude some managers have, I think it was from one of Jon Bentley's "Programming Pearls" type books....
A programmer who was working on a very complex system involving something like telephone switching optimization was leaning back in his chair staring off into space. A manager happened to walk by and asked him what he was doing. The programmer replied "Thinking" To which the manager said "Don't you think you could do that at home?"
TWR
If you don't enjoy your job at least part of the workday, you're either working a job that needs not to be done or working a job you're not fit to do.
On the other hand, if your job is nothing but fun and games all day long and never hard, you can say the same thing.
Somewhere in between those two extremes is the work that keeps the world running, and where in the spectrum any particular job falls on a particular job is a bit random.
Fun is a red herring in this discussion.
Yeah, now that I take a look at nakednews.com, you're right. Some people might think that's better than a cup of coffee for getting them going in the morning, but some people would probably rather not get that kind of going in the morning. Different stimulants for different people.
(I don't know if I'd get any work done, but I'm pretty sure I don't want to find out. My wife is plenty stimulating for me.)
Do they need to keep the guy on if everyone hates him?
I spent one summer (during the .com bust) working as a credit card bill collector. I sat in a little cubicle and called people all day that had past-due accounts on their Victoria's Secret or whatever other clothing store credit cards the company handled. Well my computer was one of the few that still had Hearts on it, and after I got pretty good at memorizing the scripts we were supposed to go through and making the best use of the desktop space in Windows I managed to keep all my work up, continue doing my job at the same pace, and also play Hearts on the side. I'd play the most while on hold waiting for someone at a hospital or car dealership that was supposedly going to show up on the phone, and when I needed to do actual data entry I'd of course stop playing Hearts immedately and do my job. But it was mostly talking with nothing else to do. So one day my supervisor came by and saw what I was doing and I was just about fired, but luckily I guess I was also bringing in the biggest dollar amounts for them too so I was just told to not play games any more. So I went on to other tasks, like finding a bunch of security holes in their old Windows95 PC network which I told them about and they ignored. Then I sketched every object on my desk, and finally started bringing in magazines to read. I also got in trouble for those. I could read things, but only company-approved magazines or training manuals. So IEEE Spectrum didn't cut it. Anyways I was glad to be done with that job when it was time to start school again. I guess some jobs just arn't meant to be long term, and I don't know who would want to keep a job that strict anyways.
According to our data, the built-in games (freecell, solitaire, etc.) are the second-most common frontmost window on people's machines. The most common is the web browser, and I'm sure all that isn't all work-related either. Productity applications are way down the list... I think 48% of knowledge workers would be out of job if they enforced the "no computer play" policy... :-)
the employee fires you!
Every morning, while my cow-orkers and bosses wasted half an hour getting coffee and talking about TV, I spent 10-15 minutes doing a serious mental workout playing Freecell. It helped me concentrate, and enabled me to better see the consequences of my actions, something very important when fixing bugs or adding features to legacy code. However, my boss's boss only saw that I was playing a game (one that he never could win, to my 25+ game streak), and forced me to stop. So my code quality dropped, but that was irrelevant. What mattered more was that I was seen to be working harder.
The company got bought out. He kept his job; I ended up homeless.
Lemon curry?
Ridicule? In other words, the FTC is planning on embarrassing spyware vendors and their customers? Yeah ... right. How about we forget "ridicule" and move on to "RICO". Now that might slow them down a little. At least, it might make U.S. vendors think twice about employing a spyware outfit. Won't do much good anywhere else though.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
solitaire.exe is evil coded from evil by an evil company encouraging evil
fopen("/dev/null", O_TRUNC) and write ("hole")
So this mayor is *not* hard at work at his desk, but wandering around getting useless publicity shots of himself - as if that is really advancing the city - and he has the nerve to call the menial employee a time waster!
Pot sacks kettle for being soot-covered.
I am anarch of all I survey.
About time someone gets fired for playing that stupid game.
Omry.
Totally ridiculous. When you're at work, you can only focus on your daily duties for so long.
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.
This is slightly off topic, if this guys computer policy said "Thou shalt no play solitaire at work." then Oops for him. But this partly made me think of how things always seem to work at companies I have worked for
Smokers usually take 3-4 or more breaks a day for a cigarette and no one ever complained. I never understood how when I would take a quick break to check personal e-mail, this was any different than some stinky bastard standing out in the snow or rain, spending at least 30 minutes a day total smoking. When did they earn special privilege for essentially slacking off?
The best part is is that this story is about a government employee being canned for playing a game at work. Two things come to mind: If you don't want them playing it don't give them access and 2) Like even the mayor himself hasn't screwed up on the job, probably with greater impact. It's funny how grunts in government jobs tend to be made examples of when their bosses may very well be even bigger screw ups.
No sig for you!!
Would it be OK if the guy had a real deck of cards and was playing solitare at his desk? I don't think so. So what's the difference. Besides, what kind of employee can't think of anything less obvious to will wasting the companies money?
Relax, aren't you lucky that it is only my Opinion?
I would feel sorry for the guy, except this was a government office. You know that if it was a speeding ticket, or getting a permit to repair a driveway, or any number of other things, no pencil pushing beurocrat would "let it slide" for anything. If only more city government employees got screwed by the major, they would know how we feel!
Right here. Not my country, but if they were taking a big chunk out of my pay check towards some HMO, I'd make sure that they did what I was paying them for.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Audit all events related to solitaire or any other games. The user will have no idea.
> On the other hand it appears this guy new the mayor was coming
You mean KNEW - not NEW.
I hope this doesn't become acceptable.
I'd fire somebody for this mistake.
"The firings will continue until employee morale improves."
Let us kill these bosses! And let us burn down their offices!
Come, brothers! Let us bomb innocent people because of this offense!
First off, the Mayor was right - not so much because the guy was playing solitare on company time, but because the guy was STUPID enough to leave the game up while the Mayor was in the office!
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...
Play a game of console-version nethack... everyone will think you're busy hacking away on the mainframe! During my days at university, I actually overheard a conversation between a student and a not-very-computer-literate prof where the student claimed to be working on some group theory related program - whilst playing nethack!
Ever wondered whats wrong with the world? http://www.ishmael.org/
Actually, no. Mayors are public servants, not rulers. Thinking of them as something very special isn't really done here at all; that might be a patriotism-related thing in the US. Here in Northern Ireland, they're basically just folks who look good cutting ribbons. And even that's debatable, with their big gold necklaces and stuff ;)
Regardless of whether he was legally allowed to do such a thing, ethically this is not the way for a mayor to behave. Such behaviour merits at the worst a mild warning. I am truly appalled that you have a bully like this as mayor.
kin242.net
...on my Treo, while using the bathroom. At work. No one's complained so far.
Of course, if I get my work done for the day, then it's Warcraft time...
No, not on the Treo.
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Might as well collect change on the street, you might do better. The mayor could have done this guy a favor, although it's not this guy's fault that sol is installed on the computer, probably a microsoft windows specialty, they spend so much programming resources on sol that it never bluescreens, unlike business critical applications :)
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
One time I played through all of Final Fantasy on an NES emulator at work while I installed a boring and tedious PeopleSoft service pack that took about two weeks or so to get fully installed.
What a tool of a boss. wait no... tool of a human! Seriously, why kinda of person does this? In my previous job, as trainee software engineer, it was recommended regular breaks where neccessary for eye sight reasons and others. I think the guy who got fired is lucky... if his boss is this tight, he's probably been holding out on a lot more than just break time!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Another shinning example of compassionate conservatism in action. 100 bucks says it would be a different story if it was the DA or Chief of Police?
Thankfully here, we have laws against fireing people for stupid reasons, firt you'd need to have one or two written or a few verbal warnings before hand, and then you could take the company to court claming unfair dismissal, where the company would probably have to show you were playing solitare out of lunch hours, and that they don't provide IT equipment during lunch hours for personal use (see proxy log of managers all viewing dilbert during lunch).
I'm a contactor. I work about 50 minutes out of every hour, and goof off the rest, unless I'm 'in the zone', when I have no idea ;-)
If I didn't, I'd soon not be able to work at all.
This guy should get another job with a sane boss... and all his co-workers better get their heads up from this and start looking too.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
its definitely like chatting while at work.. hell, if it wasn't for #Linux and #Linuxhelp, I'd have no job to begin with..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
Ever heard of the "Boss key", which was around even in the days of DOS games? You mean to tell me you're so inept that you can't hide a solitaire window on your screen? You don't have a good enough sense of radar to know when somebody's coming? You let your screen be visible from the door of your cubicle?
Yes, the question is why do so many americans fail to act in their own best interests?
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....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
I say give the guy his job back... but only if he assures us that his toddler isn't named "Edward". Giving a child a hand-me-down name as heavily used as that should be grounds for termination. Break the cycle!
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
But perhaps not about his playing patterns. He's lying because he was fired along with a dozen other people who weren't playing solitaire as part of a restructuring of the department. And chances are good he and the rest of those employees were among the least productive, lest they would have been retasked within the department.
He spends his days shopping for a car. It's been a month and he's still shopping for a car. I have no clue as to why it takes him so long to find a car but apparently he's been doing this even before I started working.
> I'm italian and we have the exact same problem here with
> FIAT, rescaled appropriately.
At least Italian cars are perceived as beautiful even if broken.
American cars tend to be more like WMD.
Well, I'm German, we have the idiotic Volkswagen "Phaeton" now which is exactly not what the name "Volkswagen" says but what the Volkswagen-Management wanted to drive themselves.
The French built quite good, technically advanced cars.
k2r
Oh come on.
Plain and simple, what you do at work must be within the guidelines of your employer and its computer usage policy.
You wouldn't bring up quake, even for just a single frag, so why do people think it's suddenly okay to pull up solitaire, hearts, or the latest java/flash game from third party Web sites? The employer couldn't care less that you wanted only a single frag, playing games is probably against their computer policy, and this person is a clear violator of it. You wouldn't pull out a deck of cards either and start playing a game on your desk, though that'd be more of a company policy than a computer and company policy.
So this is simply that someone didn't follow the rules and is now whining. Some employers are a bit more lax during lunch hours, and that's okay, but you should never just assume that the employer will be okay with you checking personal mail, surfing the net, or playing games during lunch.
I'm sure what happened in more detail is a boss walked by a few times in a week at varying times (11, 2p, 3p, etc) and saw half the time that this person was playing games instead of working. The employer has every right to kick them out. They're on someone elses dollar, so they damn-well be worth it
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
After years of overwork I was finially given an assistant to train who would help me at my engineering support position in a small company. He spent no more then 15 minutes a day eating a brown bag lunch and playing the ASCII version of startrek.
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).
I do not know for sure, but Solitare may have been included in Windows as a way of showing the users how "drag and drop" works. Too bad that game has gotten out of hand. I went into an office yesterday, and the guy in charge was on a Windows XP machine, playing (you guessed it) Solitare. Too bad there are so few little games like that included in Windows.
Sometimes I want to just give them a cd of my Knoppix remaster, so they can have a wider variety of games to play. You can bet these people are not connected to the internet, or they would be doing that, and not playing Solitare. I have some pages on Geocities, and they provide a little OS sniffer, so I can see what OS's visit the page. A lot of "Windows NT" seen there. I can imagine that may be surfing at work, and perhaps enjoying the broadband too.
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
If you don't want your peeps playing games then DONT INSTALL GAMES on your systems. This guy should sue them as he was obviously just using software that his employer pre-installed on his workstation.
"Fired" != "laid off," which is what you're implying happened. If he was, indeed, fired, it was for doing (or not doing) *something* -- otherwise, wage & labor becomes very interested. (Note that this doesn't necessarilly apply to "at will" states, though, if you "let go" someone in an "at will" state, it still needs to be done for a legal reason; eg., firing someone for not sleeping with you *will* get you in trouble, regardless of state.)
And, for the record, "lest" means (pretty much) "for fear that..." not "else."
[Note: sorry for the personal attack, but you felt no particular reluctance to indulge, so I've been willing to point out what an idiot you are. Hope you now feel enlightened. Not, mind you, that I'm sure that's possible. Good day.]
The 27K a year is nothing compared to the wrongful dismissal suit the City of New York will likely have to settle. The court might just give the guy his job back and award damages plus costs.
We had a developer who played WoW all day and then charged overtime to do the work he was supposed to be doing durring the day... and he did not get fired. If that's not wrong, I don't know what is.
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.
Next time, when the mayor comes by DURING OFFICE HOURS for a photo opportunity, the right thing to do is say ..
"Sorry mayor I am busy, I dont have time to pose in your photo that you'll use for political gain, after all I heard you fire people for having solitaire open without even evidence of them suing the computer during office hours."
happened. An employee at the assessor's office used to smoke and get regular breaks. Then he quit and started playing solitaire for 30 minutes a day. The boss saw him and made him stop. Said employee became miserable and stressed and made an $8M mistake.
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If you don't know what I'm talking about see here: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/11/14142
If it is owned by the office, you dont have a right to do ANTHING that isnt approved.
Sure we all do it, but they also have the right to can you for it. Its the risk you take.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I personally find reading Slashdot more intriguing than playing solitaire ... and when you're reading Slashdot at work it looks more like you're "researching" online ... where as when you're playing solitaire it simply looks like you're not working.
... just stick to reading Slashdot.
My personal recommendation so that you don't get fired
One fine day, after installing Microsoft SMS 2.0, I wanted to try out the 'server licensing' feature; install software on each computer, tell SMS how many licenses you actually have, and it lets only that many copies run at a time, queues people up, and so on.
I decide to test it on Solitare; so I tell the thing that only one copy of sol.exe is allowed to run, fire a copy up on my desktop, try firing it up on my laptop, and sure enough, the laptop gets a message.
A few minutes later, over comes one of the Vice Presidents, asking me to kindly turn Solitare back on.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Loose a job is not funny. Lets send a message to this solitaire mayor!
A few months ago I passed a NYC police car at night, and when I glanced in, I saw two police officers playing solitair. The next night, I passed ANOTHER police car with two cops doing the same thing. I went online, and searched for a bit, and found that yes, they WERE allowed to play it by policy during lunch and breaks. This implies it was probably general policy for the city, and as such, simply observing it on someone's desk is not grounds for termination.
Believing in a rigid class structure is simply an incorrect mindset that feeds itself the poison you've spewed in your comment.
The poison I've spewed into my comment?
Your poor command of the language and rhetorical logic betrays the relative feebleness of your mind right from the git-go.
Watch out, folks! I'm gonna have to spill this kid's blood. Keep an eye out for splatter...
It would certainly help to achieve your aims, because a leftist society requires a rigid class structure to keep the workers in line, but what you're talking about is wishful thinking, not a valid observation.
Research bears me out. A hierarchy BY DEFINITION means that only a relative few make it to the upper levels. NO MATTER WHAT CRITERIA YOU ESTABLISH FOR SUCH LEVEL MOBILITY, you ALWAYS come back to that fundamental fact-->a hierarchy BY DEFINITION MEANS THAT ONLY A RELATIVE FEW ARE AT THE TOP.
ALWAYS.
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.
Just because you could do that does not mean that everyone can. Once again, you resort to "turtles all the way down" logic.
BY DEFINITION ONLY A RELATIVE FEW CAN MAKE IT TO THE TOP OF ANY HIERARCHY.
that is the IMMUTABLE, TIMELESS, definition of hierarchy.
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.
Popular entertainment is a product of HUGE AMOUNTS of money. You think the elite DO NOT control that amonnt of money.
The system works like natural selection evolution in an ecosystem. The elite control mass media and popular entertainment production. All ideas pass through their filter. Just as in the ecosytem, the animal species are molded and evolved by the environmental forces of that ecosytem, which shapes them (e.g., the giraffe evolves a long neck due to environmental forces upon it), so too does the american culture evolve to suit the elite, because the elite control the ideology that becomes part of the culture.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
He deserved being fired.
He could have been trying to get Solitaire to the top of the "Xfire most played" list. In which case he was rightfully fired.
Bloomberg is worse than Scrooge! What fucking planet is this guy living on? The only thing you can do is fill out a form on the mayor's website and tell him what an asshole he is. Maybe choose some different words but he really does deserve any bad word you can think of. The guy was making $27,000/year? That is peanuts in NYC and only about half of what you need to live here. And he now he's got no job at all. Piss off bloomberg
>without even evidence of them suing the computer during office hours.
Wow. You know you live in a litigious society when people start suing computers.
You are standing in an open server west of a blue house, with a boarded front door. There is an Exchange mailbox here.
Those bums were taking about 2 hours a day smoking. Generally not even thinking about work problems eather.
I was starting to have trouble making deadlines (like all the smokers in the office) so I quit. My point had been made.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Edward Greenwood IX, the ninth person called Edward in the Greenwood family, which means the tradition goes back nine generations or at least 9 x 30 years = 270 years, i.e., 1736. Probably further back than that! Also, it would make a damn good name for an operating system.
Slashdot should get a clue too, hello mc fly, can you code a built in spell checker?
Oh sorry, no you cannot otherwise you would need another dualcore server to do it.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Great Comment!
I hope the Voters FIRE this mayor for his small minded, facist behavior.
He puts the 'JERK' in Knee-Jerk reactionism.
When will he bring back public floggings, hangings, and sweat boxes?
My question is: What Color was the fired man? What Religion was the fired man?
It seems unlikely the mayor would treat 'one of his own' like this...
Most sales droids see their social network as their property.
They have the relationships, they build the rapport. They make friends.
And usually, if the business is a commodity type business,
the sales people will gladly take almost all of their clients away from
the company that is letting them go.
A few phone calls, a few sweet discount deals, and suddenly dozens of accounts and hundreds of customers
are gone - gone to the competition, to the other company that just hired the guy you fired.
Smart Sales people keep all their client's customer info up-to-date,
if they are gonna get the talk and take a walk - they don't need to bother with any company resources,
they got backups at home, and will use them in there interview with their new employer.
As long as everything is legal and above board, that makes a 'smart, aggressive salesperson!'
Who would want to work at a place that doesn't let you play solitaire all day, and doesn't accept lame excuses about how it actually helps you do your job.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
This post pissed me off. Cry my a river that you got fired from a cooshie job becuase you were slacking so bad you couldn't even click an X button.
If you worked at a real job (example I'm a sprint relay operator) they monitor every *MINUTE* you are logged out of your computer. Every minute is work, or not work.
For those of you who have jobs where you can fuck off all day long. Have fun while you can, because I really don't want to hear you cry when you have to get a real job.
From the posts I've read so far modded +5 everybody on this fucking site are kids who live in their parents basements thinking they're gonna be some Maytag Sun guy who's gonna collect a 100K salary while sitting in an office reading slashdot.
Those jobs are out there. (I know someone who had one, [the key word being had].) But if that's what the employes spending their time on, that companies not going to last long.
I would fire anyone in a second for playing games while they were supposed to be working. This slashdot article is stupid whinging.
I don't feel sorry for you at all you stupid fuck. As a matter of fact I'm glad you lost your job. Maybe I can aquire it, and I won't fuck around on the job either. I work hard for my money.
From TFA, they describe him as an "Office Assistant". On a whim, I went over to Monster and plugged in a search for "Office Assistant" in the Albany area. Here's a representative sample of what came back: Office Assistant Job Description.
For everybody complaining about "thought breaks" and the like, this guy was NOT being paid to think deeply... he was being paid to do things like answer the phone... file, fax, and copy... type correspondence, etc. I don't mean to be disrespectful here, but the guy was doing a $13.50 an hour job that doesn't look like it's exactly going to put a lot of stress on the mental faculties. How much of a "thought break" does he need?
If typing, filing, copying, and faxing is too much for him, I'm sure there's plenty of candidates who would be happy to step in and take over; We're not talking about skilled labor or a highly trained technical person here... this is a pretty basic, straightforward job.
Think about it. When this guy applies for his next job he can say "I was fired for playing Solitaire, and not for lack of productivity." With 6 years on the job he obviously was getting his work done, or he never would have lasted that long. Any manager worth anything would recognize that the Solitaire firing is ridiculous. This guy should have no problem finding another job. It's one thing to be fired because you're incompetent, it's another to fired for playing games. I play games all day at work, but I also get my work done. I complete all tasks assigned to me, and thensome. I think most of us work that way. This isn't Burger King, where if you have free time, you had better be sweeping the floor or taking out the garbage. Things are different when you are dealing with educated adults.
what kind of guy doesn't lock his computer when away from his desk? If I think about getting 5' from my desk for longer than 30 seconds, that puppy is locked. Simple computer precautions could have saved that poor sap his job. Then again I make more than $27k/yr in a call center in Alabama, so his standard of living might actually improve.
Beware the fury of a patient man
- John Dryden
Maybe the mayor thought he was being given the finger - since he was allowed to see (was shown) this console. Everybody I know has enough sense to "detect" when the boss is on the prowl. The other possibility that I can see is that this fellow is just a plain ordinary dimwit. Two things point to this - the salary for one and, for two, the fact that he does not appear to be planning to take the city to court over his firing.
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
I work for the Queensland (state of Australia) government. All computers do not have games installed on them, as a matter of policy for some years now. ...
... and eventually told "don't come Monday".
Of course, just about everybody knows how to "install" something to wile away their spare time
One man who was hired as an IT support officer couldn't leave his favourite game alone, and was constantly being "found" playing.
Couldn't help people with problems, couldn't take the time to find a solution for them, but could rush back to his cubicle to recommence playing whatever it was. He got warned and warned again
We are allowed "reasonable personal use" of the Internet as a matter of policy, so the idea that we have to keep our "noses to the grind-stone" doesn't apply, but abuse of a privelege is still too much for most managers/supervisors.
Don't blame me, it's usually 2 in the morning when I post
I heard it reported that the reason this guy was fired was because he was playing solitaire on Mayor Bloomberg's computer (as in - sitting in the mayor's office and playing)
if smokers can take smoke breaks for 5-15 min every hour why cant gamers take 5-15 min game breaks every hour?
His firing was a blessing. There MUST be a better job waiting for him!
Nobody said he was indispensible. And if Bloomberg is the kind of boss that fire a random bottom-feeder for playing Solitaire, he will also be the kind of boss who will fire the bottom-feeders manager, if he choose to stand up for the bottom-feeder.
Quickly, Bloomberg will find that all his actions are perfect, because nobody in the system will dare critize them.
This kind of top-level micro-management by fear can actually work, if the boss is a maniac. Which, from your description, does sound like the case.
Hopefully, the press will watching him carefully, because when this kindof management go wrong, it goes really wrong. We had a mayor here who left his small town (30.000 citizens) with a depth of 200 million dollars, after some ambitious ideas had gone wrong. Nobody had dared stop him, before the press finally unfolded the story.
Who can live in NYC on $27,000/year?
You don't fire somebody for playing Solitaire. Period.
What about if the guy in question is your best employee? There are people bound to cover all their objectives in less time than their normal working hours. If those people do something else once they have fullfilled all their work responsibilites, what is the problem with a bit of Solitaire?
A firm willing to fire somebody for such a menial nonsense obviously does not have any metrics about employees' performance.
Oh wait, it is a major. A politician. Somebody trying to be in the headlines appearing to be though.
That explain his attitude, but it does not explain yours, you use all the managerial babble but without a really knowledge of the concepts involved.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
In big corporations there are strict procedures in place to grant raises. Your boss may not even be the person with the final saying in the matter.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Well, perhaps it's time you realized that the ponograph was replaced by CDs and DVD readers YEARS ago! ;-)
.
- aqk
F U
Although it was the "grounds" for dismissal, he didn't get fired for PLAYING solitaire. He got fired for leaving it on his (virtual) desk when the highest-ranking official in the city was coming for a photo-op / inspection. You wouldn't leave a copy of Maxim or Cosmo or whatever on your desk in the same situation, and you sure as hell shouldn't have a game on your screen.
I'm sure what happened in more detail is a boss walked by a few times in a week at varying times (11, 2p, 3p, etc) and saw half the time that this person was playing games instead of working. The employer has every right to kick them out. They're on someone elses dollar, so they damn-well be worth it
If you read the article, you'll see that this was a special visit by the Mayor, not a habitual thing at all. The mayor noticed Solitare on his screen, and had a word with the guy's boss. So not only are we talking about losing your job over one infraction, but it's not left up to your manager's discretion - a VIP is putting his foot down!
Of course, it was pretty stupid for the guy to be playing games when the VIP came to visit, but that's another issue.
I yearn for you tragically. A. T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.