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
Topic hitting close to home - or am I really first?
After 6 years on the job. Sounds like he was already pwned
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.
... must be a Freecell fan.
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."
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.
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
> Can we all agree that this guy is lying.
You mean "assume", right? Perhaps it's `creative dismissal`. If I'd been fired for playing a game at lunchtime you can bet I'd be hiring a solicitor right now. Well, as soon as I finish this level...
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.
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.
Not that I entirely disagree with you, but a guy who worked at the same job in NYC for 6 years and was only making $27,000/yr was not exactly part of their brain trust.
Many entry-level retail employees in NYC make $27,000/yr.
Every good manager knows that employees need a bit of time to themselves.
Not every manager is a good one.
I was working as a bicycle mechanic, once upon a time, and was 10 hours into a 12 hour day without a break. Nothing. No coffee, no lunch. Nothing. Completley illegal as it happens. It was spring tune up rush and I was willing to bend to meet the labor demand. I was young and stupid. Ya know, like an EA programmer.
Someone handed me a Pepsi and I opened it up and started to take a drink and the owner walked up to me and said, "You know you can hold that can in one hand and turn a wrench with the other."
Not every manager is a good manager.
He never got the chance to fire me. I was gone before that.
KFG
Besides, he got fired from a 27K job, in New York. How hard could that be to replace?
For someone with 6 years of Solitare experience?
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
I'm a non-smoker and I take my 15 minute breaks just like any smoker. The only difference is that instead of smoking I walk around the block meditating. This is good for many reasons. Eye strain reduction, RSI prevention, and spiritual needs (which to me is a hands-off area...I don't care what anyone says -- the world may collapse and I will still take a 15 minute meditation break if I feel the need).
That sounds like a variant of a similar joke:
A new manager is hired to bring an underproducing office up to speed. He decides that he must fire somebody on the first day to show that he means business. While walking through the office, he spots a man leaning against the wall, not doing anything. He is in a room full of workers and so decides that this is the perfect way to start.
"You! How much do you make a week?", he bellowed at the slacker.
"About $300," came the reply.
The manager pulls out his wallet, peels off three hundred dollar bills, and throws them at the man.
"Here's your money. Now get out and don't come back!"
Feeling pretty good about the firing, he glared around room. "What was this man's job?", he asked.
From the back of the room came the reply: "Pizza delivery man"
15 minutes twice a day? Try 15 minutes every hour.
Though I don't encourage anyone to take up smoking, it can make for a good bonding experience with upper management.
Yeah, you might both end up in the same hospital ward coughing your lungs up. That's a fantastic bonding experience.
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.
You misspelled hired.
Oh, and don't act like you aren't the BOFH that opens up old network statistics charts or network snoops, pouring over them when the big boss comes in. "Sir, I'm tracking through some anomalous network activity our SOA layer got during last night's advertising during the Olympics opening ceremony."
Pfft, that's how I got rid of my last boss. "Oh, I'm just cleaning up all traces of the child porn you downloaded earlier"
...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.
Ob. Bill Hicks Quote:
'Hicks, how come you're not working.'
I'd go, 'There's nothing to do.'
'Well, you pretend like you're working.'
'Well, why don't you pretend I'm working? Yeah, you get paid more than me, you fantasise. Pretend I'm mopping. Knock yourself out. I'll pretend they're buying stuff; we can close up. I'm the boss now, you're fired. How's that? I'm on a fucking roll. We're all millionaires and you're dick. I'm pretending shit, I'm wacky, I can't be stopped.'
I don't know if I have the right attitude for the workplace.
It's "Sieg heil".
Regards,
Spelling nazi
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.