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 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.
Really now, don't you know that what you do at work WITH COMPANY RESOURCES is up to the (shock) COMPANY?
of the rest of the undeserving rich who haven't the slightest clue about how work gets done.
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.
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.
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.
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!
That guy should move to Vegas.
I think you're right. There are a lot of people within the slashdot community which probably would loose their jobs if their Resource Use Agreement was enforced. I know I could end up in hot water one day for it. Thankfully I have an excuse, albeit weak, that I am monitoring IT trends - which loosely couples with my position.
I would personally like to see a study on how many people are compliant with their agreements. From a survey of my cube-buddies; I know we would all fail. At the same time, I don't usually stop for lunch, so I don't see the harm in taking a thought-break - without which, I am sure my productivity would drop.
Proof by very large bribes. QED.
Because all too often the modern workplace focuses more on appearance, propriety, and popularity - and less on true productivity and a healthy, relaxed environment.
I'm just amazed that Bloomberg has managed to completely revitalize the lower east side and stomp out crime in all the boroughs, and now has enough time on his hands to wander around snooping on his staff, looking for the evil sol.exe.
&laz;
when it rains, it gets real soggy. when it pours, i'm under the tap just _waiting_ for the joy
I'm sure a lot of places of similar policies. To me, though, the disconcerting part of this story isn't that someone got fired for playing solitaire, it's that the mayor came in and fired somebody of whose work performance he was ignorant based on one impression. This guy could have been the most productive person in the building for all the mayor knew. If I was in charge of this employee I would have been seriously pissed if someone came in and decided to fire my employee. It's arrogance and micromanagement taken to an extreme height. On the other hand it appears this guy new the mayor was coming to shake his hand and have a photo taken and left the game up--that's really not so bright.
"...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.
Oh come on.
The frickin' MAYOR is coming to your office. Not of Paducah, KY, but of New York City. He probably hasn't been there for three years. Don't you think you'd better make yourself a little more presentable?
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a rock.
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...
Why should an operating system's default install include games in the first place? Especially a professional edition? Besides, isn't it unfair competition against other game vendors?-)
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
It's two words, and you spelled them both incorrectly. Su doku. Jackass, however, is one word.
It really is unreasonable to have such policies without some kind of technical help to enforce them. It doesn't need to be bullet proof - it just makes things easier for the employees honestly trying to follow the policy.
A related issue is the monthly limit on total bytes transferred with my cable company TOS. I wouldn't mind it, if only they provided a meter on their website somewhere where I could see how much I had left for the month. Without that, I am just guessing and hoping they don't get strict on me all of a sudden. I know I could build a system to track it myself using iptables - but haven't got around to it yet.
Whereas it probably also was made clear beforehand that playing games during businesshours was prohibited in the case of the NYC employee, there could at least have been a 'final warning' or serious discussion: What this guy did is purely covering his own ass: -HE- wanted to be a publicity whore, he'd better prepare and sterilize the grounds he's doing that on beforehand (eg. don't give people priviledges to play/install games).
On a side note: I am too tired to dig up any past Slashdot articles, but I clearly remember one research that stated that having those little game-breaks/walk-breaks stimulated productivity overall in the end (the mind being more clear/just having something to get distracted from a few minutes).
It's measuring with two sizes (if that's even a valid expression) if people -are- allowed to have their watercooler breaks, but aren't allowed to have a 'game-break'.
And of course, one should not be playing Solitaire all day at work... or reading Slashdot for that matter. Get back to work!
...has fired people for sitting down at work and for even using a cell phone in a private break area away from guests.
Sounds to me like it's time to get a new job.
If you are good at what you do, then why are you putting up with these kind of working conditions?
My recomendation is to quit NOW
"Truth is much too complicated to allow anything but approximations"
It's the prototypical big mean rich republician squashes the innocent little poor guy news piece. It's meant to incite class envy and to increase a reader base for the reporter/news agency. Here's more...
...But the eagle-eyed mayor - a billionaire former businessman with a certain idea of how offices should be run - noticed Greenwood's game of solitaire glowing on his screen...
..."It's not like I'm the only one that ever did this," said the 39-year-old father of a toddler.
>
>
I have.
I worked at an AOL call center and I could not deal with the pressure and handle time requirements. I go to school and there is a shortage of jobs where I live in Florida. No industry. So I suck it up.
I used to have much better jobs before moving hereeee. It is silly I am being paid 9/hr and I service over 1000 computers and some of them are required for ride operation. But I bet he thought I was a minimal wage guy just clearing trams because of my outfit on did not say IT because I was not working in that department that day. I would have been termed if I told him I refuse to pick cigarette butts because I work in IT. I mean if he asks someone if you like your job you better say yes. Otherwise its onsite termination. He did that too but my guess is he had a good reason to do it. You dont double cross the CEO.
User training. Teaching new users how to use a mouse and the basic operations of a GUI. It may seem archaic now, but think back when everyone was switching from DOS/WordPerfect/Lotus-123 to Windows.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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
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!
If a big-time politician came wandering through my cube, (and a couple have) you have two obligations: clean up your desk, and greet the distinguished visitor with a smile. If your boss asked you to work during the tour, let's not be an idiot about it - find some work, or at least repeat some work you've already done. The VIP doesn't know the difference. "Sir, I'm working on an analysis of the workload levels of the T&M contractors the city hires to see if we're getting a good return on our contracts." Never mind it was something you did 3 months ago.
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."
Anybody caught doing something stupid when a VIP is in the room deserves what they get. It's like seeing a cop in the median a mile ahead and then getting the bright idea to shift four lanes of traffic and pass on the right. You're begging for it. "My cell phone rang and I was just trying to honor good road safety rules, officer." Yeesh.
If this is a policy at NYC, the whole desktop management team should have been fired too, for leaving the game available for users.
You have to love it, Canadian person. Look at the postings on this page; they are siding WITH THE MAYOR against one of their own. That's where our unions are.
I've been immersed in this culture my whole life, and it takes a short shock of outside air to look at it anew. We've a country that hates "socialism" so much that they organize to keep inions OUT of their workplace. The salaries shrink, pensions disppear, healthcare is repeatedly slashed for current employees and denied to new, "temporary" employees who never will become permanent. And they will side with the employers every time.
There's a book, "What's the Matter with Kansas?", which, altho not really being about Kansas, addresses this all-pervasive phenomenon here in the south. Wage slaves vote against their own interests, and those of the families, because of their distaste of "socialism" and "big government".
It's a waterfall to the bottom of the gorge. The center ain't holding, and we're all being flushed, except for the very tippy top of the social scale, which is swimming in money and will pretty much own everything.
Got any room up there for expats? I'm thinking WAY up north, given the warming to come. A place without cameras on every street, a scenario the Mayor of Chicago is bringing to fruition. Our new transit passes will track our movements, we're to be watched at all times, they're reading our email and listening to our phones down here. I didn't waste all that time growing up to live in a prison populated by cowards overseen by the paranoid and greedy.
...sales dweebs/bimbos. ZERO morals, which I'd like to think was part of the reason they were fired.
;-)
Or possibly the reason they were hired in the first place. Honesty doesn't make higher sales.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
"Who the hell's going to argue with that? Seriously?Who the hell's going to argue with that? Seriously?"
Me.
I guess I'm unusual.
Terry Pratchett once observed that cows are herded by men that, if the cows every thought about it, the cows could convert into a damp smear on the ground in two seconds.
But the cows never think about it. They are cows. Rebellion never crosses their minds, so they let the pink monkeys herd them into slaughterhouses.
(plaitive tone) why are we all cows? people died for over a hundred years to create unions so that employers couldn't treat people like peons on a feudal estate. Why do you hate yourselves so much?
ironically though, spending hours on /. is less likely to get you canned than 1 min of solitare. Why? because it's not a "game" so the PHB is less wise of it.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
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.
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
He wasn't playing Solitaire; he had left it on his computer from a while ago.
According to who?... Oh yeah the person who got fired; Of course he'd tell the truth if he was playing at the time, right? Really, how many people leave Windows applications up that you aren't using? If you're not using it, it should be minimized. Windows doens't have enough screen real estate otherwise, and it blocks your access to the desktop.
So in short, I think the guy is whitewashing his story. Getting canned for playing a game is harsh, but you should know better when a VIP comes to visit.
I'm in mechanical design (sorry, not IT), and many times throughout the day, I need to focus on something different. Slashdot is my usual refuge, because I dare the network nazis to ban me from here (if any of you are reading, this isn't my work acount. My UID is much lower at work.. :-)
Anyway, as far as the RUA, I think that everybody could get fired--if it was enforced. It's never enforced until it's needed.
How many of you admins pass over the receptionist's Christmas shopping on company time?
I'm seeming cocky here, even trollish, but, isn't this a case of 'you gotta go'?
Hmmmmm....
Basically, the guy got really unlucky and got made an example of. I hope he finds some way to get compensation, but it isn't likely.
+++ATH0
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.
Your eating fast food doesn't give me diabetes.
I'm fine with laws that protect people from each other. I'm against laws that attempt to protect people from themselves. Seems simple enough to me.
at least smoking tends to kill quickly.
Emphysema and heart disease are slow enough.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
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
I would say it is borderline entrapment if you install "illegal" software on someone's computer and bust them when they start to use it...
goverment allows me to have a car that goes 130mph, but busts me when I do so on 55mph zone.
I'm allowed to have a gun, but get busted doing something illegal with it.
I'm living in a free world, having free will. If I know something to be illegal or against policies it is up to me to choose what I want to do. I may break the law/policies as much as I want to, but I have to face penalties if being coucht.
Believing in a rigid class structure is simply an incorrect mindset that feeds itself the poison you've spewed in your comment. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Smokers usually take 3-4 or more breaks a day for a cigarette and no one ever complained... When did they earn special privilege for essentially slacking off?
They earned that privilege at the same time nonsmoking assholes got most offices to be non-smoking. Next time you have a problem with it, tell your manage you want your cube/office to be the new smoking room, so smokers don't have to "slack off" outside. Until then, shut the hell up.
I would have been termed if I told him I refuse to pick cigarette butts
Dude, what's your fixation with cigarette butts? I work in I.T., make a *lot* more than $9/hr but I still do my part to keep the workplace clean. If I see something on the carpeted floor in our office area, I pick it up and throw it in the trash.
When I am in one of our hospitals for a meeting or to fix something in one of the data centers, I still do my part to keep the place clean. Just like your employer, we provide a "service" to our "customers". And one of the things that they expect when they visit our facilities is that the place is clean.
When I was in college (which was almost two decades ago - yikes!), I used to work at a "water park" for $3.50/hr. Yeah, we were expected to sweep up cigarette butts and other grunt work like that (just like your job). But I also noticed that the guys who owned the water park (who had more money than God) would also stop to pick up a cup, hamburger wrapper or cigarette butt. Hell, I saw one of the owners stop to pick up a nickel or dime once.
You shouldn't look at your "cigarette butt" picking at some sort of punishment. Yeah, it may seem demeaning but as one of the employees of that organization, you are expected to pitch-in and make the place look nice. As I mentioned above, I do the same thing at my place and our customers come to us for a totally different reason. But they still expect the place to look nice. And they deserve it.
yes I used to wonder why that was. Not-blocking Slashdot is very typical for all kinds of sensitive sites I worked at: defence contractors, three-letter agencies, etc. Then I realized: security folks and sysadmins have to read something too.
Anatomy of a Comment:
First, ad hominem argument (attack the person)...
Second, ad baculum argument (threat -- blood splatter)...
Third, semantics (battle of definitions)...
Fourth, argument by extremes ALWAYS/NEVER/TIMELESS/IMMUTABLE... (your caps)
Fifth and final, argumentum ad lazarum... look it up...
Whose strong rhetorical logic? Whose feeble mind?
Yes, yes, yes! If there is a local "no games" policy, the normally pre-installed games such as Solitaire should and must be removed. Who cares that one guy played a game on his lunch break? The local IT bods should be fired for distributing games to all their workstations :)
neuro at well dot com (when I post, it's my opinions, no-one elses)