Slashdot Mirror
Judge Rules in Favor of Websurfing at Work
MirrororriM writes "According MSNBC article, a judge has ruled in favor of a worker that was repeatedly warned for surfing the internet on company time. Only a "reprimand" is a fitting punishment - not termination. From the article: 'It should be observed that the Internet has become the modern equivalent of a telephone or a daily newspaper, providing a combination of communication and information that most employees use as frequently in their personal lives as for their work.'"
Wow... cool!
Funnypics
I think around 99% of /.'s have been warned of this. Some of us even signing "company papers" indicating immediate termination to anyone caught surfing.
Woo Hoo!!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
On the other hand, most companies also have policies against spending too much company time on personal phone calls. and on the other hand, oh damn i'm out of hands. :(
Check out my women's designer clothing store.
"I don't think I should have been docked so heavily on my review this year... after all, Judge Spooner said it was ok for me to spend my time surfing and you don't want to argue with a judge do you? Best to just give me a 5/5 there... thanks."
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
repeatedly warned for surfing the internet on company time
If this was a problem, why in the world didn't they simply block outbound port 80 from the local NAT address (192.168.0.dumbass-that-won't-get-to-work) -> 255.255.255.255/0?
You can do this type of thing on any SOHO firewall, surely they had this ability.
I'll bring up this case with my boss when he confronts me about the elf porn. Whew.
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
You won't be able to use this as binding precedent against an employer unless you live in New York. The cost of bringing a wrongful termination suit to establish a corresponding precedent in your jurisdiction may be more than you can afford. Worse yet, employment laws tend to vary greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
Yes, now Big Brother can keep me from getting fired for checking out the sports scores while my patient dies.
Does God treat us as servants or friends? Check my homepage.
Websurfing is ok, but try playing Solitaire and you're screwed.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
Shouldn't an employer have the right to fire a worker who wastes too much time online?
Masturbating in the conference room can't be far off! I'll get my job back yet, you bastards!
The problem comes in when people spend so much time surfing that they are neglecting to get their work done at all. And since more and more people forfeit breaks, a few minutes here and there hurts nothing.
It's a girl!
Tomorrow - the PRON!
"Uncomfortable working environment" my ass - HR - you're goin' DOWN. Um - to coin a phrase.
Actually - the original article referred to a city/state employee (no mention of that in the quote) - that's relevent because if you've ever worked for the government - you'll know that it's not as simple to fire a person. Most of us work in an "employment at will" environment - where they don't need to establish a good reason to fire. -Mike
www.wildpad.com
My last job with internet access came with restrictive software that blocked most websites the company didn't want employees visiting. There was no news websites, no sports, no entertainment, no shopping. The company also activly added new websites to the filter when the IT people noticed surfing that wasn't explained by a company need. That seems like the better option than telling employees "don't surf". Instead, most people brought a copy of the local newspaper to read.
".. after a search of Choudhri's computer files revealed he had visited several news and travel sites..
Travel sites? on office time? hmmmn
I once read a book by an anally retentive time management consultant. Yes, that was his job. He would always have his watch set 3 minutes fast to "be ahead of the world", and would always make todo lists, and would always be doing something while waiting, and all that jazz.
The most ironic thing was that he said that he encouraged his employees to bring puzzles, books, needlepoint, or whatever they wanted to occupy their time when they were done with their work.
Why? Well, because people will stretch a project until the deadline or miss the deadline completely. By having a carrot in front of them saying "I can goof off when I'm done with this", he was able to tell when they were done with their tasks, and assign them a new one. He got more work out of these people by encouraging them to goof off than not.
Its just as irrational to assume that 100% of ones working time is going to be 100% productive work. Its more on the order of 10% to maybe 30% depending on the kind of work. Also, for a lot of white-collar and professional/skilled labor people, they do things and think about things outside of their work that helps them do better work.
How many slashdotters out there have private projects or even outside of work computing interests if you work on computers for a living? Doesn't this stuff help you at your job? If your job encouraged private projects, as Google does, do you think your job would be more fulfilling and productive?
First, a judge didn't rule in FAVOR of employees being allowed to surf the web at work. He ruled that firing was too severe a penalty in this narrow case. Second, this ruling applied to a government employee in a specific situation, not to someone in a private company.
I think the judge is nuts, but even so, the ruling only applies to a narrow class of public employees, many of whom were already notoriously slow and useless -- even before the days when web access was available.
David
Now I only have to look over my shoulder every few minutes instead of every thirty seconds!
Not that I post to /. that much (!) but there's just too much info out there not to take a peek. Of course then you get sidetracked with another link, you have 20 tabs open in Firefox, and you're wondering what you were supposed to get done today (or this week) at work!
;)
This pecident will serve me well!
fak3r.com
According to the article: "The ruling came after Mayor Michael Bloomberg fired a worker in the city's legislative office in Albany earlier this year after he saw the man playing a game of solitaire on his computer." What a stupid case. Since when is a game of solitaire "providing a combination of communication and information"? I can see if the guy was researching something online but he was goofing off.
I think it would be fairly uncomfortable working for a company that wants to fire you. Maybe he should find a job where they allow a little more slack in their internet usage policies.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Obviously since I'm responding to this post surfing at my job is oka......{/employee terminated} end of transmission...
--
So who is hotter? Ali or Ali's siter?
If you try that at a real company (i.e. not a state job) and your ass is gone. Surfing for hours on the net is not acceptable anymore than talking on the phone with your girlfriend for hours. With the logic of this ruling.. wouldn't it be ok to surf porn? Because you can talk on the phone with one of those 900 numbers. Bottom line is this... a company is paying you to do a job and thats it. Now if your job is to surf the net, then I guess you're ok :)
http://religiousfreaks.com/Unfortunately, the only people who will read this article are those who are surfing the web at work. The people too afraid to surf the web will never hear the liberating news.
This ruling only covers public employees in New York state. The vast majority of private employees are employed "at will," and can therefore be fired for anything. This isn't generally applicable.
While I feel the company has the right to restrict what takes place on company hardware, it is the company's responsibility to restrict access as to what can take place on that equipment.
In other words, if they don't want you surfing at work, cut the damn cable or learn how to configure a proxy/firewall.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Just wanted to say that. But I gotta run, boss is coming!
Wait, since when can an employer no longer terminate an employee for reading the newspaper and making personal phone calls on company time? What is this, the public sector? Sheesh.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
It seems to me that the countries that are racing ahead economically (India and China, especially) have much less in the way of workers' rights than the countries from which they're taking teh work (America, Germany, France, etc.)
This court ruling sounds stupid (relative to my expectations that an employee should spend his time as directed while doing work), and it makes me wonder: are rulings/laws like these part of why other countries eat our lunch?
But later, when I get back from lunch, I'm gonna have a whopper of a comment!
This space intentionally left (almost) blank.
Do I still get in trouble if I get caught reading this article by my boss?
I lose way more time to SOX compliance than I lose to non-work web activities.
I lose more time to PMO than I do to SOX compliance (there was one horrible 4 week period where I basically billed yet wasn't allowed to work because no projects were approved- yup- I couldn't even check out stuff and do things i knew needed doing because it wasn't an approved project).
Then there are cancelled projects.
Then there are super-rush projects that get replaced by another super-rush project without ever being installed.
It makes you wonder.
Give me a project- give me a due date, and get out of my way- please. Seriously, my productivity is down 75% since 1998- I spend over half my time on paperwork. Maybe 10% of my time on non-work activities during working hours (and if a project is going to miss deadline then I work non-working hours to make it come in on the deadline).
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Wow. Getting fired for surfing would be retarded. People that can multitask and look at say, CNN, while on the phone is not something that should be case for termination.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
Here's my take on it. Ok, surfing a little when you're brain has become mush is a standard outlet for me and the people that work for me. We work in Texas in a company with an "acceptable use" clause in our employment conditions that says we'll only use the net for work related things. Fortunately, I manage the web group...but I digress...Sure, you're cheating your company when you spend what should be work hours surfing the net. But you're also using company resources in terms of bandwidth. If every person at my company started spending just a few minutes a day working on their My Space or Live Journal or something else, it could and would seriously degrade our overall system's capability to cope with legitimate business traffic. THAT'S different from reading the newspaper and using the phone. I guess the judge didn't think about that.
Swisssushi - When the going gets tough, get some tenderizer
What if you terminate the employee for not getting their work done? Does it really matter whether they are not getting it done because they are browsing the web or because they are reading a novel or talking to the guy in the next cube for 5 hours a day? It certainly sounds silly to say you fired someone just for browsing the web, but when you can show it has tangible effects on their output.. well... that is quite a different story.
-matthew
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
... the web's not gonna surf itself, you know.
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
come on guys next thing you wont be able to fire someone for not working at all.
Sweet, where's the aplications for this job?
To err is human; effective mayhem requires the root password!
This will not even apply to most NY workers, either.
:)
NY happens to be one of those states where an employer can fire you for any reason ("Employment at will"), except for 8 very specific circumstances (Here's the list of exceptions).
Given that, I guess the critical point to this case was that the employer was the Dept of Education: a public sector job.
Albany's culture of "pay to play", indeed.
This is not my sig.
it is sapping my productivity right now.
and now!
still doing it...
in France.....LOL
Traditionally the New York courts have been very strongly in favor of employment-at-will and very strongly opposed to any kind of intravention into the employer-employee relationship, so this is very surprising for a New York court to rule this way. If the city appeals this, I would expect it to be overturned very quickly.
What?
My boss just came over as I was reading this and asked what I was doing. Then I told him to shove it because he can't fire me for surfing the web. Instead he fired me for telling him to shove it. Damn it.
Can I bum a sig?
What if you terminate the employee for not getting their work done?
It does seem rather obvious, doesn't it? I suppose all this business about unrestricted employee Internet access harming businesses indicates how poorly most companies are managed.
Newspaper, book, goofing off on Slashdot, crossword puzzles, phone gossip, water cooler loitering. The bottom line ought to be: are you getting your work done, or not? Hell, plenty of people don't goof off in tangible way, but still manage to waste hours every day and avoid getting work finished. I've also encountered plenty of folks who "work" 50 hour weeks but manage to get almost nothing done.
It seems like managing for outcomes is a helluva lot easier, too. If you're spending time as a manager trying to figure out if your employees are surfing the Web, that's time you could be spending checking your employees' actual work output.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Anyone who's more like Peter than Tom.
It's all a big poker game. Most bosses probably don't want to hire and train a new person over a petty issue, but they don't have to worry about that because you're too afraid to stand up for yourself. You'll spend the rest of your life f@#$ed if you fold every time your boss tosses a few chips into the pot.
Note that it doesn't appear that this ruling will impact anyone outside of the particular work situation/contract that the employee was hired under.
In other words, it's very doubtful that this ruling applies to you.
That is what matters: that they do the work they're paid to do it. If they spend their time surfing, and don't do the assigned tasks, then it's symptomatic of another problem. Looking at websurfing as a quality indicator is a sign that management doesn't know what its employees are doing.
... NAKED PEOPLE!
Funnily enough, this comes from the US, which I seem to remember prides itself on being result-oriented (i.e.: looking at how the person and the company performs, not so much on how it's done) rather than process oriented (i.e.: as so-called old-fashioned Europe supposedly does).
Or maybe it's just that management is afraid of litigation from the employees because they might see (OMG!) breasts! Or
My 0.02 EUR
yup, and it looks like, but the article isn't clear, that the judge is merely interpreting company policy to say it extends to web surfing as well.
not a big deal
Your suggestion to simply "remove all web browsers" is about as sensible as removing the telephone from an employee's desk or office, citing the fact that "Many of you don't really need one to get your job done."
It could probably be done, but it creates a hostile work environment. People expect to be able to check their personal email during lunch breaks and so forth, and these things usually require web access. Furthermore, it's increasingly difficult to make a determination that "employee X never needs Internet access". What if their boss suddenly asks them to "find me some documentation on how this machine is disassembled", or maybe "get me some price quotes on a new air compressor"? Does it makes sense to limit them to making phone calls from numbers they can find in the phone book, and talking to a few salespeople to find out "the best possible price"? If they had Internet access, a few searches on a search engine could yield them much better results.
Even your secretaries/administrative assistants (who many bosses think do nothing with the Internet besides play online games and waste time chatting) often save a company money when they realize they can use the net to get better pricing on toner or ink cartridge refills, paper, and other office supplies than what they've always gotten through their normal vendors. And if your company still uses a travel agent to book flights - shame on them. Give your employees access to the airline web sites and car rental/hotel chain sites, and let them take care of those things themselves!
Bottom line: Giving people more tools to accomplish tasks is never a "bad" thing. The issues only come about when poor management allows employees to waste too much time. It doesn't really matter if we're talking about the Internet, trips to the water cooler, or reading books.
Each and every case will most likely be different. Are you just browsing a bit around while others take their 10 minutes break, or are you do it 6 out of the 8 hours and the other two is at the coffee corner?
The importand question is if it was interfering with his job. I have been in situation where management did not provide enough work and still asked not to surf. It was allowed to bring a book and read. So I could buy Hacker Crackdown, by Bruce Sterling but not read http://houghi.org/Fun/hack12.txt
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I'll tell ya what - when you're on my LAN, using my Computer, and my Internet connection - then I tell YOU what YOU can and can not do. If you don't like it, then use YOUR LAN, YOUR Computer, and YOUR Internet connection...
When I came on the scene - I had a slow, saturated T1 with people complaining all the time. A couple days analysis and I discovered that all the bandwidth was going to bullshit - music, shopping, news, downloading screen savers/ringtones, etc. So I set up DansGuardian and blocked everything but what we decided to allow. Now I have a T1 line that's not saturated, and get's about 50% use with 75% peaks (so I'm looking at going to a fractional to save some $$$).
Yep - I'm the "Company Dick", people hate me, but the boss is happy that I've cut costs and have people working in the office... Even better - people get their shit done during the day, so once they got with the program, they were able to get more work done and go home on time - so they're slowly starting to come around too... And nope, no one quit...
I have the same policy with email - no personal use. We whitelist all the known addresses/domains that we use for business, and let the rest hit the spam filters. We monitor the spam filters daily to make sure nothing either slips by or gets caught unnecessarially, and when we discover a bizillion messages that have nothing to do with business - we blacklist that address - we don't bounce anything, just blackhole it... that problem takes care of itself after a day or so and some "Test messages"... Requests to open up those addresses are summarially ignored.
Yep - I'm the company dick, but my email server isn't overloaded with a lot of shit, and I don't need to increase the capacity to handle a bunch of non-business crap.
My company cell phones - no personal use. I monitor all the #'s and match against known personal numbers/known business #'s. All the rest are looked at statistically to see if there's high usage. If there is, and it's not business related - I charge the employee back.... Yep, I'm the company dick, but I saved this company hundreds of thousands of minutes last year on our cell bill.
And yep - we DISCLOSE everything we do at the time of hire - employee is free to not accept the agreement, and we just won't hire them. If they do accept it, then I expect, require, and demand that they hold up their end of the bargain or I'll charge back just like I said I would. Once the first few chargebacks go out, people get the message pretty quickly and the shit stops.
If you want to get personal calls at work - carry your own damn cell phone. But if that affects the time that you are to put in for this company - we'll fire your ass, so keep it short and sweet and only when you need to. None of that all day SMS/IM crap about what you plan to do after work, blah blah blah...
I've had a couple people go to court, try to challenge it, but hey, we're employment at will, not some bullshit governmental shop so they get no where with it once we pull out the copy of the agreement they signed...
My advice: Grow up. Be professional. When you're at work - try WORKING for a change.
(and no, I'm not doing this from work...)
I agree that you can still be efficient...I work in IT (and I work online) and generally I work very quickly and efficiently but still go online all the time. This is because I have a huge amount of time during which I have no work to do. So I go online every day and try to find crap to read. It really sucks, but I can only stretch out my work so far. If I were to leave when I got my work done I'd probably be fired for not working enough hours. It's a Catch-22.
They just mention the solitaire firing since it is tangentially relevant. And Bloomberg is a douche.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
P.S. Pleeeze.
When I have employees comnputers will only be allowed email and IM - unless web access is necessary. And at that point they will have to share a common terminal.
I remember before the web how much more work was done. The distracts us too much and is not necessary for most jobs.
Unfortunately the system logging net usage does not attempt to correlate it to compiler usage, so it doesn't show that you were surfing while waiting for a 15 minute build and link to complete because a header file used by only 21% of the code had to be touched and you need the resulting binary to do testing.
This is precisely why I keep a laptop, pen and paper around, so I can work on some design notes for the next task I plan to tackle during these idle moments. Without these, I'm prone to random web browsing and posting on...
Oh. It seems I'd better go get my laptop.
According to the article, this person was fired ultimately for playing solitare on the job after being told to stop surfing the net. I think playing games on the net on company time is a bit different than a quick peek at a news site or something similar....especially after being told not to spend time surfing. I can definitely understand him being fired for this.
Many (most?) states have "at will" employment laws where the employee can be fired/let go/terminated for any reason. Does this ruling apply in those states?
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The major difference is that company-owned productivity tools are used to surf the Internet during work hours, meaning the employer should still have the ultimate say.
This ruling won't cover you even if you do live in new york. This ruling will only cover you if (1) you're employed under the same contract as the other person, and (2) you were doing the same thing this other guy was doing.
It's fair to say that 99.99% of the people out there don't conform to #(1), let alone #(2).
If the contract allows surfing the web on breaks AND this employee is guilty of doing nothing but surfing on breaks, then he would be guilty of NOTHING. But the AC says the judge is right. Since the judge ruled that the employee should be reprimanded, the AC would have us believe that the judge has correctly ruled that the employee should be reprimanded for doing nothing wrong. So which is it? Is the judge abusing the poor, innocent civil servant? Or do you admit that the person WAS doing something against the rules and the real argument is what punishment is appropriate. In LogicLand, you can't have it both ways.
David
I, for one, welcome our new paper-pens-and-paperclip providing overlords.
just looking at the path, seeing the email addresses listed, and warnings that 64k was a 'large' file...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
You've obviously never run Gentoo.
That was in New York. Here in California you can terminate people arbitrarily. (it's a 'right to work' state). It might not sound fair that you can lose your job at any momemnt without warning, but the advantage is that employees can leave without notice and work for a competitor.
Personally if some guy was surfing the web instead of doing his job, I'd fire him after maybe a single warning. We're all adults, having escalating levels of punishment for your employees only makes sense if they are children. (or wish to be treated as children).
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
My cousin is the morroccan ambassidor, he met George Bush(as ambassidors do), who met Putin.