Do You Slackers Actually Work At Your Job?
Posted on April 18, 2006 by Him and tagged blogging, employment
Since I've been on my couch recuperating from my surgery, I've been watching vapid daytime television and have been reading the never ending barrage of new blog posts. During the average workday, there are about a bazillion posts that are added a day to pfblogs.org. In addition to those people posting, there are even more who are commenting on said posts. Obviously, your place of employment is not one that actively restricts your internet usage, but it may be monitoring your online activity without you knowing.
We try to only post when we're at home because we do not want our employers to find out what we're doing. We don't directly reveal our income so technically we wouldn't get fired for breaching non-disclosure agreements, but we still don't need our IT departments to know everything that we're up to.
I do believe that employees are entitled to some breaks at work, and what is done on that time should be within work standards. It is when I see blogs with multiple posts during the day in which I think that there is some abuse of the system going on. No matter how much your job sucks, it is unethical and immoral to be getting paid to waste time.
Please humor me, bloggers, personal finance or otherwise. Here are a few questions for you to ponder:
- How many of you are posting at work?
- How many of you are commenting at work?
- Would you mind if your coworkers knew about your blog?
- If you were an employer, how would you feel if you found out an employee was surfing the internet 3+ hours a day for non-work related purposes?
Please feel free to comment anonymously if you feel you'll get in trouble, slackers.
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1. No writing posts at work, though I've turned drafts into public posts during breaks. I might stop that though just in case my employer ever connects me to my blog. Bonus tip: don't include timestamps with your posts, or fake them to times before or after your workday if you post from work.
2. I comment lots during breaks. Fortunately our work schedules are flexible, so our breaks are whenever we like!
3. Eh, I wouldn't mind if some co-workers knew, but I wouldn't really like my team leader or managers to keep tabs on it. Fortunately they're all not the kind of people who probably use the internet for reading blogs.
4. If your last bullet point happened where I worked, the manager wouldn't say a thing since he or she probably surfs the internet for hours a day, too!
I sometimes post at work, and check various blogs and feeds at various points throughout the day. My coworkers can find out about my blog. It's linked publicly on my freelance site, which I'm pretty sure at least one of my editors knows about (and it's certainly easy enough to Google). My view on it is that this is the equivilent of smoke breaks, water cooler chat, and all the other little time-wasters employees have taken advantage of since cubicle culture began, because it's impossible to do useful intellectual for every minute of an eight-hour day. My job is to get my workload done. So long as I'm meeting expectations there, I think it's reasonable for me to be a bit flexible with allocating time during the day. If I need to come in early or stay late, I do that; if I have a quiet stretch where I'm waiting on phone calls or recharging between tasks, I surf.
Anon E. Mouse | Apr 18, 2006
Why would you be fired for revealing your salary? Forbidding non-management employees from discussing compensation is a violation of the NLRA; this has been tested in court.
I probably spend an hour or two during the day surfing the internet (but this includes a portion of my lunchtime). I'll stop doing that when my employer stops expecting me to read and respond to email during evenings and weekends. I get my work done, and my manager is happy with the quality.
I read blogs and post comments from work.
Bob, er Joe | Apr 19, 2006
I browse & comment, but don't post while at work during off-time. I'm salaried, and I'm good at my job even with the browsing, so I'm really not terribly concerned about whether they know how much I'm reading or not. Especially since they'll ask me to go ahead and come in on Saturday to make up for some people we lost this week with no regard for how necessary Saturday work actually is.
anon | Apr 19, 2006
My job is to staff a desk. I sit here and try to look available to people who walk by. If nobody approaches the desk, I have nothing to do. So I really don't think they can fault me for doing personal stuff on the computer. I've asked for additional work to keep me busy when desk traffic is slow, but they don't have anything to give me.
The problem, though, is that I'm on a shared computer. When other folks are staffing the desk, they're using the same browser I use. I always clear the history, cookies, delete temp files, etc when I leave, but I'm paranoid about coworkers finding the blog.
In my case, I often write articles at night, and set them to be published the next day throughout the day when the most people are reading. Sometimes I get a few minutes to browse and comment or even write a short post... or write little bits towards a long post.
I would mind if my coworkers knew about my blog, but that's why I'm semi-anonymous. I have other websites linked to my real name that they could peruse if they get an itch to search google for me.
anonymous | Apr 18, 2006
I post during the day, but that's because I have down time in my work day while I crunch numbers or process data. I kill less time than a smoker does and I'm not killing my lungs.
I used to be a hard ass about inappropriate use of the internet at my old job because I was pulling large amounts of data for clients over a very narrow pipe. I would yell at anyone streaming audio on their desktop since it directly impacted my ability to do my job in an efficient manner. However, I've given up on it since I gained a reputation as being a pill.
(In fact, the big boss came to see me while I was writing this.)
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