okay- anyone got bosses at work CAPTURING your every email, your every website, monitoring you for spending time doing personal things on THEIR time? this is just a half-substansiated rumor at work right now, and i am pissed beyond belief. any comments? why can't employers trust employees, if the employees are doing their job? everyone's got downtime, right?

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2000

Answers

My bosses don't capture email or monitor their employees, and in any case *I* wouldn't be in trouble because one of the owners of the company is also my husband.

HOWEVER (and I don't mean to rain on your outrage; I completely understand it) several months ago my husband wrote a small program to monitor one of the other employees, since he wasn't getting as much work done as he should have. The results? The guy was spending 6 out of 8 hours looking at porn, reading his email, and surfing the web. None of which is in his job description. Our main customer is the government, and we were billing the government around $50 an hour for this guy. I have a slight problem with my tax dollars going to Employee X, who's checking out persiankitty.com instead of doing the real work he's being paid for.

Just my opinion. :)

http://www.bitchypoo.com/bitchypoo.html

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2000

My work does have some sort of monitoring system going on, although I'm not sure to what extreme it goes to. It doesn't bother me too much. I have my own internet access at home, and most of my surfing is done there. I do check my personal e-mail while at work, and a couple of news sites. Oh, and I am the naughty girl and run an IM program when I'm not supposed to. From what I hear, I am not one of the big offenders. They have caught quite a few people downloading porn, surfing all day, and sending inappropriate e-mail, so I am all for any tracking programs they run. If, one day, they approach me and let me know my habits aren't appropriate, I'll change my ways.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2000

a place i worked got backed into the wall by the union when the union got word about the projected installation of videocams and microphones in the lavatories.

-- Anonymous, January 16, 2000

I was told at my orientation that my employer (shouldn't be hard to figure out...) is tracking every single web page I hit, and that I shouldn't be using the browser for personal use, stock quotes, entertainment, personal email, or perusing pornography (why that exists separate from entertainment, I'm not certain). I had been at work for a week before my orientation, and, following the example of my experienced co-workers, I had already broken all the rules except for the porn thing. Go figure.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2000

Whatever personal opinions may be, it's perfectly within a company's rights to monitor employee activities online and on the phone. I used to work at a huge "internet" company ("So easy to abuse, no wonder it's #1") and it was instilled in me at that time to watch what I do in email and what websites I visited from work. Sort of set an example for the customers (shyeah, right).

Unfortunately, sometimes the monitoring is necessary. I have a friend in a managerial position who was recently compelled to pull phone logs for a couple of employees. Turns out one of the guys literally spent 40 hrs on the phone in one month. That's not a routine action for that company, but she's at her wit's end with this guy not pulling his weight.

I think I saw something recently about someone being asked to fill out a form detailing what s/he does on breaks (was that here?) and I think that's seriously crossing the line. Monitoring bathrooms is also very creepy and perverse.

The companies I've worked for subsequently don't have any such policies, but I still don't use my work email for personal mail. I've got a freemail account for that. As for web surfing (except, hrm, porn sites), that's part of my job. Actually, they're pretty damn cool around here. I can even keep chat windows open. As long as we're getting our work done, we're given a lot of freedom. (And I think that's how it should be.)

Gotta wonder, though, why not save the porn surfing for home?? I'm not a prude, but the LAST thing I'd want is for my boss to show up while I've got nekkidchix.com or something like that all over my screen.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2000

Everyone has downtime, I agree, but your problem is maybe not so much with your employer as with the employees who abused the privlege of web access at work and ruined it for everyone else.

I shared an office with a women who opened an irc window at the beginning of her shift,and closed it when we left. She did all of her mailing list mail from the office, and surfed websites.

This was a very liberal office, and we were allowed to do a little surfing(in fact, that is how I found this site- I worked with a Pamie, who wanted to see what pamie.com looked like. We used to pass good links along on the company email, and naturally links to things like hampsterdance, and the ibrator. But my office mate, that was all she did, was write a journal site, and surf, and chat.

It drove me nuts! She and I had a quota of work that had to be done, and I would do my share, surf around some, then do a little extra work, but she did nothing, so although I did more than half, we never met our quota.

It got very, very frustrating, working alongside someone who spent the day surfing for porn, and chatting on irc, icq. I don't think a lot of people realize how much time they spend on the web at work until they get busted for it.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2000

Well, I freely admit that I spend probably way too much time at work working on my site and surfing the Web. However, the way my job works, we have six weeks of furious, ulcer-inducing production, and then six weeks of catch-up. During the production cycle, I have no time to surf, and I barely have time to update my page. During the off-cycle, I figure it's nobody's business how I spend my time on the Net. As long as I'm getting my work done, which I am, I feel no qualms about spending four hours reading every story on cnn.com or whatever.

Of course, if you aren't getting your work done, that's a different story. Still, I feel that the appropriate way to handle the problem is to approach the employee and talk to him/her about the lack of work, rather than monitoring everything everybody does on their computer.

-- Anonymous, January 17, 2000

As far as I'm concerned, it's their phone, their computer and they have a right to know that I'm using them in the appropriate manner. Of course, I spend quite a bit of time surfing or reading/writing emails; but since 99% of my job is sitting around at night waiting for the phone to ring, I figure that anything I do to stay awake (short of crack, that just makes the cubicle seem way to small) is appropriate. I mean, they encourage us graveyard workers to play games and watch tv as long as it doesn't stop us answering the phones.

That being said, there is still the very clearly understood policy that access to the internet is a privilege and any impropriety (porn, hate sites, etc) will be met with a loss of that privilege. It's also known that they have the ability and the right to monitor all calls, emails and internet usage. Whether they have the time or the inclination to monitor everyone is another story. I choose to play it on the safe side. Of course, I think everyone has had the embarassment of clicking on a link a friend sent only to find that you're looking at porn and that no matter how fast you click on the X, another site is just going to pop up. That's happened to everybody, right? uh, nevermind.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

I, too, must come down on the side of the company to monitor what is going on. It is their network, their computer, their money that is being used for the access.

Now, far be it from me to preach about not surfing from work, as I do all the time, and I update my site, etc, so forth. But, the things is does it interfer with your job? If I have a dealine or something that needs to be done immediately, I won't blow it off to surf about. I get the job done.

But some people don't, and that has to be checked. Also, there is the legal 'sexual harassment' issue that companies have to worry about. Finally, and probably the biggest issue, is performance.

People bitch and moan when the network slows down, or the mail servers crash, or something else. But some of the main culprits are people downloading huge files from the net and sending out mass-mailings of jokes and mpegs and exe's, bringing a company's server to a halt.

And it's not always the little guy. We had some sevior vice president doing it. Technology also had to get everyone to remove Pointcast and then block the site because it was degrading performance so much.

As for e-mail, your IP address is attached.. and therefore anything you send out can be attributed to the company,as you are an abassador. Companies need to protect themselves.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

This has also become an issue at my place of employment. We have a number of data entry/customer service employees, whose job can be very monotonous at times. We allowed them to take short breaks and surf the net, for some distraction. Well, as was bound to happen, a few people abused this privelage, and ruined it for the rest of the group. These employees are now on a proxy server, and the company has limited the sites that they can access to only the ones necessary to doing their job (i.e. the company website)

The story continues. One of the employees didn't care for this setup. She decided she was going to do something about it. So, she says she was attempting to change the time on her computer, and she "accidentally" uninstalled Internet Explorer. (Obviously, she thought if she uninstalled, then reinstalled, she would have her abilities to surf back). Doing this crashed her entire machine. It took our network administrator 2 days to repair it. The employee gave her two weeks notice this morning. Go figure.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

why do i keep thinking of hitler and stalin ? now we have electronic big brother. if a person is not going to behave, they won't and there usually signs and indications which don't entail electronic eavesdropping. are we now a nation of misbehaving children who can not do a lick of work unless someone is doing more than looking over your shoulder ?

one suggestion is to make job description to include 1/4 of time to include some type of physical work. that would get rid of the types who are too proud to pick up a broom or empty a waste basket or generally help out where it is needed. broom and waste basket are hypothetical, but the meaning should be clear - - - get 'em out in the open where their actions demonstrate their willingness to d;;o what is needed. paraphrase probably, "the poor we will always have with us," unsaid is, "the lazy will be dragging anchor to our detriment.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

rich came up with an answer........nah......that is too easy.

sure, why not take the steps necessary to prevent the use of "this stuff" for anything other than strictly business.

why can't we all confine out extra-curricular activities to home base ?

a break is a thing you do to maintain the ability to move, move, move - - - not sit staring at the monitor - - - - do these people sit staring at the monitor while they chew their sandwiches ?

variety is a spice of life, get up, walk around, go to the water cooler, go comb your hair, stick your nose outdoors and sniff the smog. what ever - - - there is actually life beyond the web . . . . i think or at least there used to be.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

the thought of my bosses being able to see what im doing on my computer makes me seriously paranoid! i dont worry so much about the internet, as i keep that limited to a few minutes in the morning, during my lunch break, and before i leave in the evening. i worry about them discovering that im doing journal entries, or writing some (really bad) poetry, or some stupid story thats popped into my head. (sometimes i just cant keep the creative juices dammed up during the day. i know if i try, ill forget the really super, witty, and cleaver thing i thought of by the time i get home. i can write my ass off at work, but when im at home: nothing. or, very little. its sad.) although i totally agree with the person who said we all need our downtime during the sometimes very long work days, i also agree, however, with the person who said that its the bosses property and their time, so therefore they do have a right to make sure were all working when were supposed to be. after all, would you want to pay someone to just screw off all day?

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000

Can't answer.

Supposed to be working.

I just hope that they don't mind me tinkering on my site since the company's web specialist just got awarded for her own personal site. I suppose they'd want an award-winning web gal for their web site, right? i hope.

My experience with companies has always been if I got all of my work done, they didn't mind what I did in between.

My last job didn't do anything even when people were looking at porn on other people's machines. But they did mind if you were on the phone. Whatever.

-- Anonymous, January 18, 2000