Yesterday, my place of work decided that we needed to be routed through a Net Nanny type device. Now we are unable to access any website that is non-work related, and if we try we get a restricted message telling us that our attempt has been logged and reported. They are also monitoring our emails and anything remotely questionable is getting bounced back to the sender with a nasty message.

So what do you think? I know we're here to work, but isn't this a little too much? Having Big Brother watching over my every move doesn't make me feel happy and productive.

In fact, it just made me get sneaky. Thank god for shell accounts, telnet, lynx, pine, tin and ircii.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Answers

I have mixed feelings. I mean, no one has a right to be online at work. I sympathize with employers there. I just think they're fighting a losing battle. In the old days, we all just daydreamed or talked on the phone or read the News and Review, right?

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

I know that my unrestricted email and internet access certainly doesn't contribute to my productivity (witness this post, for example), but at least, due to the nature of my work, it makes it easy for me to look busy...

I think employers should accept some built-in fucking off time in the workday structure, though, because overall, happier employees are going to be more productive.

If I had to go back to a job that didn't provide me with unmonitored high-speed internet access, I would probably smoke a lot more, and take longer lunches.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

I surf about 32 hours a week at work.... it would be around 40, but I simply don't come in that often (tee-hee.) Seriously, my job gets very busy at times, then very slow at times. No one cares what I do during the slow times, as long as I still show up.

My employer does monitor usage, but only by time on... anyone with a net nanny at work should check out safeweb.com, very customizable, very nice.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

Well,m it gets worse. Apparently, they're going to be checking into our machines daily to see what we're doing for the next couple of weeks.

This is ridiculous... a scared employee is NOT a happy employee!

I need a new job, and until then - I'm going to keep a text file open at all times that says "Hi you corporate jerkoff!" that I'll switch over to periodically.

Assholes.

-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

They're within their legal rights I suppose, but it's stupid. In my opinion, people should be evaluated based on the quality of their work, and otherwise left alone. If you're doing good work, they shouldn't care if you trade a few personal e-mails or check a couple of non-work Web sites, no more than if you take ten minutes to chat with a co-worker in the hallway or dash out to pick up your dry cleaning.

I've never worked in a place that micro-managed my Internet usage like that ... even the job from hell that I left two years ago wasn't that intrusizve. I can't really imagine that I would put up with it happily ... not because I spend a lot of work time doing personal web stuff, but just because it's insulting.



-- Anonymous, August 02, 2001

I think you should consider yourself lucky. Lucky that they decided to announce what they are doing, rather than do it more covertly, as most companies do.

I don't think people *need* web access at work, if their only use of it is non work related. And as someone who has shared office space with a few online gambling addicts and people who surfed for porn 8 hours a day, who has had to develop projects with someone who moderated an IRC chatroom at work all day every day from her desk, had to cover for a co-worker who consistently missed our joint deadlines because she was playing hearts at msn gamezone with her online pals all day, and who has had to hear that stupid "UNH-OH!" beep ICQ makes every 30 seconds from 9am to 5pm as my office mate exchanged dirty ICQ messages with her girlfriend, I would just like to say that there are many, many people out there who cannot resist the temptation to open a browser and surf for hours and hours.

Until you are a sys admin, you will never believe how many people surf for porn or gamble online from their office PC in *your* office. People like that ruin it for everyone.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

I am the person who put this system in place in our office. When we first got our high speed unrestricted Internet connection in place we were not blocking anyone from anything. But I was logging everything. A 3-page computer use policy and a 3-page e-mail and Internet use policy was distributed. We had a meeting, everyone participated, the policies were signed and returned by all the employees.

Six months later we had people spending HOURS each day downloading from Napster, surfing porn sites, shopping on-line, instant messaging their kids to get off-line so they could call home and checking their home e-mail accounts. One woman had a child in daycare and the daycare center had web cams in place so the parents could log in and watch their children. Guess what she had open all day long ?

Everyone was aware that we could track their usage but they still did this stuff. We had no choice. Our people must have internet access so the only way we could solve the problem was to allow them, by groups, to access only business related web sites. If they had only been reasonable about the time they were spending on-line this might never have happened. Martie, you were probably more than fair about what you did on-line but maybe some of your co-workers screwed it up for you.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

I work at a university, and some people are just shocked when they realize that the university has a right to access any emial sent on their servers. At the time I learned it, I thought, "Well, of course they can. It's all free, so how can I really claim ownership? It's not like I bought anything." What's really fun is that I knew someone who got in trouble for looking at gay porn in their office, and they came back with the fact that their research is on representations of sexuality. They wrote a paper about gay internet porn, had it published, and pissed off the administration because it really was legitimate research. And that's the fun of academia, everything is research and everything can be taken off of taxes.

Sorry, went on an unexpected tangent there.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

Well, I am here at work, and we have a fairly liberal policy on internet use. Basically, no porn. No porn at all. Otherwise, if you are doing your job to expectations, if internet use is not causing you to put in extra hours, the powers that be figure a little surfing can't hurt anyone. The only time internet use is monitored is at the request of a manager or other supreme type being who suspects poor job performance is related to the internet, or your e-mail address undergoes a huge increase in volume, compared to what the volume was before.

Even if you are caught doing something contrary to policy, you have to recieve 3 written warnings, and undergo a Performance Improvement Plan before anything terrible happens.

-- Anonymous, August 03, 2001

I have a question, which is, what the hell did people do during downtime before the Internet? I'm serious here. My Mom's answer is that she just goes and finds more work to do, but that isn't an option at my office, because my job is pretty specific, and it's not like I can take over the graphic designers' slack, because I don't know anything about graphic design.

Today, for example, I had zero to do. I've been waiting for chapters to come back from authors since Wednesday, and they just told us today they were pushing back their deadline (again) to Monday. I already did all the make-work stuff I could find. I cleaned out my inbox. I recycled all the loose papers on my desk. When I was done with that, I still had six hours of an eight-hour day to kill. I spent about three of those hours surfing the Web and then went home early.

So anyway, I'm just not sure what I'm supposed to be doing during these times. Writing procedural documents? Vacuuming the floor? My bosses knew I had nothing to do, and yet they had nothing to give me. We're just in a really slow in-between-projects time right now. Half my co-workers are only showing up on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays because there's not much to do currently.

Anyway, I guess I feel extra guilty about this because I'm one of those workers who probably spends excessive time on the Internet. I'm an addict. However, it's not for online gambling, porn, or running my own business, at least. It's mostly message boards and online journals. But still. I like to think that I do finish my projects on time and professionally completed, I just wish I could think of something else to fill up my downtime with.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2001

I don't really have "down time" -- I don't get credit for just being there for eight hours; nothing counts unless it's billable. But I can tell you what I used to do when I was too bored to concentrate: I used to do searches through old California Supreme Court opinions from the 30s and 40s, searching for things like "murder + Sacrament + ax" and other cheerful subjects. Loads o' fun.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2001