Don't Let Your Boss Catch You Reading This

Stony Stevenson writes "iTnews is running a piece on the culture of cyberslacking in the business arena. Studies worldwide suggest employees spend about a fifth of their work shifts engaging in personal activities. Most of that 'wasted time' is, of course, spent online. From the article: 'A recent survey by online compensation firm Salary.com showed about six out of 10 employees in the United States acknowledged wasting time at work. About 34 percent listed personal Internet use as the leading time-wasting activity in the workplace. Employees said they did so because they were bored, worked too many hours, were underpaid or were unchallenged at work. Firms all over the world are concerned about potentially harmful effects of surfing they deem to be inappropriate may have on their company's image.'"

I don't waste time at work!

[hansamurai]

Just because I read Slashdot at work means I'm slacking off.

Just a sec, I see someone in my monitor mirror *alt-tabs to Eclipse*

Okay, I'm back, just started a 6000 test JUnit test suite so if anyone wonders if I'm being productive, I can point to the green status bar slowly approaching 100%...

Re:Didn't read the article

[xvicex]

Facebook didnt spend all my time, so I signed up for myspace as well

Solitaire

[Viceroy Potatohead]

about six out of 10 employees in the United States acknowledged wasting time at work

The other four in ten were too stupefied to respond, having just played 900 consecutive games of solitaire.

Re:I don't waste time at work!

[Anonymous Coward]

As always, XKCD [xkcd.com] comes through with the goods: Compiling! [xkcd.com]

Re:limit access

[mikkelm]

Yeah, productivity thrives in tightly controlled workplaces where the management doesn't trust the employees.

Save the trees

[daveywest]

I personally would like to thank the internet for saving the trees. Think of all the stupid faxes the office secretary used to forward every day. There is scientific proof the net is saving the planet.

Poll: When reloading Slashdot every five...

[Anonymous Coward]

...seconds, what do you do when your boss comes in?

1. Claim you are researching business value of deploying Linux.

2. Fess up and tell your boss you are cyberslacking.

3. Tell your boss you are researching the viability of a CmdrTaco-based CRM.

4. You quickly hit the "boss" key combination which brings up vi in a console and opens the source code you were supposed to be finishing by the deadline.

5. You point out the window and tell your boss someone is picking the lock on his car.

Thank you. I'll be here all week!

Anonymous Coward Sig 2.0:
--
Madonna > *

Re:Surveys

[rishistar]

And three percent of employees cannot splelcheck wiithout a splelchevcker.

Re:Didn't read the article

[xaxa]

Facebook and MySpace are blocked here, but not Slashdot. Presumably because IT read it.

It's not slacking off...

[Spy der Mann]

It's just that my code's compiling. [xkcd.com]

*sigh* Thanks for the title. :P

[arkham6]

So I'm eating lunch, glancing at slashdot.

My boss walks up behind me and says "Don't let your boss catch you reading this? What is that Dave?"

"Umm, its slashdot boss, and Its my lunch time."

"You know Dave, internet usage isnt for personal activities...."

*sigh*

Good ol' Days

[Anonymous Coward]

cyberslacking at my old job didn't involve *just* looking @ porn on the internet (though we did do plenty of that). Here's a rundown of a typical day where I used to work:

7:00AM - arrive at work

7:30AM - 10:00AM - Watch a movie

10:00AM - 12:00PM - Target practice, setup plastic army guys and shoot them with a pellet gun

12:00PM - 2:00PM - lunch off-site

2:00PM - 3:30PM - work on daily problems, maintenance, etc

I was the IT manager, my co-worker was the maintenance manager, this was for a small production company where all the upper management and goodie-two-shoes were located about 5 blocks away and rarely visited or bothered us (provided everything was working properly). I'm not defending our slacking, when some problem came up, the movies stopped, the guns got put away and we cut lunch short to get things done. The rest of the time though, it was the best job ever.

Re:Hold on there, junior...

[igny]

I feel that the fact that most people waste 1/5 of their time on the internet may be a good indication that work weeks are 1/5th too long. In fact, if I could find a job where I would only work 4 days a week, I would probably be as if not more productive than now that I work 5 days a week. This is a case where corporations should revisit their policies instead of the other way around.

But the 4 day work week would mean that one would waste 1/4 of his work time. Oh wait, I was never good at fractions.

Re:Poll: When reloading Slashdot every five...

[rootofevil]

im all for porn too, but youd never catch me there at work.

not nearly enough privacy for all that midget on horse stuff i like.

Re:Poll: When reloading Slashdot every five...

[Oktober Sunset]

ewww! Midget on horse! That's gross, why can't you just watch dog on woman porn like everyone else.

Re:Poll: When reloading Slashdot every five...

[jollyreaper]

Seriously, dual monitors allow people to work and play a lot better than a single-monitor setup. That's probably one reason why people are more productive with 2 monotirs - you can shove all the "personal stuff" to one side, and keep an ey on it without actually having to stop working on what you're doing.

It's also good for work, too. Nothing like needing to be on two different servers while looking up instructions on what to do to them on a third monitor. And the large format monitors these days mean you can really tile a lot of crap on each screen. Also makes it easier when doing the support calls because I can have the user's screen up on one monitor, my main task I'm monitoring on another, and a lil' slashdot window to type in on the third. Keeps me from falling asleep while the end user hunts for the "any" key.

Re:Hold on there, junior...

[Anonymous Coward]

>we are the good guys of the healthcare industry

I understand the words individually, but I simply cannot sensibly parse the phrase as a whole...

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hold on there, junior...

[somersault]

You just have to read into the words. "Patient Assistance Programs and also assits with Insurance Verifications and Prior Authorizations...essentially, we are the good guys of the healthcare industry:-)"

Obviously he works for Microsoft, quietly destroying other peoples patents and valuable property, all the while sucking on candy as any good evil mastermind should.

Re:Hold on there, junior...

[veganboyjosh]

I feel qualified to chime in here. As someone who used to work 4 day workweeks, I got all kinds of shit done on. I had a whole extra day to do what I wanted to do.

If you have read this far down the post...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have now wasted gobs and gobs of time reading something only mildly useful in this world where life is non-stop madness!

Re:Poll: When reloading Slashdot every five...

[Blnky]

Ok, with this situation, which I have been in, I have one question that has never been answered. Where does one charge the time spent filling out the time sheets? I have always hated that uncertainty.

6 out of 10 ain't bad

[DavidHumus]

> about six out of 10 employees in the United States acknowledged wasting time at work

So, from this we can conclude that about 40% of the people surveyed were liars?

Reminds me of a Bash.org post.

[mikebald]

#258908 +(11695)- [X]

<Ben174> : If they only realized 90% of the overtime they pay me is only cause i like staying here playing with Kazaa when the bandwidth picks up after hours.
<ChrisLMB> : If any of my employees did that they'd be fired instantly.
<Ben174> : Where u work?
<ChrisLMB> : I'm the CTO at LowerMyBills.com
*** Ben174 ([e-mail]) Quit (Leaving)