I really have no dog in this fight, I personally think it’s whatever the company rules say. Honestly, if it’s your break I don’t think they really have a vested interested in keeping you from doing it, and as such don’t really think it’s that bad to deny the company rules unless you’re not supposed to for, say, national security reasons. This is mostly just a release valve for a minor trainwreck debate threatening to derail this thread about minor SDMB grievences.
Thoughts? Heated arguments filled with apoplectic rage? Confessionals?
I think it’s dependent on what level of control they try to exert over their workers. Most places I’ve worked are pretty lenient about personal browsing on your break/lunch/etc… if you’re salaried. Everyone checks ESPN, CNN, etc… and quite a few people do online bill pay, etc… Lots of college-related sports forums being read, from what I see walking around as well.
Most of the language in the personnel handbook and codes of conduct is more of a CYA thing for if you’re not doing your job and surfing all day, and they fire you, then they can point at that and say “See! Not doing their job, and specifically doing prohibited stuff.”
I don’t know about the hourly folks though; I think the higher-paid hourly folks (the ones who have a nominal 40 hour week) are treated much like the salaried people.
Hell, I’m on the dope in between phone calls, or anytime I need to manufacture some downtime–when I enter claim faxes, for example, I engage in measured productivity to make sure I don’t work too fast. Our quota is 4 per hour, and I don’t do a single penny more than that (there is no value in working too fast here). So if I finish a fax and it’s been less than my allotted 15 minutes, to the Dope I go.
Is it a breach of etiquette? Not during breaks, for sure. The way I use it is arguably in poor taste, but I’m hardly alone in doing it here. In this environment, downtime is important. It’s technically against company policy to use internet resources on the clock, for ANYBODY (salaried or hourly), but I think that rule truly only exists as a “gotcha” if they’re looking for reasons to get rid of you. It’s REALLY hard to get fired here.
I’ve been browsing the internet like this for the last almost-three years and I’ve never heard so much as a negative word. Never been written up. It’s an implicitly-accepted activity as long as it doesn’t interfere too much with getting the job done.
Company policy says, “Limited, occasional personal use” is allowable. But “limited” and “occasional” are open to a pretty wide interpretation in this office.
My first day on the job I saw people watching youtube, selling stuff on eBay, and zooming around on Google Earth…so I just went with the flow. We get the job done and we meet all our metrics; I think that’s the bottom line as far as the boss is concerned. Of course, if you’re caught looking at pron, you’re gone…I haven’t seen it my self, but I’ve heard tales of people being escorted out by law enforcement officers.
Nah. But I would stay away from the borderline topics, like the sexytimes polls in IMHO and Hitler debates in GD. But if you’re reading GQs about the speed of light, it’s coo’.
As a temp I work in a variety of offices, and everyone everywhere is surfing the internet at work. What I’ve seen is that companies appreciate it being limited to your breaks, and often limit the sites you can see for you, but surfing to something personal that hasn’t been restricted on your breaks is fine. Hell, if someone gets a funny video via email at any time of the day, the whole gang might be called over to come watch it.
I work at home from a company computer. Sometimes I do a little “personal” browsing when I need to eat something during my 10-hour work day, but I limit that to mainstream or local news sites. I do excellent work for them and I don’t think they would begrudge me a 5-minute perusal of local headlines. I would not browse the Dope from my work computer, but that’s out of privacy concerns rather than any ethical issues. The less my employer knows about my non-work life, the happier we both are.
A number of my co-workers do use their company computers on company time to go to industry-related websites and post critical comments or even proprietary information about the company, a practice I find almost comically reprehensible.
Every desk here in my office has two monitors. Most of us have a browser open at all times on one of the monitors, and some even watch movies while we work (I don’t do that, I find it too distracting).
Where I work, you can pretty much surf wherever you want during lunch or on a break, as long as you obey the company rules about what types of sites you go to (no pornography, no sites about drugs or other illegal things like bomb making, no music downloading sites, etc). Movie sites are technically banned since they use up so much bandwidth, but HR and IT don’t complain about youtube videos and the like as long as you don’t become a network hog.
The office is mostly salaried professionals (engineers and programmers).
Personally, I think it is a little unprofessional to surf such a personal site at work, especially on a work computer. There is a lot of stuff here that really doesn’t belong at the work place and just too much self-disclosure. It’s just asking for someone to see the banner, do some sleuthing, and find that post about your lesbian fantasy.
On my work machine, I’ll check news, industry blogs and some large mainstream sites- stuff that if my boss walked by, I’d be glad to share it with them. Personal surfing, such as the Dope or Facebook, stays on my iPhone using my data plan in the breakroom.
If the company has “limited, personal use” policies then no. If you’re doing it to the extent that you’re not getting your job done, then it’s an etiquette issue and a bunch of other issues as well.
It’s funny: my client has very strict limits on what you can do on their computers, as is within their rights. And a lot of websites are outright blocked e.g. you can’t get to gmail (though fortunately you can get to google maps and google calenar).
But one of the things I have to do, when working on their computer, is use Internet Explorer to link to a specific work-related site. Only, the home page is MSN (and can’t be overridden permanently)… with all sorts of ooooooh-shiny links to click.
The one time I clicked on one, without thinking, it popped up a big “this will use up your HOUR A DAY of PERSONAL BROWSING TIME, ARE YOU SURE???”.
It’s actually kind of funny here because social media is part of the job and I’ll realize that I’m testing Facebook like buttons and such while logged into my personal Facebook account. All my coworkers have had that happen, and then all your friends are wondering why you liked corrugated widgets.
We are allowed to do basically whatever we want with company computer time and most of what we want with office supplies (I often send faxes and print personal things, if it got out of hand, I suppose someone might mention it).
We are a software company and as long as you are being productive, they really don’t give a damn.
Oh yeah, I forgot about office supply nazis. The concept of not being able to use the fax machine for a personal fax astounds me. I buy movie tickets online and print them out at work (yeah, the theatre got the hang of generating tickets online, not so much with scanning them from a smartphone instead of paper).
However, I have also become the office sugar and coffee whitener lady, so whatevs.
If you can’t refrain from using the internet for personal reasons during work, I think there’s a bigger use than where you’re using from. Insert anything addictive and this converstation would answer answer itself. “Do you drink/smoke/do drugs/ect. at work? What about breaks?” Honestly, if you if you can’t refrain from using the internet to browse personal site at work, you probably have an addiction.
You’re wasting the companies resources even if it is your break.
