Like every other workplace, we are constantly reminded about not visiting porn sites while at work. Is this really a problem in most workplaces? Is this just a CYA from management to prevent a sexual harrassment lawsuit?
In the land of the cubicle dwelllers, there isn’t much privacy to begin with. I can’t even imagine how anyone could sit at work and watch porn without the whole office knowing about it. Even management has those offices with lots of glass and it would be very difficult for them as well. I’m sure the rules don’t apply to executives with private offices.
I’m actually quite happy that we have fairly unrestricted internet access at work. But, to me, I’d rather people spend 15 minutes on a fantasy sex site, than 3 hours on a fantasy sports site.
My brother is a network admin for a fairly large company. Yes, it’s a problem alright. He’s had to report people because he found porn on their computers. I can’t imagine surfing for porn in public either, but apparently some people are not so shy about it.
In fact I was recently part of a large investigation where an upper manager was exchanging porn with one of his underlings (whom he was dating - or at least fucking). Several people ended up seeing porn they did not want to see, as pretty much everyone can see everyone else’s monitors. It was very upsetting to those employees, as they felt they had no recourse, since both people were managers. Fortunately the individuals were using company email to exchange the images and it wasn’t hard to find, and they both ended up leaving (one quit before he was fired, the other actually fired). We all had a standing complaint because of the inappropriate relationship, but it was easier to just fire them for the porn.
Before that we had an employee whose job it was to listen to customer contact and give performance ratings. Part of this was looking at the employee’s actions on the PC at the time to see if they were actually performing functions correctly. In the midst of this she caught another person looking at porn (not once but on several occasions). Uh, hello people, we tell you that we are going to look at what you are doing on the computer during customer contact, why wouldn’t you at least close it! In this case it was written erotica, again another employee got very upset because she was exposed to it without wanting to be.
Just recently we had another employee looking at porn when he was supposed to be participating in on-the-job training.
What they said. My position is part of the employment law department, and the attorney 2 offices down the hall from me is in charge of dealing with all the legal issues associated with porn viewing in the office. He’s a busy guy.
My husband’s former employer discovered gigobytes of porn on somebody’s computer & wound up installing filters on everyone as a result.
Of course, they also found out that an employee was running a small business from his cubicle (auto parts or something), so it wasn’t the most rigorous environment.
I’ve seen it at large and small companies. One person was using remote desktop to access his work machine from home so his wife wouldn’t find any cached porn. However he neglected to turn off his monitor which faced the hallway. Another turned his monitor way, but forgot that glass reflects and anybody walking buy could see everything he could in the window behind him.
Aside from wasting time and bandwidth I don’t really care, but doing in such a way that others can see it is just idiotic. And I hate being pulled away from work to someone’s office to ‘see something’ only to find out he just discovered internet porn. Some folks have work to do.
I worked in a 300-person call center for about seven years, and during that time I know of only three people who were walked out the door for visiting porn sites. They were fired after it was determined they were visiting the sites repeatedly and deliberately.
Maybe I’m inexperienced and innocent in the ways of the world, but why would a person visit porn sites in a fairly public place? I mean, the purpose of viewing pornography is to facilitate masturbation, is it not? I can’t imagine anybody onanizing at their desk at work.
One of the law firms I worked at asked a partner to leave after he was caught surfing porn sites on the library computer, which was in full view of anybody who happened to walk by that (relatively busy) spot.
Even people who really know better can’t seem to help themselves.
Also, some porn sites set themselves as the PC’s new homepage, which means that the next person who boots up a common area computer gets a nice look at anime Harry and Snape in bondage, which is not to everyone’s taste.
Hell, at my old company, someone got fired for converting his extra hard drive AT THE OFFICE into a porn server. He had it running under his desk. What an idiot.
My ex-husband also once had to fire a contractor who repeatedly and openly watched porn on his computer the entire day, day after day. He was asked to stop twice, and fired on the third occasion it was observed.
Firstly, there was a workplace I worked at a number of years ago which had a sexual harassment lawsuit filed against it because one of the employees would surf porn in a common area(news room of a public radio station). The lawsuit was filed before I was hired and the employee was terminated, but it wasn’t wrapped up/settled for about five years from the original offense. It caused a lot of workplace tension and alienated several female members of the staff. Some of the guys were thinking it was no big deal though and were upset because they were implicitly part of the suit. This was an in-your-face violation situation though. The news room was open and the path to the broadcast booth and production studio flowed right through it. It was pretty high exposure. If it had been the station manager in his private office, or the DJ in his closed booth I doubt the issue would have arisen. The policy was set to disallow porn surfing at all however.
Second viewpoint/anecdote. A company I worked with last year said they had the discussion about Internet filtering years ago and had come to this stance. “If it isn’t affecting their work performance, we don’t care what they look at or how much. If their performance is unsatisfactory, that’s the problem and it doesn’t matter what the cause is.” So they don’t filter anything. They rely on their supervisor teams to know when someone is slacking and to take appropriate action based on that, not what specific activity they are engaged in aside from work. A person’s performance could be hurt by an SDMB addiction as badly as a habit of browsing porn. Employees of this company said that as long as they were discreet about porn browsing and remained productive they could surf all they wanted and the company would not stop them or care. Their policy is content-neutral.
Obviously both companies frown on people having porn on screens where others, who may not be interested or may be offended, will be exposed to it. The difference is in the policy of discreet browsing. One treats it is verboten due to the inherently non-productive nature of said activity, the other allows it as long as overall productivity is acceptable. I can see pros and cons for both. The first limits liability in harassment lawsuits, as long as some resonable measures are taken to enforce the policy, but adds in the overhead of filtering solutions and maintenance/costs of said systems. The second leaves you much more open to a big lawsuit and increases the likelyhood of one coming, but reduces your operating costs and it could be seen as a “perk” by some employees to have a higher level of freedom/privacy in the office.
OK, I’m going to tell you why people surf porn at work even though it can and does lose them their jobs. The more delicate among you may wish to sit down and take a firm grip on something. (No, not THAT!)
It’s because work is boring.
There. I said it. Most work is boring. I know, I know, children. It’s SUPPOSED to be something you love. Something you care about. And even if it isn’t and you don’t, you’re supposed to be a PROFESSIONAL at work, goddamit! And even if your job isn’t professional, well by damn, the boss isn’t PAYING you to surf porn! He’s paying you to do your job, no matter how boring it is.
But here’s the thing. All that talk doesn’t change a thing. Work is still boring. And a grind. You can do all the tough/happy management talk you want, but the dullness of most jobs still sits there like a five ton elephant, unmoveable, smelling kinda bad, inescapable in its massiveness.
And the people who surf porn at work are, in many instances, trying to COPE with the dullness of work. They’re not trying to masturbate, they’re trying to keep from going nuts from boredom.
Is that so hard to understand?
Now, I don’t surf porn at work, but I undestand the people that do. I wouldn’t mind at all having a TV with a VCR loaded with images of naked women dancing on it at work all day. It would be very nice to look at when I needed a break from work. But I know what kinda people I live among (people like many on this thread) so I wouldn’t think of giving them a chance to fire me on those grounds.
Evil Captor, I sure do understand being bored at work - but there’s so many sites to entertain you that don’t raise a red flag like porn does. Porn is still pretty taboo.
When I see what the Israelis swap on their company servers, though, I think we’re horribly backwards.
People watch porn as passive entertainment in the same way they’d watch a tv show? Like, you can just sit there for an hour and watch porn and be entertained?
That’s very strange to me. I use it when I want to provoke a certain physiological reaction and then take care of it. The content itself isn’t entertaining outside of that. Why the hell would I want to arouse myself to that state, for long periods of time, just to not be able to take care of it?
Very weird.
Yes, work is boring. That’s why you surf interesting websites. But I’m totally not understanding the porn thing, even if it wasn’t risky.
We’ve had two people fired for surfing porn that I know of, probably more. I know other employees that were reprimanded. A while ago I had a guy put up photos on his screensaver that weren’t really porn, but very close. Girls in g-strings and tiny tops or covering themselves with their hands or other things. These images played as a slideshow everytime he left his desk, and I was the only other person who could see them as part of my daily job (his computer faced my desk). I am the only female in my department, and while I didn’t make a formal complaint, as soon as a higher up saw it he was disgusted on my behalf and the guy was ordered to remove them. I thought it was pretty dumb, I mean, he was displaying potentially offensive images directly at my desk.
Some of the guys in our shop have cheesy pictures up but not exactly porn. Still, I wonder if any of the few women out there mind. They have to put up with a lot of testosterone and guy talk in general though so maybe that is the least of it.
I had to work in a government/military network in a secured site that dealt with very sensitive information. Everyone knew that everything was monitored. They still caught people. After a while they decided to install more filters so they wouldn’t have to court martial as many people. That killed the Dope for me. That was just a coincedence, if they had any problems with me posting I would have heard about it. We also couldn’t listen streaming radio anymore. Just because some people have no sense.
Just to summarise (and based on some of the excellent posts already made):
It does happen.
It can cause legal repercussions and major reputation damage for the employer. Want to be associated with an employee later charged with involvement in a child porn ring? Who stored child porn on their work computer? It happens (at at least two companies I know of).
It can be associated with an increased risk of viruses and malware. Now sure, you’d hope your company has up-to-date firewall, intrusion detection, monitoring and anti-virus controls, but the best way to prevent these problems is not to open yourself up to the risk.
You need to communicate the rules to cover yourself legally. I cannot find the case, but several years ago an employee of a British company successfully won an unfair dismissal case in a situation where they’d been fired for misusing internet access. Their defence was that at no point had it been made explicitly clear to them what was permitted and what wasn’t, and they hadn’t signed anything to acknowledge that they agreed to any restrictions. This issue is even more important in countries with very employee-friendly legislation (such as The Netherlands, I’m led to believe).
My mom works for the State of Oregon Dept. of Revenue. Last spring, an employee was fired for browsing porn and, as a result, accidentally downloading a trojan which recorded his keystrokes and sent them who knows where. As many as 2200 people’s personal information may have been compromised. So now no one is allowed to use the internet for recreational surfing, even during their lunch hour.
