Solitaire Game Gets NYC Worker Fired (By Bloomberg)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.heraldnewsdaily.com/stories/news-00140191.html

Mayor Michael Bloomberg isn‘t playing games — after he saw a game of solitaire on a city employee‘s computer screen, he fired him.

Office assistant Edward Greenwood IX was going over some papers at his desk as Bloomberg made the rounds with his photographer, greeting workers and posing for pictures. When the mayor reached him, Greenwood stood, they shook hands and the photographer snapped a photo.

<snip>

"It‘s not like I‘m the only one that ever did this," said the 39-year-old father of a toddler.

"I admire the guy — he‘s a great financial success, and he has a definite management style," Greenwood said. "I just think he could have seen my situation and weighed the harshness of his final decision."

"I expect all city workers, including myself, to work hard," the mayor said. "There‘s nothing wrong with taking a break, but during the business day, at your desk, that‘s not appropriate behavior."

I think Bloomberg was an asshole in this situation.

[BayCityProgressive]

1. I don't

I work for AT&T and i hate it when fellow employees sit on the computer and do homework or play games instead of doing the work they are paid at least 40k a year for. Sorry if I sound cold hearted but he would have gotten at least a write up from me. Also, the "I am not the only one who does it" excuse is very immature.

[okieinpain]

2. geez, man you're a tough one. guess you don't drink coffee either

[BayCityProgressive]

4. lol

Well when you are in a job where what one person does effects you personally you get mad about that sort of thing. Our company depends on customer service and if susie in the desk next to me is playing games rather than completing a business order I am the one that gets the escalated order with a screaming disatisfied customer. Perhaps firing was too harsh but he should get at least some form of disipline.

[okieinpain]

13. ok, I can agree with that. I do goof off from time to time. I don't

play games, but I do read the news at work. what I don't understand is why he didn't close the game when he saw the boss coming. hell I would have closed it even if he had caught me red handed.

[skids]

16. Been there.

I don't begrudge employees a bit of a respite every hour or two, but I've seen it taken to excess too, and had to pick up the slack. A write-up would have been more appropriate, though, like you say -- or even a verbal "get your crap together."

[qazplm]

5. oh good grief

sorry but you arent going to sell to anyone that you take exactly zero breaks throughout the day, that you work 100% of the time, and that you never take 5 minutes off.

Most experts will tell you that you NEED to step back about 5 minutes out of every hour to be productive throughout the day.

[skids]

17. Playing solitaire isn't a break.

If you want to take a break, walk to the bathroom, splash some water on your face, blow your nose, pet your rubber troll doll, whatever.

Playing solitaire does nearly nothing to actually increase your productivity.

[Fredda Weinberg]

48. It keeps me awake

If the mayor tried that to me, he'd be laughed out of the city agency where I work.

[Poll_Blind]

9. A warning or write-up, yes. Firing- totally overboard. n/t

PB

[henslee]

11. If you're gonna shirk, don't get caught.

[The Straight Story]

20. Well that does not tell the whole story in his situation

My engineers work 12 hour days, and sometimes there is not much going on. Sure they do training, et al, but sometimes we go many hours without any issues to address (when I was an engineer I worked alone those hours and in a 3 day weekend I worked, 36 hours total, I did not have one call or issue at all).

I tell them to surf the net, play some games, anything but sleep (unless on lunch break, then not on my time). I have walked by them playing 3d first person shooters and I am ok with it - what else they gonna do, stare into space? I am not one for making useless busy work for people just to keep em awake, seems dumb. Efficiency means making things work well with less work, and when we accomplish that (and we work hard to do so) i see no reason not to let them have some perks.

[RamboLiberal]

24. I did a big software project one time

Had a deadline to meet, so I made a goal of coding/testing/debugging one program a day - hundreds of lines of code, many nights working till 10 or 11PM. My boss had no problem with me taking a break to play an occassional computer game.

And how about places like Google, Microsoft, etc., where play is encouraged to keep the employees sharp.

I think even Solitaire can be a morale booster and a way to stay sharp. Hell, I've played it when on a long phone call or waiting for a computer process to finish. I'm bored if I just have to sit and look busy.

[The Straight Story]

26. I do that at times on conference calls

1-3 hours a day on calls and can't really do much else. I read DU, play some chess, and so on.

[shanti]

36. ITA

i feel that as long as the work gets done and there's no backlog, what's the big deal? some people talk on the phone, take ciggy breaks, "visit" with others, read newspapers, surf the net.

most jobs don't have you working 100% of the time. who wants to stare into space? :shrug:

[Shakespeare]

28. Are you at work right now?

If so, you're sitting on the computer and posting to DU. How is that different than playing solitaire?

Pot...kettle....

Yeah, it was a little harsh. A warning and even probation would have been understandable.

[roguevalley]

35. fuck billionaires. Plato said an enormously good man can't enormously

rich. fuck rich men.

[htuttle]

3. Bloomberg should have taken it up with the guy's supervisor

...and let the supervisor make the final decision. The 'chain of command' should be followed in both directions for things to run smoothly.

What if that guy was the only one who knew how to fix the fax machine, for example?

[BayCityProgressive]

7. I agree you do need breaks

and we get plenty of breaks. 2 fifteen minute breaks, an hour lunch...you can get up and take a walk or go to the bathroom if a customer upsets you. It's not like they chain us to our desks lol. BTW if the city employees have a union this guy will probably have his job back. I am a CWA member and whenever someone is fired for something small like this the union almost always gets their job back.

[htuttle]

23. We have a small call center at my workplace

It's a democratically-run taxi coop, and our call center has huge peaks and valleys in the business volume. They are all connected to the net, and are (unofficially) allowed to browse online between taking calls as long as they answer the phone on time. Call volumes are monitored and tracked against historical statistics by supervisors (who are all hired out of the same department they supervise).

They can all pretty much see each other, and each other's screens. If one person starts ignoring the phone and making the others do all the work, the others complain about it, and the person gets some sort of discipline, if only a talking-to the first time. We require an escalation of discipline in most situations (except for 'capital offenses', like theft), so people don't get fired immediately unless they are incredibly stupid. In any case, peer pressure works very well in a situation like this -- being worker-owned and operated helps. I'm not sure how well something like that would work in the private corporate world, since the workers don't feel as invested in the business.

In any case, my point with that description is that there's a way to reach a happy medium on 'non-work activities at work'. Grinding your employees into a fine dust only works if you plan on hiring new employees all the time after they burn out. We found that training a really good employee costs so much that it's better to try to keep the ones you have by allowing them to stay sane (and make enough to live on, but that's a different thread). They ultimately tend to be more productive that way, too.

[RamboLiberal]

10. Exactly - Bloomberg had no way of knowing if this guy

was productive or not. Wonder how many of us take a little break during the workday to post or read DU?

Come one now - admit it, no fudging. I see those posts asking for more info for "us cube dwellers".

I'm going to have to watch it soon cause we're installing a bandwidth monitor next week that does some nifty reports. I administer it, but I won't cheat when I do the reports so I'll have to watch my surfing - no more little 5 minute breaks. But I bet it will be interesting to see who really does abuse it. I'm betting I see mostly management and sales guys names in the mix.

I monitor our spam filter and it's amazing how many jokes - especially RW email jokes are flying through our server every day. The biggest abusers of this are the managers and sales guys! Hardly any going to the worker bees.

[henslee]

12. Bloomberg is a blowhard POS.

[Cronus Protagonist]

18. And they could deduct the time wasted from all the free unpaid time

If their place is anything like ALL the places I've worked in, he must have several hundred unpaid hours stacked up over the years to easily repay the few minutes he was playing solitaire. And in any case, perhaps he couldn't do real work while the dog and pony show was going on... people's private information could have been on that screen rather than solitaire.

[TomClash]

6. This is one of the reasons I have my own company

I can fire the boss!

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

8. Many large companies would agree with that move

Lots of places do not even allow Solitaire to be installed on their employee's machines. (That's not to say it can't be put on a floppy disk- sol.exe is a small program file... :evilgrin: )

Helpful trick: the Win98 version of Solitaire is slightly different from the updated Win2X/XP version- the new version significantly slows down the winner's shower of cards. If you want it to go rapidly find a Win98 machine and copy the file to your XP machine, overwriting the newer one.

[robbedvoter]

14. Bloomy - the billionaire friend of the working man....oh, joy!

So proud he bought a mayorship in my city!

[RamboLiberal]

15. City of Pittsburgh I think came up with an equitable solution to

web surfing. Though I think they're going to have to do a lot of tweaking. So much of business now depends on web access.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06040/652505.stm

When some city of Pittsburgh employees tried to check the Internet Tuesday, they got an unusual message.

Up popped a note saying the site where they were headed was "filtered." If they wanted to proceed, they had to click on a button that said "Use Quota Time." They'd then get 10 minutes to browse -- one of three such sessions they'd get that day.

It was the same for any Web site they checked. Turns out the message reflects a new city policy restricting many employees' Internet access, for any purpose, to 30 minutes a day.

Announced in a memo Tuesday, the policy has been rolled out in the Public Works Department, which handles street repair, engineering, trash collection and building maintenance.

[jody]

19. I agree any employee who uses employer time and resources for

personal benefit/pleasure should be fired, particularly elected officials who use their positions for benefit/pleasure.

[RamboLiberal]

22. Guess we should've fired Clinton for the BJ's

And can we fire * for all the recreational biking and exercising, plus overuse of vacation time?

[jody]

33. I'm sure people from all political parties abuse their office. Why should

they be treated any differently than the lowest level worker?

Why should Generals get slaps on the wrist while privates serve time in Ft. Leavenworth?

That goes equally well for CEOs versus the most menial laborer.

[lindisfarne]

21. I've known lots of co-workers who wasted a lot of company time by sitting

around and chattering about non-work topics. Frankly, I think the chatting people do wastes more time than people using computers for non-work activity.

[RamboLiberal]

25. I know I'm going to get smacked upside the head

but how about the smokers who run out every hour or two for a 5 minute cigarette break? What's so different about them or the employee who plays one game of solitaire or does some quick web surfing or web shopping? Hell, at least they are at their desk to answer the phone.

[lindisfarne]

30. I agree with you 100%. And, the person playing solitaire is not

endangering the lives of those who have to run the gauntlet of the smoke-filled building entrances (or inhale smoke pulled into the ventilation system after idiot-smokers smoke near the air intake areas).

[Zensea]

27. I think this guy has a case to get his job back

Despite some of the high and mighty puritanism I see in some of the posts in this thread & Bloomberg's response.

Bloomberg is acting like a tin horn dictator.

Well, I didn't vote for him.

[still_one]

40. I agree

as long as it is not abused what kind of environment does he want anyway?

[MrPrax]

29. Bloomberg is disgusting...

basically using this guy's 'meal ticket' for his own political image. I bet the guy will win big in the lawsuit.

But what is worst that Bloomberg are some of the terribly heartless management-keener 'brownies' in this thread...

What total Scrooges...! Shit you guys would fire Bob Crachet for a first time you saw him going for a Number Two with a newspaper...I swear.

[RamboLiberal]

31. Bob Crachet going for a Number Two

Glad I didn't have any coffee on that one or I'd be cleaning my company owned keyboard. :rofl:

[brooklynite]

32. I'd say he deserves to be fired for stupidity...

If the boss, Chairman of the Board, Mayor, etc. comes into the office, you'd think he'd have the reflexes to shut down the computer or change what on the screen pretty quickly.

[RamboLiberal]

34. He was out of his office to get tickets for the mayor

Mr Greenwood said that he had left the solitaire game on his computer while going to pick up tickets for the Mayor and other city officials to attend the Governor's annual address to the state.

When he returned, Mr Greenwood said, the Mayor had arrived and was posing for pictures with other office workers.

Mr Greenwood said that when he asked for a picture with the Mayor, too, Mr Bloomberg went into his office and saw the solitaire game.

"I don't have any real animosity towards the guy," he said.

"He's the boss, so if this is the way he wants it handled, there's nothing I can do about it.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/mayor-sacks-worker-caught-playing-solitaire/2006/02/10/1139542406203.html

[Starbucks Anarchist]

37. So solitaire is wasting time, but a photo-op isn't?

Bloomberg's an asshole.

[democracyindanger]

43. Ding ding ding.

Perfectly put.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

45. I wonder if the guy was fired on the spot.

If he was, and if I was him, I'd have gone all out and decked Bloomberg right there.

[Dogmudgeon]

38. Fired for cause

'Cause Bloomberg is an asshole.

He was made an example of. That's cause for a civil rights action in most places.

Employers and Republicans in this country get away with murder.

--p!

[cmdrzog]

39. Its always ok for the highest paid and most powerful

to play photo ops, greet and chat w/ others of their rare status; but those that do the actual day to day work should always be machines. That is the work ethic they are always waving in your face; you work, I'll collect double, triple 400 times what you make and talk about my new house, car, vacation,or whatever while you work.

[bigwillq]

41. No need to fire him for that.

A warning, a write-up but not having his job taken from him.

[Der Blaue Engel]

42. I'm writing a novel at work as we speak

Whatever. I get my job done. My boss has no complaints.

[Maddy McCall]

44. The 9th?

I hate it when people use the same name over and over and over in their lineage--as if they want to connote status.

But a "the 9th" working for the city? I guess Edward Greenwood VIII must have run into some hard times. :eyes:

[rug]

46. He has a son, Edward Greenwood X.

BTW, he had a very low-level job at the NYC liason office in Albany.

One of his last tasks was to be a gofer for Bloomberg to pick up Bloomberg's tickets for the State of the State speech by Pataki.

His firing is complete bullshit and the CSEA should act immediately.

[no name no slogan]

47. Not suprising-- the employee is wasting taxpayer $$$

I suprised the employee even had Solitaire installed on his/her machine-- most places don't intall it, or severely restrict what software an employee can download/install.