* there's got to be a bit of give and take in the working world these days

…
So there’s this story:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6969791.stm

And its amusingly related spoof:
http://newsbiscuit.com/article/facebook-employee-sacked-for-spending-entire-working-day-on-excel-185

All I know is, I used to work in a place where the pace and workload was constantly hectic and unpredictable, and so after totally knocking your pan in doing nothing else but this one thing for a solid hour putting together stuff that someone needed NOW!!! … It was nice to have a break and a bit of a surf for fun stuff, as well as stretch the old legs and go for a pee, etc.

It worked really well to relieve the pressure and also helped us bond as a team, sharing daft stuff and chatting about what we’d found.

Then they changed the system and we lost access to a bunch of stuff: it was really frustrating, made you felt like you were doing something wrong and disciplinary-worthy when you tried to access a ‘forbidden’ site [like the lottery results, because it was classed as gambling... or YouTube because it was ‘entertainment’…] and meant that we were then #more# likely to work through our lunch-hours for lack of anything else to do, thus making us more stressed and resentful of the environment and not doing much for the old work-life balance or health and safety ‘take regular breaks’ advice…

I’ve also worked in call centres with no internet access, where there came a point when there was nothing left to do: calls had died off, files and drawers had been tidied and re-tidied, work-based quizzes and such had been exhausted, newspapers weren’t allowed because newsprint would mucky up the desks, games and books and magazines weren’t allowed because it looked unprofessional… we were tied to our cubicles by the length of our headset leads like a junkyard dog on a too-short chain, and all that was left to do was sit about and chat, which could get out-of-hand and even too noisy when one of us finally did get a call through…

I know there are people who totally rip the pi55 out of it and do nothing but surf and shop all day, I’ve worked with one who organised their entire wedding and every holiday on company time with company resources.

Heck, I’ve even done it myself: I was made redundant but was made to work out my full notice period rather than being put on garden leave, so for a full 4 weeks I was paid to come in and surf and job-hunt and answer the odd query about the stuff I used to do.
It was such a waste, it meant I had to fork out for bus fares and do a 1 hour 2 bus commute twice a day just to sit about doing nothing, which I could do much cheaper #and# in pyjamas if I had been allowed to stay home…

But then again, I’ve used internet access to do stuff I would have otherwise have needed to take time off for, like banking, arranging appointments, getting stuff from people and even surfing for online information that would help the job/business I was currently in, and so on.

So I guess it has to come down to trust: as long as the work is done when it needs to be done and is of an at-least satisfactory standard, then what’s the problem with surfing in-between times?