Other Gaming in the workplace

[liratheal]

If you were caught gaming at work, what would they fire you for?

A friend was lamenting about how the WoW ports were blocked at his office (He claims not to be an addict, but the guy has spent 800-900+ hours on one character in the last year. He has 5 characters at 70, two are in some crazy-ass hard to get gear, or so I'm told (Not a big WoW player myself, so I have no idea)) and claims that they wouldn't fire him because 'he has nothing else to do'.

I contested this - They would (And rightly should) fire someone for gaming in the workplace, but I don't know what it would come under?

Would it be misconduct?

[kenco_uk]

Improper use of company time, I guess.

[CardJoe]

Yep, I'd be fired.

I imagine it would come under misconduct or inappropriate use of company property. Could also be negligence it resulted in lost sales, lost customers etc.

[UrbanMarine]

Some places consider theft of company time. Stealing X amout of hours playing a game.

[Xtrafresh]

just general negligence will do for that.

Although I once had a collegue who was payed for watching a PC process batches all day, and fixing it if one went in error. His PSP was worn beyond repair!

[Tim S]

Joe, you're fired for playing RA3 during work hours!

[UrbanMarine]

He's fired for playing RA3 RA2 4 Life!

[mushky]

If it was busy and I was playing games then I'd get in trouble. Where I work it can be really quiet and all of a sudden get really busy, then go quiet again all in the space of a few hours. When it's quiet there isn't usually much to do in the way of catch up stuff and everyone just looks on the net etc so no problem really playing games if it's just casual stuff. Plus I'm the IT guy so it's all good

[BigD79]

Originally Posted by mushky

Plus I'm the IT guy so it's all good

lol! I'm a User Tester for our groups IS (IT). Me and a mate play Inkball on these Panny Toughbooks (with a stylus on the screen) it just looks like we're testing!!

back on topic - SACKED!! defo, wasting company time, we have a "fair usage" policy on emails (via work account) and a similar one for internet access (for those that have it, with restrictions) but has to be on your own time. regardless of if you had nowt else to do.

[Angleus]

Depends where you work really though doesn't it, back when I used to work at (un-named uk second-hand electronics retailer) my boss was the worst, he used to literally lie on the florr underneath the tills playing on his DS while people served over him, quite funny when someone asked to see the manager and he jumped up though!

[Xtrafresh]

Originally Posted by BigD79

lol! I'm a User Tester for our groups IS (IT). Me and a mate play Inkball on these Panny Toughbooks (with a stylus on the screen) it just looks like we're testing!!

back on topic - SACKED!! defo, wasting company time, we have a "fair usage" policy on emails (via work account) and a similar one for internet access (for those that have it, with restrictions) but has to be on your own time. regardless of if you had nowt else to do.

Fair usage policy for corporate mail? hahahahaha...

I remember one particular spamconversation with over 500 mails sent to a spamlist of 40 people filled with images from the interwebs that were imported through an illegal proxy... and all this while handling a client every 7 minutes. The contents were rude, tendentious, sexist, gross, insulting to other collegues, commented on clients and were thus actually illegal (!), and even managed to generate a slowdown on the internal mailserver! Things spiraled completely out of control.

The managers responded... by shutting down the only legitimate gateway to the internet, forcing us all to use the illegal proxy that was frankly f*cking up their network. They fired nobody, but refused some of the lesser guilty people (that were on the list but only sent like 3 or 4 mails) a promotion.

IMHO, six people should have been fired, and 5 more seriously reprimanded (among which was myself). The management never bothered to tally up the list and analyse who was sending the most and who was downloading all the images.

Bottom line: you get away with anything!

[bigsharn]

I'd love to see them fire me for playing games at work... we've got no computers at all at work

[Firehed]

Originally Posted by bigsharn

I'd love to see them fire me for playing games at work... we've got no computers at all at work

Well you don't plan to get away with playing a round of Scrabble, do you?

At the old day job we had someone get caught, and get a stern reprimand, but half the office would play facebook apps and stuff like that throughout the day. They weren't anything that take any real time out of the day so the management either turned a blind eye or actually didn't know (unlikely), but I doubt they would have been thrilled had they walked in on me playing any of the flash Tower Defense games I frequent.

No worries now though, freelance cheesecake.

[liratheal]

What I enjoy about my office is the fact that I'd get fired for gaming on work time, but they're absolutely fine if I go to the local pub and get as plastered as possible in my lunch break.

But yeah - As I thought, gaming at work is a no-no. Now, to talk him out of it, since he's my flatmate..

[Cthippo]

Actually, I'm at work right now.

It totally depends on where you work. Where I am we have beds and even yesget paid to sleep. in fact, i've been at work for almost 8 hours now and haven't done one, single, productive thing all day. We have consoles upstairs in the crew room and most of the employees bring their laptops and port in on the company network. Different strokes for different folks.

[modgodtanvir]

Well when I'm at school, I'm usually gaming away on the laptop while the physics teacher mindlessly drones on about magnetic flux density...

And when I'm working as a waiter, I wile the hours away on my phone, playing on emulators That is, until we finally get a customer...

[Bogomip]

It really depends on where you work an the situations to be honest. If the rest of your team is frantically trying to meet a deadline and you're playing wow then you deserve to get ****ed, but if you have nothing to do because they haven't given you anything to do then they shouldn't really say anything (they could, but it would be unfair, and employers dont want to have to get new staff all the time, especially if you work when you have stuff to do).

I have only really had summer jobs, but (except for the first one) my employers were really good about letting me get on with uni work and chat to friends when we had nothing to do. So when saturday night came we were happy to work, the managers treated us with respect and so we did our jobs well for them when it was required of us

[BentAnat]

in my job, that'd get you fired.
In my previous job, me and a couple of colleagues got written warning for playing quake 3 on christmas eve during our lunch break (and believe me, there was nothing going on at that time for the last 2 weeks already).
my current job, as much as clicking a link to certain websites with adult/tasteless content would be enough to get the bank's legal people down here faster than you can say "Flash!.... AAAAHHHH!"

[BigD79]

Originally Posted by Xtrafresh

Bottom line: you get away with anything!

Not true with my lot. a couple of years ago about 7 people got the sack in the office i was in.
One was a friend, all day the GM and another manger kept walking up to people and taking to a room and they came out packed up and left. So my mate, a jnr manager, comes in for a late shift, and the same happens to him. we all realise something is up so i give him a bell. he said they took him in to a room, closed the door turned on a projector and a giant image of goatse is dispalyed! they ask him what it is, he is speechless then they show other photos (involving similar situations, wine bottles and the like) he's still speechless, then they ask how they are realivent to his job and why he was forwarding them on, using his work email account, to other colleagues.
I wet myself, just the though of a 8ft goatse image on the wall "So, whats this then?"
He was suspended pending a hearing then eventually sacked for gross misconduct (i think). We still laugh about Goatsegate to this day!

They've not done any witch hunting for a while, and i still access bit-tech and such from work nearly every day!

[mushky]

goatsegate