Yet another HR wtf
-
So this friend started to work at my company the other day. After digging his cubicle out of the mountain of styrofoam peanuts I left for him, he got down to the serious business of filling out a 2 inch thick stack of paperwork. During his lunch break, he logged in and used his computer to pay some bills over the internet.
He had not yet taken the mandatory 11 hours of training on, among other things, using the internet. Specifically the part about thou shalt not use company resources (eg: computer, electricity, internet connection) for non-business (aka personal) use.
By random chance, someone who watches these things spotted his new account being used to gasp pay bills at non-business related web sites (interestingly, TDWTF seems to be permitted). He got called in on his second day.
HR made like they were giving him a break as he hadn't yet taken the training. They basically flamed him for taking up valuable bandwidth. He countered that he could have walked to an internet cafe (23 minute walk each way), spent 5 minutes paying his bills from there, and 10 minutes grabbing a quick lunch, but then he'd lose an hour of (unpaid) productivity (at least if had any work to do). There are 200+K people in the company. If everyone uses 5 ms of bandwidth per day, that's 1MM ms or 1K seconds of bandwidth over the course of a day. However, if all 200K people took their full lunch hour away from their desks, that's 200K hours of lost productivity. HR didn't care and made a point of harping on the corporate line.
My friend and I will be taking our full lunch hours outside from now on.
-
@snoofle said:
thou shalt not use company resources (eg: computer, electricity, internet connection) for non-business (aka personal) use.
...
My friend and I will be taking our full lunch hours outside from now on.Better make sure you coordinate things so that you step outside just as lunchtime hits - don't want to get dinged for using company air and heat/ac while on personal time. And don't step on any company grass while leaving the grounds - those blades are expensive.
-
My company has a similarly stupid smoking policy that basically says "thou shalt not smoke within 100 meters of the building".
So, if I paid any attention to the policy (which I don't cos I'm in a satellite office with no management and no HR), I'd have to go and stand in the middle of the field next door or something.
I tried pointing out that if all the firms in the business park took the same approach, then all we'd achieve was a redistribution of smokers, with people from XYZ Co standing outside ABC Co and vice-versa.
But TRWTF is that we share a building with another (bigger) firm, that has no such policy. So they all stand by the front door, smoking away merrily.
-
@snoofle said:
thou shalt not use company resources [...] for non-business [...] use.[...] (interestingly, TDWTF seems to be permitted)
Clearly there is a relation between your business and TDWTF...
-
@snoofle said:
By random chance, someone who watches these things spotted his new account being used to *gasp* pay bills at non-business related web sites (interestingly, TDWTF seems to be permitted). He got called in on his second day.
I have no idea if we have a similar policy where I work or not, but I don't take any chances. SSH Tunnel to dedicated server + FoxyProxy + SOCKS DNS lookups = happy browsing.
I highly recommend it.
-
Or you could use XB browser as well, I suppose.
I think TRWTF is that, unless this is your friend's first job, he tried to reason with HR. HR doesn't allow for reasoning. They have their policies, which were on the 3rd tablet handed down on Sinai. The problem is always with you, never with them.
-
@snoofle said:
So this friend started to work at my company the other day. After digging his cubicle out of the mountain of styrofoam peanuts I left for him...
I have to say I'm very amused that you went through with this after reading your initial thread the other day... the progression of the story makes it that much better. What hilarity awaits in the next episode??
