I was doing my usual reading and found a story about an ALDOT (Vernon Blake) worker who documented that his boss (George Dobbs) spent well over half of his time at work playing solitaire. As you might expect, bringing this to the attention of his boss’s supervisor got the guy fired. The troubling part, however, was that Dobbs got little more than a slap on the wrist and the reprimand letter said that his work ethic was “above reproach.” The most annoying thing about the article linked above was that it took well over half of the article before they mentioned that Blake was the network administrator.
This is, of course, a non-trivial detail — some random employee monitoring another employee’s computer usage is one thing, a NETWORK ADMINISTRATOR doing it is another entirely.
This should miff any of you who pay taxes in Alabama. It might not make much difference, but it couldn’t hurt to Contact ALDOT and let them know that spending 70% of one’s time playing solitaire is not an appropriate use of tax-payer dollars.
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June 28th, 2004 at 7:19 pm
Sucks that the guy got fired, but unless he had permission to use WinSpy on his boss’s computer (which seems to be a debated point) he was probably way out of line. Also, just because a game is running 70% of the time doesn’t mean someone is playing it 70% of the time. I leave ‘hearts’ minimized on my work computer for hours at a time. My old boss used to never shut his solitare game down, because he liked to keep track of his score. Finally, not all jobs require a person to be ‘doing’ things all of the time. I do a lot of tech support - if someone isn’t calling up for asking for it, it’s not like I can call them and just give them a head’s up. That all depends on the job though, I’m not sure what this guy’s exact function was.
June 28th, 2004 at 9:10 pm
1) He’s the network admin, how a network admin can do his job without being able to monitor the network and the machines on it is beyond me.
2) REGARDLESS of whether the employee was right or wrong, what the boss was doing should be grounds for demotion or dismissal.
3) The software, I believe, takes a screenshot. The statement is that he was PLAYING solitaire. One cannot play a game while it’s minimized. If he was PLAYING in 70% of the shots, I find those excuses you’ve provided to be a little week.
4) He’s a supervisor — if he can spend 70% of his time playing solitaire, he needs to either get paid MUCH LESS or be down-sized. Period. If you’re a tech support worker, and you spend 70% of your time doing nothing, then your company has employed too many people to do tech support. If that’s a company, fine… whatever… but this is the government, and it’s MY money… and in a state so strapped for cash that school budgets get slashed every year from what’s needed, wasteful spending my ANY agency hurts everyone.
So how about we quit trying to defend wasteful spending in the government? It’s the apologists and excuse-makers who make it possible for this sort of thing to continue.
June 29th, 2004 at 6:59 am
If it actually takes a screenshot, rather than just logging what programs are running, than that indeed is a way different story.
June 29th, 2004 at 11:18 am
We’re talking about the department of transportation here. Is it any surprise they waste time?
June 29th, 2004 at 11:33 am
No, it’s not… but I think he ought to take his happy ass to the section of 20/59 that’s under perpetual construction and pick up a shovel, or hammer, or SOMETHING and start working.
July 7th, 2004 at 12:49 am
In this case, Mr. Blake was not only doing his job as a Network Administrator, he was following Alabama Governor Riley’s edict to make Alabama “the most accountable, most cost-effective and most efficient state government in the nation.” Mr. Blake should be rewarded for trying to make this a successful reality. Governor Riley should be supporting Mr. Blake, if indeed he spoke truthfully about his plan for Alabama. And, to further show his serious intent to make Alabama more accountable, he should hire Mr. Blake to head up a “Waste Finder Task Force” for Alabama. The money that people like George Dobbs cost the taxpayers of Alabama could easily pay for such a department and still save Alabamians money.