According to an NPR article published all the way back in 2006, they analyzed a survey of more than five hundred companies and found out about sixty-one percent of those surveyed companies disciplined employees for inappropriate Internet use and a quarter of them went to the extreme of actually firing the offending employee. So it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that out of all of the employees surveyed, three out of every five actually admit to personal web surfing while on the clock (Pachikara Surfing the web on the company dime).

This problem has been further exacerbated since 2006 as our technology has only gotten ever more advanced. It is a broad consensus that one of the top concerns among employers would be the lack of productivity. According to one of my personal experiences working at a technology company, I can certainly confirm that this statement is true. Let me share one of my personal stories that relate to this topic. When I was working for that company, I worked as an analyst in the web development department. However, every time a major sale season hit, such as Black Friday, our order processing department will become extremely chaotic and flooded. Therefore the company will usually ask for volunteers to stay overtime to help out with order processing tasks. In our department, I am usually the only one that offers to stay overtime on holidays. I mean, after all, the extra money will certainly buy me a perfect Christmas gift. But that year was a bit interesting, two of the other colleagues in my department also offered to help.

Fast forwards to the day of Black Friday, the three of us came to work. I immediately prepared the printing paper and compiled the orders into PDFs to send the jobs to our printer. The plan was that after I printed them, I would split them among my other two colleagues for further processing. So long story short, I printed about seven reams of paper that morning, and each ream of paper is about 500 pages. So I split the workload three ways between us, and I didn’t leave work until about 10 p.m. that night. The other two colleagues left a bit early at 5 p.m., And they left the ones that they didn’t finish on my desk before they took off, and it was about half of everything that I initially handed to them, and that was why I stayed till 10 p.m. working on their leftovers.

Now, you might be asking; they could only complete half of them since 9 a.m.? Well, yes, and you know why? Because one of the colleagues was playing League of Legends on the company computer with his headphone on. For a total of perhaps 4-6 hours straight while being paid for overtime. At the same time, the other colleague was swiping on her phone and using the company computer for online shopping for about 2-4 hours that day. They could do that because we were at the same level of position; none of the supervisors or managers volunteered to be on-site that day. Therefore, there was utterly no oversight at all.

The male colleague eventually left the company to play league of legends professionally. That female colleague is probably still working there and perhaps promoted to a supervisory position by now. But after hearing my story, do you think they are ethical? Was it their right to slack off and not be productive? I am sure everyone will be able to form their own opinion by now. In my opinion, employees who possess self-control and proper work ethics are the absolute pillar stones to a successful company, but apparently, they had none.

Work Cited

Pachikara, Melissa. “Surfing the Web on the Company Dime.” NPR, NPR, 23 Aug. 2006, https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5697883.