Yes, yes and yes.

And then they had the nerve to tell unemployment that I was surfing a pr0n site (GWJ).

I guess they should rename the site GWBJ.

Details, man, details!

It had more to do with where and with whom I worked than GWJ.

It'd be hard for me to get fired for reading GWJ since I'm self employed.

"He was logged in as Mr. BlackBoner or something like that - must've been one of those girly sites on the internets."

I was asked once to "focus on work and less on personal issues". I'm pretty sure that concerned GWJ or another other site I frequent since I don't deal with "personal issues" at work. Honestly I have no idea how they even knew that I did something besides actual work since the entire office is staffed by chatty hens. They still ask me to show them how to refresh a page. Daily.

But if you had to file college transcripts for 3 hours a day would you blame me? Even they take 15 minute Solitaire breaks at every chance they can get.

My office blocked YouTube! The bastards.

I have very good friends in IT and they will warn me if anyone starts snooping around. (I hope.)

Well lets just say that the business required being flexible and in order to get the job done, you had to run fast and loose.

They had no problems with the results unless someone complained. The few times someone complained (they wanted something for nothing and I wouldnt budge) management treated me like less than dirt and would ask me to document my work. (implying I didnt do any)

You can all appreciate how hard it is to keep records when you are stretched different directions, you dont have a job description or a boss, and as said above, you have to run fast and loose. So what did they do? They took one of the sales people that wasn't very good and they gave him the job of documenting and organizing my work. Oh and did I mention he became my boss? But Im getting ahead of myself...

Years ago, at another company, I mentioned a possible defect in manufacturing and was assailed for it. Of course the component was changed and everything was gravy except for one of the manufacturing guys took it personally and tried a few times to sabotage me.

After working at the new company for a year with no problems, that manufacturing guy was brought in as second in command of the company. (a huge promotion since he'd never had that kind of responsibility before and he had attrocious people skills) The next 4 months were hell, despite my attempts at tact and my availability to help him.

I didnt report to him directly and I still didnt have a boss but within 1 month, they installed VnC on eveyones computer to monitor them and I had been brought in for my internet usage (GWJ). I stopped immediately and they even acknowledged this.

Yet, they gave me an assistant and made him my boss. And still, I tried and succeeded in making it work. Until my first customer complaint came (wanted something for nothing and I wouldnt budge). I was fired that morning... by email!

Wow...that must have quadrupled how pissed you were - I hate getting e-reprimands.

Warlock was as well. More for CNN than GWJ but you get the idea. He even made a thread about it.

It sounds you not being there might have been the best thing that could have happened to you. What a snakepit!

I have my own stories about some of the mental midget asshatery I've seen, but they never involved surfing.

I guess I'm lucky here. I can get my weeks work done in about 90 mins. Maybe 2 hours if I drag my feet. Mosk of my week involves looking busy on command.

I used to be a really eager and productive employee. Any spare time I had I always used to improve current systems and practices. I'd develop tracking systems, logistics, research plans etc.

After doing this in 3 diferent jobs, being enthusiastically thanked and praised pretty much constantly for my efforts and ability, I learnt that it doesn't really matter in the long run. No raises; no promotions; no extra leeway in any other areas (time-keeping etc.). Just an expectation that you'll keep putting in the extra effort for the love of it

Now I think screw 'em - they have to dangle the carrot first before any more than minimum effort shines out of my arse

Fortunatly our IT dept is overworked and understaffed. Probably little time or inclinantion to bother with monitoring as long as I don't hog the bandwidth.

I've never been reprimanded for GWJ, but I did get about 5 to 6 complaints about surfing porn when I was working as an ER clerk.

There was a time when our computer wasn't blocked like the rest of the hospital. During this time, I could look at anything, but I tended to steer clear of any possibly objectionable material because there were way too many people with a clear view of my screen. Triage was located about 2.5ft behind me, and the patients sat in a chair that directly faced my computer screen. Also, there was one room where if the patient was sitting in the right spot, they would easily be able to see my screen.

The complaints came when some adult adware got installed on our system. By this time, our computer had been locked down by IT, but they didn't bother cleaning it. I crawled my way through the system, and found that the adware had been wrapped in a solitaire game that the clerk I had just relieved had installed. Irritated, I attempted to install spybot or ad-aware to rid our machine of it, but since IT had taken all installation privileges away (denied access to the registry), there really wasn't squat I could do (without tampering with the system at least), besides click the X when a pop-up came up. Since I read books during the night, I rarely looked at my screen if a patient wasn't there... so, the first night I got about 3 complaints about surfing porn because I didn't click them off before someone saw them. I was fine though, because my boss was already aware of the issue. After that night though, I learned to turn my monitor off if I wasn't checking someone in. I still got a few more during times where I shut the monitor off for a while, the nurse decided to pull them back to triage before I checked them in, and when I turned the screen back on it was filled with porn. A little embarrassing, but nothing I could have done about it.

I bet I had well over 200 complaints written about me in the 2 years I worked there. Most I knew about, and none were actually investigated because they were either completely without merit, or a complaint against something that wasn't even close to my job.

I hope my little fictional intro was a good starting point.

My first company they handled the layoffs pretty much like I described above. It was horrible, actually even worse than I describe. Waves of layoffs in the 2000 - 2001 period of time, with the downturn of ERP consulting following Y2k, and a failed initiative to replace it with e-everything.

Peers would literally get a tap on the shoulder, asked to shut down their laptop and hand it over immediately, then be escorted to a room with HR representatives by their manager and a security guard. The room would have security guards posted at the door. HR would inform the folks about their layoff and any follow-on services they could expect. They were required to sign something equivalent to a NDA to receive their severance. Once done they were escorted out of the building and could arrange to come back after hours to collect any personal belongings in their cube. Usually a colleague or two would be tasked with cleaning out their cube after that.

This always really ground my gears. The folks getting laid off were people who had worked together closely for x number of years and the coldness/protections in place were so draconian and be-little-ing.

Anyways that company was bought out by a corporate behemoth, who ironically handles layoffs with a bit more human dignity from what I hear. I survived all those layoff periods, I think my greatest struggle now is being caught in the belly of the behemoth.

But i just had this dream one night, like the story I wrote above, and the image of a boss figure being cheeky and saying gamerwithoutjobs.com stuck in my mind.