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My personal observations at various companies are that "Personal Use of the Company Computer" is one of those "gottchas" that companies use when they really don't have a legit (i.e., poor work) reason for termination.
I've seen it used over and over on good folks, just because they crossed a friend of the boss or something similar.
At one previous employer, I know firsthand that the department manager operates the entire division on a budy-buddy system. He surfs the web as he wishes, brings in jokes (many of them off-color, and some just out-and-out porno/dirty) and even tolerated it when my supposed "assistant" brought in the same kind of stuff. He -- the dept. mgr -- is high up enough that he commands and gets the power he wants to keep up his shennanigans.
I stay in touch with a few still there so I know what continues on.
I can see that he was the bully on the playground as a kid and runs his office that way, too. (He'll either take you under his wing or else banish you to daily hell-on-earth work stuff.)
Notify H.R.? Ha!! The office and corporate politics there are so draconian (look it up) that the H.R. dept. manager simply does nothing more than gather resumes for review by the department managers, schedule feel-good employee lunches (where some but not all office contractors of various professions who held winning tickets for gift certificates had to forfeit the gift), and hold employee meetings on sexual harrassment, working nicely together.etc.
Official complaints about what I stated are simply apt to get the complainant out the door by way of the ubiquitous "Personal Use of the Company Computer" charge. Easy for the company to prove, virtually impossible for the victim to disprove -- even though virtually everybody in the company does it to varying degrees. (One favored person purchased stuff from ebay.com.)
And nope, I never filed any complaints, suffered in silence and just did my work as best I could. Now, several years later, I'm glad to be gone and am much valued where I work now.
-------------- Original message from "Cardimon, Craig" <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com>: --------------
> > I also know personally three writers who have been fired in the
> > past year alone for writing personal emails, or surfing to
> "non-business
> > related sites" on company time.
>
> I see how that can happen, but are we talking about the Home Shopping
> Network or QVC, "Las Vegas.com," or something like CNN or MSNBC?
>
> There are many technical writing and grammar blogs to keep up with.
>
> I heard about some odd and funny surfing going on in other companies
> that people don't blink at.
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