New Wave of Shirk Attacks at the Office - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

ARTelevision · 05-17-2003, 04:39 AM

When we have a bunch of big projects I love to be hyper-productive.
When we don't. I seriously consider diversionary "work".
Looks like I'm not the only one...
....................................................

Shirk Ethic: How to Fake
A Hard Day at the Office

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

David Wiskus gives new meaning to the term "working lunch." The Denver tech-support worker installed a program on his Handspring Visor hand-held that allowed him to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner.

As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around on his screen via the hand-held -- creating the impression to anyone who walked by that the diligent Mr. Wiskus had just stepped away from his desk.

It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated are still grousing about how mobile technology has created a 24/7 work culture and sabotaged their private time, a savvier crowd has moved on to a more rewarding pursuit: using technology to make it look like you're working when you're not.

The tactic isn't new, but the tools have gotten a lot more powerful. Executives have long discreetly asked their secretaries to flip on the office light to make Friday absences less glaring; leaving a jacket on the back of your desk chair is also an old trick.

But the latest generation of office accessories, from cellphones to the RIM BlackBerry, have brought a new level of sophistication -- and a host of new strategies for manipulating perceptions of your diligence.

The new options allow people to do far more than send e-mails from the beach. Services like GoToMyPC.com -- similar to one Mr. Wiskus used on his hand-held -- let you operate your office computer by remote control. You can even move the cursor on your screen, opening documents and printing them on the shared office printer.

Other strategies involve using existing technology in new ways. E-mail timers, a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook, let you send e-mails hours after you have gone to bed -- a painless way to suggest to the boss that you are burning the midnight oil. (In Outlook, open up a message, go to "options," and fill in the "do not deliver before" option.)

Instant Message programs, a more-immediate form of e-mail now used by millions of employees, can also be reconfigured. Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available.

Psychologists call these games "impression management," a field whose rules have been transformed now that so many people communicate through technology rather than a handshake and a conversation. In some ways, the e-mail that arrives at 11 p.m. is the modern sign of a dedicated worker.

But others see all this as yet another legitimate technology that has been hijacked by people with skewed ethics. "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office. ... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington.

Even some lower-tech tools, such as call forwarding, have grown more sophisticated, making it a snap to answer your desk phone from your daughter's soccer game or the pedicure chair. Phone company SBC Communications Inc. currently offers five different call-forwarding services, including a new one that lets you transfer your phone to different phone numbers throughout the day.

E-mails Read by Jenni

Services like Yahoo By Phone also let you pick up your e-mail from afar, even without a hand-held gadget. For $4.95 a month, a computerized voice named Jenni will read your messages aloud over the phone.

Wireless e-mail gadgets like the Palm Tungsten W and the BlackBerry can also be tinkered with to help cover the tracks of an office absence. E-mails sent from a BlackBerry, for example, automatically sign off with the phrase "Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld," a dead giveaway that you are out.

"It's the classic sign of a complete BlackBerry neophyte," says Alex Levine, co-founder of the text-message company Upoc in New York. "The only reason to keep it on is to make people acutely aware that you're not at your desk."

Reconfiguring the Subject Line

Mr. Levine has configured his BlackBerry so that messages he sends from it have the exact same format as those sent from his desktop e-mail. (One key: Reply messages sent from a BlackBerry often have "Re:" with a lower-case "e" in the subject line, while e-mails sent from an office PC sometimes show "RE" in the subject line.)

Mr. Levine has used this approach to set up his "desk" in Central Park.

Some companies say these new tools are dangerous because they play into employees' increasing willingness to fudge the truth about their work life. The case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who used e-mail and a cellphone to suggest he was writing from locations he didn't visit, is one example.

Lying to the Boss

A recent ethics survey by the society for Society for Human Resource Management found that 59% of human-resources professionals said they personally observed employees lying about the number of hours they worked; some 53% reported that they saw employees lying to a supervisor, a jump of eight percentage points in six years.

Still some employers not only tolerate the technology, but use it themselves.

"If you're a boss, and you send e-mails at all of hours of the night, the subtle message you're sending employees is, 'I'm working, why aren't you,' " says Anne Warfield, a career coach in Edina, Minn.

E-mails and Pina Coladas

Skip Coghill, who runs a trucking company, does a lot more than send e-mails in the middle of the night. When he recently took a cruise off the coast of Acapulco, many of his clients never knew he had left the office. Between casino visits and midnight-buffet runs, Mr. Coghill used the GoToMyPC.com software to operate his office computer by remote control.

He could even spy on his employees from the deck of the ship: He brought up Global Positioning System maps that showed him the precise location of each of his trucks, down to the intersection. If an employee was off-track, he could fire off a text message to the truck.

"I was drinking a pina colada, sitting in my swimsuit, having a total ball," says Mr. Coghill.

Of course, not all managers pay much attention to things like what time an e-mail is sent or where it is sent from.

Craig Prickett, a vice president at Charles Schwab in San Francisco, says he is more concerned about the work being completed than the time stamp on an e-mail. "I'm not thinking 'nothing's getting done here, but they sure work hard at 2 a.m.,' " says Mr. Prickett.

The Power of Suggestion

Die-hards see nothing wrong with any of this. "You don't have to actually lie," says Don Pavlish, host of DonsBossPage.com, a Web site for slackers. "You just let your e-mail program suggest you're working late."

But it's easy to get a little too comfortable with these new powers. Mr. Wiskus, the Denver tech worker who manipulated his computer from a nearby diner so he could take three-hour lunches, says he was eventually fired for habitual lateness.

FAKING IT

1. Printer: Dial in and print documents on the office printers so people will think you're in.

2. Calls: Forward them so they follow you from place to place throughout the day.

3. E-mail: Go to bed early, and use the timer feature in Microsoft Outlook to send e-mails to your boss at 4 a.m.

4. Computer Screen: Use remote-control technology to open documents on your office computer screen.
....................................................................

Warning:
Don't be surprised when they ship your job to India.

Bring on the "labor saving devices" but remember - unemployment is only a 6-month free ride...

billege · 05-17-2003, 04:58 AM

I'm glad that some people are fighting the trend to make all time, "work time." With one caveat, that people are actually getting the work done, I don't mind this.

Work is not why I was put on this earth. My purpose in life is not to raise someone's stock price. Often at work I can complete my tasks in half the shift, if that. Since they can't provide enough of a challenge to keep me busy, and they don't pay me enough for me to constantly find more work for myself, I have no problem reading a book.

The catch is, I even overachieved before I picked up the book. I know many slackers are not overachievers, but if they've got the job done, or are just under pressure to give "115%" than they should do what they've got to do.

Somewhere along the line companies got the idea that my personal time also belongs to them. All the wireless connections in the world do not exist so I can be a wage slave all the time. I think it's sick that the achiever's competativeness has allowed this enroachment into personal time to happen. We've allowed our jobs into our free time. They have NO RIGHT to that.

If I get my work done, and more, then those bastards still demand my home time, I'll fuck them right back.

Don't get confused with what I'm saying here. If these tricks are used to make me do the work of the slacker, I'll find out myself and shut that crap down. I ain't no body's bitch. Avoiding work is not cool. Saving personal time from unreasonable enroachment is not.

Loki · 05-17-2003, 05:17 AM

actually, this reminds me of a cartoon i saw a few months ago. A boss is telling his employee " Well, Walter, you've done so much with so little for so long, that we now want you do everything with nothing".

We now work a LOT more than before. Remember when you were a kid, how little your parent(s) would work overtime? What happened to that? Nowadays, you are fully expected to work overtime, and if you dont, it shows that you have an inadequate dedication to the job. Stuff that. As billege said, my sole purpose on Earth is not to put another porsche on some CEO's driveway.

So yeah, if they are still doing thier workload properly, all the more power to them. If not, well, they are probably going to get fired anyway.

Leander · 05-17-2003, 07:27 PM

I only care that someone gets their work done. I put far too much time in on the job to even think about it offsite. Many days I can get my work done in 5 hours instead of 10, but I still stay and try to get ahead. Don't get me wrong, I would rather spend that time playing golf, but there is always something to be done on company time. Call me at home and I will rip your damn heart out.

BBtB · 05-17-2003, 09:12 PM

I like the place I work at now for one thing. We have an agreement. They don't call me at home and I don't call them at work (By which I mean they never call me to try to call me at home to come in on my day off and I don't call in sick or whatever) I agree with everyone else with the thought of as long as they get their work done then who cares? Of course they are probably not so. But if they are not getting their work done and these stupid little tricks trick their bosses into thinking they are there then those companies deserve to go out of buisness.

blkdmnd · 05-18-2003, 05:36 AM

The real problem is that you have people who are lazy or deceitful who want something for nothing. They want to get paid but they don't want to do the work. They're looking for a handout.

All the technology is great. It's a wonderful tool to help make all of us more productive. But like anything else, some folks will abuse it.

All the above posts have the right idea. Get the job done and don't worry about it. Just don't look to get something for nothing.

Spanky Johnson · 05-18-2003, 07:06 AM

Well. the other side of the coin is people that really are there at work trying to finish a project at midnight or 4 am. I'm sometimes one of those people , and I admit that I often send an e-mail that could wait until the next day so that my boss will know I was there working and I'll get credit for it. It's not enough to do good work -- people have to know about it too. It sounds self serving, and I suppose it is, but around annual evaluation time it can definitely pay off, and as a wise former supervisor once told me, "self preservation is the first order of business".

I don't like the idea of people being able to fake being there at all hours if it means that those of us who really are there at those times won't get credit for it because of all the fakers.

Cynthetiq · 05-18-2003, 07:14 AM

having shed my pager, blackberry, cellphone, walkie talkie I'm in at 8:45 and I am done at 5:30. I don't have the same stresses as I once did when I managed 15 people.

I had to account for these tricks of the trade and more because I didn't have something to "GPS locate" my direct reports. I had to follow up on them. It was my responsibility. Each month I would take two or three of them and audit them. I'd go through each documented issue they claimed to work on and verify it with the customer they interacted. It was a pain in the ass, and they still figured out how to fuck with it.

05-17-2003, 04:39 AM	#1 (permalink)
ARTelevision I change Location: USA	New Wave of Shirk Attacks at the Office When we have a bunch of big projects I love to be hyper-productive. When we don't. I seriously consider diversionary "work". Looks like I'm not the only one... .................................................... Shirk Ethic: How to Fake A Hard Day at the Office THE WALL STREET JOURNAL David Wiskus gives new meaning to the term "working lunch." The Denver tech-support worker installed a program on his Handspring Visor hand-held that allowed him to manipulate the screen on his office computer from a booth at a local diner. As he lingered for hours over burgers and fries, he could actually open windows and move documents around on his screen via the hand-held -- creating the impression to anyone who walked by that the diligent Mr. Wiskus had just stepped away from his desk. It has never been easier to be a white-collar slacker. While the uninitiated are still grousing about how mobile technology has created a 24/7 work culture and sabotaged their private time, a savvier crowd has moved on to a more rewarding pursuit: using technology to make it look like you're working when you're not. The tactic isn't new, but the tools have gotten a lot more powerful. Executives have long discreetly asked their secretaries to flip on the office light to make Friday absences less glaring; leaving a jacket on the back of your desk chair is also an old trick. But the latest generation of office accessories, from cellphones to the RIM BlackBerry, have brought a new level of sophistication -- and a host of new strategies for manipulating perceptions of your diligence. The new options allow people to do far more than send e-mails from the beach. Services like GoToMyPC.com -- similar to one Mr. Wiskus used on his hand-held -- let you operate your office computer by remote control. You can even move the cursor on your screen, opening documents and printing them on the shared office printer. Other strategies involve using existing technology in new ways. E-mail timers, a standard feature in Microsoft Outlook, let you send e-mails hours after you have gone to bed -- a painless way to suggest to the boss that you are burning the midnight oil. (In Outlook, open up a message, go to "options," and fill in the "do not deliver before" option.) Instant Message programs, a more-immediate form of e-mail now used by millions of employees, can also be reconfigured. Typically, if you haven't touched your computer in a while, the people you chat with online see an "idle" message next to your name. Diehard slackers can crack into the program settings to make themselves appear perpetually available. Psychologists call these games "impression management," a field whose rules have been transformed now that so many people communicate through technology rather than a handshake and a conversation. In some ways, the e-mail that arrives at 11 p.m. is the modern sign of a dedicated worker. But others see all this as yet another legitimate technology that has been hijacked by people with skewed ethics. "If you're out playing golf, and you look like you've spent four hours in the office. ... If everybody does that, the company goes bankrupt," says Stuart Gilman, director of the Ethics Resource Center in Washington. Even some lower-tech tools, such as call forwarding, have grown more sophisticated, making it a snap to answer your desk phone from your daughter's soccer game or the pedicure chair. Phone company SBC Communications Inc. currently offers five different call-forwarding services, including a new one that lets you transfer your phone to different phone numbers throughout the day. E-mails Read by Jenni Services like Yahoo By Phone also let you pick up your e-mail from afar, even without a hand-held gadget. For $4.95 a month, a computerized voice named Jenni will read your messages aloud over the phone. Wireless e-mail gadgets like the Palm Tungsten W and the BlackBerry can also be tinkered with to help cover the tracks of an office absence. E-mails sent from a BlackBerry, for example, automatically sign off with the phrase "Sent from my BlackBerry Handheld," a dead giveaway that you are out. "It's the classic sign of a complete BlackBerry neophyte," says Alex Levine, co-founder of the text-message company Upoc in New York. "The only reason to keep it on is to make people acutely aware that you're not at your desk." Reconfiguring the Subject Line Mr. Levine has configured his BlackBerry so that messages he sends from it have the exact same format as those sent from his desktop e-mail. (One key: Reply messages sent from a BlackBerry often have "Re:" with a lower-case "e" in the subject line, while e-mails sent from an office PC sometimes show "RE" in the subject line.) Mr. Levine has used this approach to set up his "desk" in Central Park. Some companies say these new tools are dangerous because they play into employees' increasing willingness to fudge the truth about their work life. The case of former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who used e-mail and a cellphone to suggest he was writing from locations he didn't visit, is one example. Lying to the Boss A recent ethics survey by the society for Society for Human Resource Management found that 59% of human-resources professionals said they personally observed employees lying about the number of hours they worked; some 53% reported that they saw employees lying to a supervisor, a jump of eight percentage points in six years. Still some employers not only tolerate the technology, but use it themselves. "If you're a boss, and you send e-mails at all of hours of the night, the subtle message you're sending employees is, 'I'm working, why aren't you,' " says Anne Warfield, a career coach in Edina, Minn. E-mails and Pina Coladas Skip Coghill, who runs a trucking company, does a lot more than send e-mails in the middle of the night. When he recently took a cruise off the coast of Acapulco, many of his clients never knew he had left the office. Between casino visits and midnight-buffet runs, Mr. Coghill used the GoToMyPC.com software to operate his office computer by remote control. He could even spy on his employees from the deck of the ship: He brought up Global Positioning System maps that showed him the precise location of each of his trucks, down to the intersection. If an employee was off-track, he could fire off a text message to the truck. "I was drinking a pina colada, sitting in my swimsuit, having a total ball," says Mr. Coghill. Of course, not all managers pay much attention to things like what time an e-mail is sent or where it is sent from. Craig Prickett, a vice president at Charles Schwab in San Francisco, says he is more concerned about the work being completed than the time stamp on an e-mail. "I'm not thinking 'nothing's getting done here, but they sure work hard at 2 a.m.,' " says Mr. Prickett. The Power of Suggestion Die-hards see nothing wrong with any of this. "You don't have to actually lie," says Don Pavlish, host of DonsBossPage.com, a Web site for slackers. "You just let your e-mail program suggest you're working late." But it's easy to get a little too comfortable with these new powers. Mr. Wiskus, the Denver tech worker who manipulated his computer from a nearby diner so he could take three-hour lunches, says he was eventually fired for habitual lateness. FAKING IT 1. Printer: Dial in and print documents on the office printers so people will think you're in. 2. Calls: Forward them so they follow you from place to place throughout the day. 3. E-mail: Go to bed early, and use the timer feature in Microsoft Outlook to send e-mails to your boss at 4 a.m. 4. Computer Screen: Use remote-control technology to open documents on your office computer screen. .................................................................... Warning: Don't be surprised when they ship your job to India. Bring on the "labor saving devices" but remember - unemployment is only a 6-month free ride... __________________ create evolution

05-17-2003, 04:58 AM	#2 (permalink)
billege Watcher Location: Ohio	I'm glad that some people are fighting the trend to make all time, "work time." With one caveat, that people are actually getting the work done, I don't mind this. Work is not why I was put on this earth. My purpose in life is not to raise someone's stock price. Often at work I can complete my tasks in half the shift, if that. Since they can't provide enough of a challenge to keep me busy, and they don't pay me enough for me to constantly find more work for myself, I have no problem reading a book. The catch is, I even overachieved before I picked up the book. I know many slackers are not overachievers, but if they've got the job done, or are just under pressure to give "115%" than they should do what they've got to do. Somewhere along the line companies got the idea that my personal time also belongs to them. All the wireless connections in the world do not exist so I can be a wage slave all the time. I think it's sick that the achiever's competativeness has allowed this enroachment into personal time to happen. We've allowed our jobs into our free time. They have NO RIGHT to that. If I get my work done, and more, then those bastards still demand my home time, I'll fuck them right back. Don't get confused with what I'm saying here. If these tricks are used to make me do the work of the slacker, I'll find out myself and shut that crap down. I ain't no body's bitch. Avoiding work is not cool. Saving personal time from unreasonable enroachment is not. __________________ I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence: "My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

05-17-2003, 07:27 PM	#4 (permalink)
Leander Crazy Location: The Land o'Toxins and Wudder	I only care that someone gets their work done. I put far too much time in on the job to even think about it offsite. Many days I can get my work done in 5 hours instead of 10, but I still stay and try to get ahead. Don't get me wrong, I would rather spend that time playing golf, but there is always something to be done on company time. Call me at home and I will rip your damn heart out. __________________ Just me and God, watching Scotty die..

05-17-2003, 09:12 PM	#5 (permalink)
BBtB ClerkMan! Location: Tulsa, Ok.	I like the place I work at now for one thing. We have an agreement. They don't call me at home and I don't call them at work (By which I mean they never call me to try to call me at home to come in on my day off and I don't call in sick or whatever) I agree with everyone else with the thought of as long as they get their work done then who cares? Of course they are probably not so. But if they are not getting their work done and these stupid little tricks trick their bosses into thinking they are there then those companies deserve to go out of buisness. __________________ Meridae'n once played "death" at a game of chess that lasted for over two years. He finally beat death in a best 34 out of 67 match. At that time he could ask for any one thing and he could wish for the hope of all mankind... he looked death right in the eye and said ... "I would like about three fiddy"

05-18-2003, 05:36 AM	#6 (permalink)
blkdmnd Addict	The real problem is that you have people who are lazy or deceitful who want something for nothing. They want to get paid but they don't want to do the work. They're looking for a handout. All the technology is great. It's a wonderful tool to help make all of us more productive. But like anything else, some folks will abuse it. All the above posts have the right idea. Get the job done and don't worry about it. Just don't look to get something for nothing. __________________ I blow my nose at you. Now go away before I taunt you a second time.

05-17-2003, 05:17 AM	#3 (permalink)
Loki Psycho Location: Drifting.	actually, this reminds me of a cartoon i saw a few months ago. A boss is telling his employee " Well, Walter, you've done so much with so little for so long, that we now want you do everything with nothing". We now work a LOT more than before. Remember when you were a kid, how little your parent(s) would work overtime? What happened to that? Nowadays, you are fully expected to work overtime, and if you dont, it shows that you have an inadequate dedication to the job. Stuff that. As billege said, my sole purpose on Earth is not to put another porsche on some CEO's driveway. So yeah, if they are still doing thier workload properly, all the more power to them. If not, well, they are probably going to get fired anyway.

05-18-2003, 07:06 AM	#7 (permalink)
Spanky Johnson Insane	Well. the other side of the coin is people that really are there at work trying to finish a project at midnight or 4 am. I'm sometimes one of those people , and I admit that I often send an e-mail that could wait until the next day so that my boss will know I was there working and I'll get credit for it. It's not enough to do good work -- people have to know about it too. It sounds self serving, and I suppose it is, but around annual evaluation time it can definitely pay off, and as a wise former supervisor once told me, "self preservation is the first order of business". I don't like the idea of people being able to fake being there at all hours if it means that those of us who really are there at those times won't get credit for it because of all the fakers.

05-18-2003, 07:14 AM	#8 (permalink)
Cynthetiq Tilted Cat Head Administrator Location: Manhattan, NY	having shed my pager, blackberry, cellphone, walkie talkie I'm in at 8:45 and I am done at 5:30. I don't have the same stresses as I once did when I managed 15 people. I had to account for these tricks of the trade and more because I didn't have something to "GPS locate" my direct reports. I had to follow up on them. It was my responsibility. Each month I would take two or three of them and audit them. I'd go through each documented issue they claimed to work on and verify it with the customer they interacted. It was a pain in the ass, and they still figured out how to fuck with it. __________________ I don't care if you are black, white, purple, green, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, hippie, cop, bum, admin, user, English, Irish, French, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, indian, cowboy, tall, short, fat, skinny, emo, punk, mod, rocker, straight, gay, lesbian, jock, nerd, geek, Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Independent, driver, pedestrian, or bicyclist, either you're an asshole or you're not. What's the best nation in the world? DO-NATION!