At work a big chunk of the productive part of today was spent staring at nearly worthless PC. Half of everything that most people need to do their jobs and one major item, email, are controlled through servers in New Jersey and it seemed like maybe somebody parked their truck on the network hose and didn’t realize it. Started sometime mid morning and after lunch we got partial connectivity back and received this email:
From: Xxxxxx, Xxxxxxx [INDAUTO/ASCONUM/FP]
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 1:08 PM
Subject: NETWORK OUTAGEAll Employees:
Our Datacenter is still experiencing network problems as a result of several outages by our local telecom carrier. We have failed-over to a backup link and will continue to work on restoring the primary link. We are severely limited in bandwidth so please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities until our primary link is restored. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, please call me at the numbers listed below.
Xxxxxx Xxxxxxx
Manager, Network Systems
The highlighting is just as it came from the sender. My favorite part is the red letter words, “please suspend all non-work related web/internet activities” because I could swear that every employee has to sign off on a computer usage policy that expressly forbids using the net for anything non-business. I’m thinking that because this manager has to remind us not to use it for non-work, that perhaps he must think it is OK in other times to use it that way.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 32
I think most companies have given up the fight against “non-work related web/internet activities”.
I post this from my company-owned laptop. It is before regular work hours, but frequently I post during work hours. My bandwidth is through my home office, but paid for by my company. Some days, I use my company owned cell card.
Of course the flip side of that is that my company saves on office space (they don’t pay my mortgage), I frequently work long hours and never know when the day starts/ends. I guess we break even.
Yeah, I think they pretty much look the other way. But I just know they are keeping records in case they ever decide that they don’t like you, then they can actually have a cause for your dismissal.