Surfing the internet or playing on your phone at work?

[Giggly]

How many of you do this?

My boss, who claims she is overworked/works too much overtime, even does this. I catch her reading the news online almost every day and various times throughout the day.

I'm not knocking it because I do it too, but I see it so much. I just wonder how widespread it is.

 

[spirilis]

Yup. Not when I'm busy, but in between tasks...

 

[Stigmata]

I get some of my best reading and researching done on company time.

 

[Cygnus]

School.


Mostly on days when I didn't sleep enough to focus.

 

[Bush]

Still getting the work done? Knock yourself out. None of my concern.

 

[BluRoses]

I definitely do this... Am doing it now, in fact. I finish 95% of my work in 2 hrs, and then have 7 hrs of boredom.

 

[Totenkindly]

My understanding is that it's extremely widespread.

... although the Candy Crush bug seems mostly wiped out now. I only have one friend at work who sends me random instant messages bitching about the new level she's trying to get through and can't.

 

[21%]

I'm doing it RIGHT NOW

 

[highlander]

I actually do this very little unless I'm working from home or something. I'm too busy. Once in a while, I might check email or the forum or something but not a lot.

 

[ceecee]

Since I work from home, I do this more often than I did when I was in an office - I was too busy there. It's my internet connection and as long as I meet deadlines and finish what I need to do, I'll do what I want. I feel the same thing about others. If it isn't impacting work and you have downtime, no problem.

 

[Lark]

I've been known to check facebook when I've been using the loo and that's the height of it, I get notifications through on my phone and once in a while I've posted something simple, like a line update.

I see the "idle time" involved in my checking of the internet as on a par with my using the loo, so I dont think its a big deal but I dont use the internet anything like the time I've heard of my friends doing office work or IT jobs do, some of them have planned, researched and booked holidays while at work.

Then again there are some computer companies and start ups I know people working in who dont care if you do this, actually encourage it, because they see that allowing it actually blurs the lines between work and leisure time and results in people spending more time working than otherwise, its why there's upshots in home working too, people do more and work harder when the illusion of being freer with their time exists.

 

[Such Irony]

I'm guilty of doing this more than I should. Sometimes my job has slow periods where there just isn't much to do. I try to read stuff that's professional development or job related but I do cheat a little and sneak some Facebook and forums in there as well.

 

[EffEmDoubleyou]

I do this, especially since I work long hours that sometimes have extended down time.

I think most everyone does. It's the nature of computers - this is what happens when your entertainment comes out of the same box your work does.

 

[á´…eparted]

Absolutely. My research adviser is fairly laid back about it. He only gets mad if he sees someone dinking around on it when they aren't being productive.

Not being able to access my phone or internet while I am working makes me less productive.

 

[EJCC]

Some of this depends on company culture, I think. Since everyone does it at my office, I do too. A lot, unless I'm busy, which is not very frequently these days.

I expect it'll be just the same at my new job, which I'm starting in a few weeks. Hoping my new supervisors will have [MENTION=22264]jscrothers[/MENTION]' attitude about it, which IMO is the most reasonable for a supervisor to have.

 

[Totenkindly]

Some of this depends on company culture, I think. Since everyone does it at my office, I do too. A lot, unless I'm busy, which is not very frequently these days.

I expect it'll be just the same at my new job, which I'm starting in a few weeks. Hoping my new supervisors will have jscrothers' attitude about it, which IMO is the most reasonable for a supervisor to have.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it's viewed here by most supervisors.

I mean, don't be stupid -- don't be playing games and stuff on your computer all the time so that people see it when they walk by, you don't want to get a reputation as someone who does nothing (DADT) -- but basically as long as you are meeting your deadlines with professional quality, no one really bothers to dig into anything.

 

[Cellmold]

I could never get away with this. One of my jobs is technically in an office....well office shaped area.

 

[nos4a2]

If you can find time to screw around online and text friends, and still get your work done on time, it just shows that you are efficient. That’s the line I’m going to use with my boss if and when I get caught.

 

[Frosty]

Do it at school, not at work. Used to be always be on my phone at work until I got totally bitched out and threatened go be fired. Now for the most part its shoved away. Out of sight, out of mind.

 

[kelric]

It depends a lot on the job. Of the three "real" jobs I've had (i.e. not working in the lab in grad school) I've only done this at one of them. In that case, it was simply an issue of not having anything else to do a lot of the time. The company had brought us in to work on a piece of a larger project, and the other portions of the project were having trouble. Which left us with an awful lot of time to wait for people to get back to us.

It's sort of funny. It took me weeks to get accustomed to the fact that it was okay to just read whatever online. My supervisor flat-out told us that it was fine, since he knew we were just waiting for people. It was fun in ways, particularly as the others on my team were in the same position and we'd basically just hang out. But it also got very boring.

I don't at the current job. It's a good mix - plenty to do, but pretty low stress. If nothing else, I'll do some research/experimentation on future directions for our product -- but that's legitimate work.