Solitaire = Source of Sedentary Sedition?

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21975' target='_blank'>http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=21975</a><br /><br /></div><i>"US Republican Senator Austin Allran wants to erase all copies of Windows Solitaire from state-employees’ computers in his part of North Carolina. . . . He says folk there spend too much time sliping red queens on black kings rather than getting on with useful work. The article quotes research carried out by the Internal Revenue Service which says its employees spend over half their time on its computers playing games, shopping or gambling online. There is a healthy body of opinion which suggests the dominance of Microsoft’s Windows owes much to the inclusion of Soiltaire from version 3.1 onwards."</i><br /><br />I've worked on Windows deployment project where exactly the same point has been debated. In the end, each project decided to leave it in. People need to slack off occasionally and if it's not Solitaire, it's something else. Personally I'm more of a Minesweeper/Jawbreaker kind of guy. ;-) If there is a game already present on a system, then it will reduce the incentive to fiddle and try and install one. Still, you have to wonder at exactly how much cumulative time the digital visions of solitaire have chewed up over the years. So, does the good Senator make a fair point or not?

[cuteseal]

All I can say is...

http://www.shuttertalk.com/forums/images/upload/freecell.gif

[DaleReeck]

More government control in our lives, that's all I can say. A human being can't go eight hours straight doing just work. Especially when it involves things like looking at a screen, typing etc. There's a fatigue factor and they need a diversion. As long as the work that needs to get done is done, then pilng on "busy" work just because you can is an abuse IMO.

Also, I seriously challenge that "half" of their time is spent on games and such. Of course, when was the last time a US Senator or Congressman did "useful work" themselves? :D Occasionally writing or researching a bill, voting 100 times a year and they earn $100,000+. Nice work if you can get it. Maybe Mr. Allran should try sitting at a desk 8 hours a day, doing crap work for meager pay and watch as overpaid politicians take away the emplyee's few perks.

[Kowalski]

73 wins in a row !!!
man i wouldnt bealive if i didnt see it my eyes

[bluevolume]

If Microsoft could somehow recoup all of the hours that people have wasted playing Solitaire, they might have enough resources to finally fix all of the security holes in Windows!

But then again, maybe not.

[dma1965]

I worked as a SysAdmin for a
DotCom where the CEO decided to make his wife the head of the IT department. Mind you, this was a person who literally had no idea what a .zip file was until I explained it to her one day, after she had deleted her upteenth .zip attachment (contracts, financial documents, etc. emailed to her as archives), and installed WinZip on her laptop. She was easily the dumbest person I had ever worked for, and she would play solitaire for up to 5 hours at a time (no exaggeration) instead of doing less important tasks like paying bills (she also handled AP). To make a long story short, I have never been able to take anyone who plays Solitaire seriously since.

[karen]

This is all so stupid.

These games were originally put in Windows to encourage new mouse users to learn good mousing skills, among other things.

I have also worked with shops that have these removed. I never missed them. Heck, I have PPCT to slack off with :lol:

My husband, who is not a computer guy, is the computer guy for his employer. I keep telling him that it is a managers job to ensure that people are working, not a computer's job.

I remember, in the olden days, when office workers didn't get their own phone. There was a shared phone in the corner of the room. Managers figured then that if each person had their own phone, they'd slack off.

I said, let the manager manage his people.

There are cases where it does make since to remove all kinds of distractions: A point of sale system that runs on Win, a library kiosk used for catalog look ups, etc.

But dang it, if managers and supervisors were actually managing and supervising, they wouldn't need to worry about Solitare, Minesweeper, IM, online fora, etc.

[MikeUnwired]

More government control in our lives, that's all I can say.

Without knowing the exact details of the effort, it sounds like the Senator is just trying to keep taxpayer-paid employees from goofing-off playing Solitare and such. If you want to play Solitare, I guess you'll need to get another job.

The IRS survey results are a self inflicted wound for the IRS. There are certainly tools available that could goof-off-proof employee workstations. Employees that are hell-bent on goofing-off will find a way -- bringing a PSP, Pocket PC or even a lowly Palm to work with games and such, SMSing friends all day and such. But, you can certainly limit formal access to gambling, shopping and games. We may want to encourage the IRS goof-offs to keep goofing though -- as more productive employees of the IRS would mean more audits. :lol:

As for it being impossible to work 8 full hours a day -- again, there are jobs that allow you a little recreation during the work day and there are jobs that put you to work every minute. I see chefs as an example. They get to work standing-up over a hot stove and such their full shift -- no Solitare in sight. That's why people can choose what they do. If you get a paycheck every other Friday, you have to look at the total net income and make a decision -- is what I have to do to get this $ worth the $ to me. If not, you better get looking for a new job.

I've personally done this in my life -- goofed-off and found new jobs because, to quote the best line from the movie The Girl Next Door, "Is the juice worth the squeeze?" I figured I had to drive and sit in traffic over six work weeks a year for a gig I was working 34-miles from home -- yup, the traffic SUCKS in that area. After five months, I decided that the juice WASN'T worth the squeeze in this case and I found a new job that would let me work locally and goof-off when I needed to. Because I'm now working 100% on commission, I control what I do and when I do it -- and I have flexibility to work hard when I need to and have personal time when I need it as well. Best yet, I get paid based on the quality of my efforts, not on a punch card from a time clock.

So, if I choose to play a few rounds of Jawbreaker on my Pocket PC, it's my call -- and I have to live with the consequences, if any, of choosing to goof-off. But, because I pay myself in my job, it's my decision to make -- no one else's.

[yslee]

I don't really like it when such measures are being announced. It carries a rather demoralising tone from management: "We don't trust you to do your job and we also want you to do more, so we're limiting your freedom."

I also must say it does depend on the job, personnel and management. If the job is challenging and keeps one on their toes, there will be no need to spend hours playing solitaire. If the personnel are well, like what dma1965 said, it's not the program's fault now, is it? And like what Karen has said, management is key to keeping employees working productively; it's their job! And when I said management I don't mean snooping around to see who is goofing off or not, but rather to assign meaningful work and a system of getting the work done on time. And maybe stroke a few egos at the same time. =P

Finally I also want to highlight that this line of thought where removing a factor that is causing a dip in performance will result a 100% recovery from that dip is a flawed one. Very much like the RIAA's thinking of every pirated album is a sale lost. It just doesn't work that way!

[LarDude]

It's all baloney and irrelevant!!

Why are things not goal-oriented? If the job gets done at the end of the day/week/month/year, who cares if someone spends 90% of his time playing solitaire (or staring off into space or counting cracks in the wall). By the same token, if someone is putting in 110% effort/time, never plays solitaire, and is still achieving less than what is required (or less than what is "reasonably" expected), then something still has to be done.

[dma1965]

It's all baloney and irrelevant!!

Why are things not goal-oriented? If the job gets done at the end of the day/week/month/year, who cares if someone spends 90% of his time playing solitaire (or staring off into space or counting cracks in the wall). By the same token, if someone is putting in 110% effort/time, never plays solitaire, and is still achieving less than what is required (or less than what is "reasonably" expected), then something still has to be done.

I agree with you, but most of the management in the US will not. If someone only needs to work an hour to get a job done, when it would take another person 4 hours to do the same job, management wants to use that additonal 3 hours to get more done (i.e. pick up the slack for someone else). This is indeed the essence of modern management all over the US, and it generally serves to punish those of us who do work hard for our money. On the upside, my hard work did get me the promotion I felt I deserved, but it took years of picking up the slack for, among others, my own boss. So being goal oriented may work for some, but it tends to piss off others.

[MikeUnwired]

It's all baloney and irrelevant!!

Why are things not goal-oriented? If the job gets done at the end of the day/week/month/year, who cares if someone spends 90% of his time playing solitaire (or staring off into space or counting cracks in the wall). By the same token, if someone is putting in 110% effort/time, never plays solitaire, and is still achieving less than what is required (or less than what is "reasonably" expected), then something still has to be done.

Increases in productivity are getting more goals accomplished in the same period of time. The employee shouldn't decide what to do with extra time if they are being paid -- it's the employer's time.

That's why commission is so good -- it's the ultimate in equalizers.

[jimski]

So I guess the person who develops a foolproof program to limit gaming and Internet access on a company PC to say 1 hour per day or 5 hours per week will make a fortune 8O.

And then the person (possibly the same one) who sells the hack to get around this foolproff program will earn enough to make BillG a nice offer for the business in a few years.

[Steve Sharp]

I have worked at a federal installation for over 12 years. I have jokingly said before that if the average, hard-working American knew how many of their tax-dollars go toward paying the $80,000 - $100,000 salaries of people who accomplish little more than spend 8 hour drinking coffee and playing solitaire, there would likely be anarchy.

But, as so many government blow-hards do, this senator is blaming the games on the machine and not the poor management, unmotivated and unqualified employees, or the glut of employees who actually have little or no true job function whatsoever (in the government).

Yes, I see folks wasting the entire day (we're not talking about having a break, we're talking *all day*) engaged in net surfing, IMing, shopping online, playing solitaire or freecell, etc. Like some others have indicated, our facility, too, has mulled the idea of removing all games from all computers at the installation. I once knew a guy who's hard drive crashed, so while waiting for IT to come and fix his PC, he methodically sharpened a whole box of pencils and spent his day throwing them up and making them stick in the accoustic tile celing.

I guess this Senator forgets that 20 years ago, people wasted time by paying solitaire with a real deck of cards, or did crossword puzzles for extended periods of time. And so it goes with a large number of people in management positions, "if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out" but never consider the factors and root causes for the unproductive and lackadaisical attitudes toward work.

Steve