Don't Get Your Rocks Off on Company Time

Richmond Times Dispatch columnist Ray McAllister has done his due diligence on confronting porn and the city.

In Richmond, Virginia, city officials determined that over a two month period of time, 191 city employees visited a pornographic website (hereafter referred to as "Goodies") at least 10 times. Some had visited over 50 times. Two employees, who have since been fired, had seen Goodies over 12,000 times.

The big question: who is it that determined what was appropriate workplace Goodies action and what is not? If you visit ten sites, we frown upon you, but carry on. Fifty sites: you have a problem, but we are not here to judge. Ten thousand+ sites: nice severance package to go home and look at even more porn.

The next big question: where can I fill out an application and when do the benefits kick in?

At work, I feel dirty and shamed whenever I try to visit a site during downtime that "The Company" finds inappropriate. Things like Consumerist, TV Squad, and even my own blog is deemed inappropriate for work-use and I am subsequently greeted by a nice reminder: ACCESS DENIED. I can't even imagine what it would be like to work in a place with unfettered internet access. I would imagine it would be awkward to have your sixty-ish year-old boss come up and find you viewing Goodies. This would be eclipsed in awkwardness by him saying, "Hey, that's a good one."

People, inappropriate internet access at work is never a good thing. It siphons your productivity (like you care), makes other people work harder (who haven't figured out about free porn access at work), and your customers or clients ultimately bear the consequence (as they don't have free porn access for themselves). Control yourself and curb that brunette-babes-with-big-hands-among-really-big-other-things addiction until you get home.

On the other hand, maybe it would be best for more public employees to have access to the full-fledged wonders of the internet, including porn. It may make those people at the DMV less cranky.