First complaining post about work

[locker_monster]

Well, that only took, what? Four days?

So the company I'm working for now is a small environmental company. They work with oil and gas companies, assessing the land where the companies want to build pipelines and what not. Since it's related to engineering, there are engineers employed and so by relation the work place is very relaxed. As nice as a small company is, there are also drawbacks.

For starters, they monitor everyone's e-mails. The boss frowns upon work e-mail being used for personal stuff. So I can't send e-mails to my friends or family. On top of that, any outside e-mail addresses are blocked. No G-mail, no hotmail, no yahoo. So no checking of the personal messages either. I'm fairly certain they also monitor all the sites I visit so no surfing the web when there's no work. Can't pop over to LJ without someone knowing.

I don't know if all small companies are like this. For sure, bigger companies don't care what their employees are doing. The big ones I worked for could care less about what I used my work e-mail for. I mean, I get that with smaller companies you only have so many people. If people are slacking off, productivity will be less. Still, I feel really cut off. I can't even e-mail my mother. A co-worker told me she got a stern talking to after she sent an e-mail to her mother.

But my cubicle is in a crappy spot anyway, so surfing the Internet was never an option. I'll miss checking out LJ between tasks though. You guys got me through some of the other boring jobs I had last summer.

Comments

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

That sucks. I'd rather companies monitor just internet usage by amount to make sure you're not overusing it while at work, rather than monitoring every thing you do.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

It seems like they can see everything I do. Good thing I only visited some sites and didn't post/e-mail anything. They told me today it's more of a security thing than playing Big Brother. Either they don't want viruses ending up on the mainframe or they're worried about people hacking their database. They have some big clients and the oil and gas industry is pretty heavy over here.

I think it's more of a small company thing. With bigger companies they don't have the capacity to monitor everyone and every place they visit. But god, I miss surfing the web, even on breaks. Is this a sign of an addiction? ;-)

[ninamazing.livejournal.com]

(Your icon is AWESOME.)

I worked in a small company (abt. 40 people) that was almost entirely made up of engineers, and they didn't have a problem with us surfing the internet as long as we got our work done. I mean, I felt a little weird about doing it, and I mostly just sent personal emails instead of checking LJ a lot, but nobody else seemed to care either way.

It's funny that you mentioned engineers making the place more relaxed -- I'm not sure I've ever found that!

And I'm sorry they're so crazy about you doing personal things. Taking short breaks for that can be revitalizing.

[locker-monster.livejournal.com]

I was told it's just a security thing, not a productivity thing. I'm not sure I totally believe that but I'm not going to try to sneak in some web surfing. Technically I'm not on their payroll yet, but I don't want to have to report back to the employment agency because I got fired. ;-) The lame thing is, if I want to e-mail the employment agency with basic questions, I can't. I can't access an outside account and I can't use my work e-mail to send a message; it gets delayed, defeating the purpose of instant e-mail. Me thinks I might have to talk to someone about this.

I've worked for three engineering companies so far and all of them have been very slack. Slack in the sense that dress code is very casual, they have flex time so you can show up whenever you want, and people generally sort of wander about visiting co-workers during the day. With this company the engineers are out in the field a lot so it can get really quiet up on the second floor.

Funny you should mention breaks. We get two paid ones during the day but I seem to suck at taking them. I suddenly get swamped with work when the time rolls around and I end up working right through them. Once the work starts to pick up, I think I'll be fine. Funny how the day just whips by when you have deadlines.