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Steven Azeez, the administrative assistant who sorts and delivers the office mail, says one day he made four trips to Mr. The mail brought him something in the morning, and then UPS brought him something in the afternoon, says Mr. But to paraphrase the Good Book, let he that is without sin cast the first stone. Azeez privately admits that he shopped for his car online from the office. While a lot of ink has been spilled on the explosion of online shopping, not much has been said about where people are doing all that browsing. In many instances theyre Windows shopping from the privacy of their office cubicle. Once the haven of closet solitaire players, the office computer is now the place to buy that anniversary present, order that Mothers Day bouquet or bargain-hunt for the lowest prices on DVD players. Harmless Trifle Many office surfers say that what theyre doing falls into the category of personal phone calls, a harmless trifle if they dont abuse the system.
But attaching these personal addresses to orders placed from work is dumb and inefficient, says Stuart Stock, a San Francisco network-security consultant who recently shopped from work for Y2K survival supplies, such as candles, freeze-dried food and a water-filtration system. And when these Net shoppers start cyber browsing, they become highly adept at avoiding detection by manipulating the maximize and minimize buttons on their screen to smoothly remove from view the shopping site theyve been poring over. One games Web site has a panic button people can hit if theyre about to be caught in a compromising position. Click on it, and up pops a faux business news screen containing a fake Dow Jones Industrial Average, among other things. A Fort Worth, Texas, corporate auditor says she got busted by her supervisor who suspected she wasnt crunching numbers on a spreadsheet. One day he walked into her cubicle, leaned over and clicked on the maximize button and pulled up the Web page for an online furniture retailer. Some Web shoppers smirk at their Ive got to run to the mall at lunchtime colleagues. Online, I can shop at four stores in 15 minutes, brags Jill Osur, vice president of marketing and development for the Special Olympics of Northern California. Visiting traditional retailers at lunchtime would take me at least an hour and a half.
Its like Maslows hierarchy of needs, he says referring to Abraham Maslow, a humanistic psychologist who advanced the theory that peoples needs are arranged like a ladder. The most basic needs, at the bottom, are physical air, water, food. He says his employer actually benefits because he is more productive when he takes minibreaks. When I need a break, I just pull up a Web page and just browse, he says. Ten minutes later, Im all refreshed, and I can go back to business-plan writing. Kranes company, says its OK with him if employees shop from the office, within reason, because he knows that they are all putting in more than 40-hour workweeks. We have a philosophy around here that people should be comfortable at work and if theyre comfortable at work, theyll work harder, Mr. Im totally fine with these areas where business life and personal life mix. Theresa Rickle, the Certicom office administrator who handles the mail, says on some days the personal items coming in outweigh the business mail. One day earlier this week, United Parcel Service delivered four boxes from Amazon and only one commercial package. The UPS guy said to me, Boy, looks like you guys are having a good time here at work, ordering all this stuff, she says. Rickle says that people frequently stop by her workspace to see if their packages have arrived. While many companies these days have taken to monitoring their employees Internet usage to ensure they arent accessing pornography or other questionable content, shopping sites usually dont come under scrutiny. But thats because companies arent really thinking about it, says Phil Lumish, a spokesman for Little Brother, an Internet monitoring and blocking product of JSB Software Technologies Inc. Little Brother is designed to alert a company to excessive unproductive Internet use, and allows extensive blocking of Web sites. While Little Brother has a database containing roughly 750,000 categorized sites that can be blocked, I havent had anyone tell me this is an issue, or that it is something I should concentrate on, says Mr. Indeed, even companies using software that can filter sites say they are reluctant to prevent access to e-tailers because their employees could have a business-related need to view them.
But there could be legitimate needs for people to go to some of these shopping sites. Im sure if we added it up, altogether there would probably be some collective gasp, he adds, noting that ebay is a frequently visited site among Fortune Brand employees. We had meeting after meeting about it and realized as long as were OK on bandwidth and theres not blatant abuse, what can we say? But Carole OBlenes, a New York City labor and employment attorney, says companies should think about cracking down. Online shopping generates junk e-mail that could clog a companys server and cause it to crash, she says. Whether theyre checking their stocks, shopping or doing research for their upcoming trip to Spain, thats time diverted from doing business, she says. Lisa Quinn, a former assistant account executive at an insurance company, can attest to that. After a while, she upped the ante and planned her coming nuptials. She shopped for a wedding dress, bridesmaids dresses and a photographer over the Internet at work. She also lined up a yacht and found a party-favor site through which she purchased disposable cameras for her wedding guests.
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