State employee posts thousands of comments online

Dec. 11, 2012

By Katy Grimes

Any private sector employer who discovers an employee stealing from the company has obvious grounds for termination.

Stealing takes on many forms, including surfing the Internet, commenting on news stories, and conducting personal business. Getting paid to work, and then not performing the work is theft… unless the thief works for the government or a unionized company.

“A California Department of Education employee posted approximately 4,900 comments on The Sacramento Bee’s website between December 2010 and December 2011, according to a state report released this morning, reported the Sacramento Bee today.

But this state employee is still working for the state government, according to another reporter I just spoke with.

I worked as a Human Resources executive for more than 20 years at a large manufacturing company. Personal time on the Internet by employees was a problem with some, and we regularly addressed it. We monitored Internet usage, including the websites that were searched while on company time. Those who abused the privilege  were dealt with swiftly.

“Auditors also found that the employee misused state time and equipment for his private contracting business during work hours,” the Bee reported.

But this state employee is still working for the state government.

There is no doubt that this state employee’s coworkers and supervisors know what he was doing. It’s usually coworkers who rat-out a bad employee. And any supervisor worth his weight would see a problem with the employee’s productivity and poor work quality.

A full-time employees works 2,080 hours per year, which is 260 eight-hour days. “Investigators found that the education employee posted comments on sacbee.com 195 days of the 208 days he was at work, averaging about 25 comments per day. On his most active day he wrote 70 comments on sacbee.com during business hours,” the Bee reported.

The bulk of his time at work was spent online. Just the lack of productivity of this guy should have put him on suspension or probation.

The audit is here. Be sure to read the comments on the Sac Bee story. The story points out other agencies with unscrupulous state employees. And notice all of the state employee comments. Some are very interesting, indeed.