Chain letters from Government offices 2

[greenv]

Every once in a while we receive e-mails from user in State and Federal offices, Schools, etc...
This e-mails are Jokes, Inspirational, or funny pictures.
I usually read and delete.
But I'm realizing , these people are getting paid by my tax money, using equipment paid by my tax money.
I feel I should not pay them to email jokes and I feel they should not use PCs bought with taxpayer money to send their jokes.
Am i being a prune ?
or
Should these people be reported?
is yes
to whom do you report them to?

Verde

 

[KellyK]

If you're receiving the jokes personally, are these people your friends? Do you want to rat out your friends? If they are not, I'd consider the quantity/frequency of the emails. Everybody's entitled to a break. If the emails are only "every once in a while" then I wouldn't worry. Assume they are sending these during their break times. If it bothers you, you could always request for them to remove you from their list.

Kelly

 

[DoubleD]

I agree with KellyK. Do you send email jokes to your friends from your work PC? If so, why is it ok for you, but not ok for them? Just because they happen to work for the government and you work for a private company?

As long as the person is effectively doing their job, I don't see this as an issue.

I am what I am based on the decisions I have made.

DoubleD

 

[DrJavaJoe]

I don't send jokes or personal email from work I assume everything sent is read by management, it shouldn't be done in a private company or government offices. My guess is that just like most government jobs no one cares. Rather than specifically tell on your friends, write yourself a two minute speech on why you have a problem with this and go to the next city council meeting and share. Then make it into a letter and send to your congressman.



Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.

 

[greenv]

I don't send jokes or chain letters.
When I do get them, 10-20-sometimes 30 people also get them. So no friends are involved , it just so happens I'm on a list. I’ve asked them to take me off, no luck.

But reviewing the 2 totally different responses..
Let It Be approach or report it to Congress ????????????????

Let’s say..
You are an Email Administrator and you receive an email from me complaining of one of your users is most likely breaking policy and emailing me and other people jokes.
Would you respond that he was taking a break ?
Warn user not to email me jokes?
Warn user not to email jokes at all?
or follow policy and have HR take care of the situation?

Verde the Prune

 

[SantaMufasa]

Frankly, I constantly receive unwanted, unsolicited "jokes" all the time [that I cannot get to stop or get removed from their stupid lists, even when I "opt-out"] from government employees...every time I receive correspondence from the Internal Revenue Service.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)

http://www.dasages.com

Do you use Oracle and live or work in Utah, USA?
Then click here to join Utah Oracle Users Group on Tek-Tips.

 

[DrJavaJoe]

Oh wait, if it is from the Internal Revenue Service you definitely need to report them to their superiors make sure to attach your Name, Address and SSN ;-)



Two strings walk into a bar. The first string says to the bartender: 'Bartender, I'll have a beer. u.5n$x5t?*&4ru!2[sACC~ErJ'. The second string says: 'Pardon my friend, he isn't NULL terminated'.

 

[ikayak]

My two cents:

As a government employee, I am faced everyday with the assumption that I/we are overpaid and under worked. I have to tell you this is not the case. This is not to say that there isn't a piece of dead wood here or there. I (and most of my coworkers), took pay cuts to come here. My benefit package is less than my last few jobs and I buy most of my own hardware and software tools. I am here for the stability; my last 4 companies downsized, outsourced or went out of business. We are understaffed and 2 desktop techs handle about 700 computers, in 20 some different locations. Right now, most of the computers I work on are 4 to 5 years old and every year we face budget cuts. Yes, there are e-mail abusers but most of the people I know, participate very little. I have been known to send a "funny" once in a while myself and the comic relief is a nice break.

 

[DoubleD]

Interesting responses.

DrJavaJoe,
You never, EVER, send jokes or personal emails from work?
Do you ever tell a joke to a friend at work while you're at their desk? What's the difference? If you are not guilty of any of the above, wow, relax a little and enjoy life.

greenv,
You had not mentioned in the initial post that you asked them to remove you from their list. In this instance I would see it as valid recourse to contact their superior.

I am what I am based on the decisions I have made.

DoubleD

 

[svanels]

Strange, I also receive e-mails, chain letters etc, from friends trying to do me favor and from complete strangers. My behaviour, I do not read them, everything that smells like chain letter, hoax, some lunatic in a far hot country promising 25% of a fortune, offers of PhD degree and anything with the word free is sentenced to suffer the delete click without even opening.
I do not bother to reply, because that will confirm that your e-mail address exist.

If you have time to read all that rubish, then you are probably overpaid.

Looking at the senders, It is hard to tell if they are from the government (probably they don't have the computer resources).

Mostly they are from individuals in private companies, or others who have nothing to do (whiz kids).

Most governmental agencies I know are still in the stone age if it comes to computer infrastructure.

Once I complained at a tax inspector about the amount of tax they were cutting. He took five minutes to explain what he was doing he was doing and what his salary was.
I never ranted again about the tax-cut to an inspector.

I should have known better, my parents also have been working for the government....

 

[johnwm]

I don't receive that many of these email 'spam' jokes from government employers, but have received a few, and a few more from 'proper' (FTSE100 or Fortune 500) companies.

This is a gross abuse of taxpayers or shareholders funds, and I always report the matter to the appropriate authority. I'm glad to see that most of those authorities seem to take suitable action, and if I don't get a measured response I will escalate the complaint.

Accepting this behaviour is the moral equivalent of condoning the theft of any other company resource

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[Thadeus]

I'm not sure that one can equate sending an e-mail as stealing resources any more than having a second sugar in your morning "company supplied" coffee. In fact, the sugar probably costs more physical dollars.

~Thadeus

BTW, I abhor any e-mail that tells me to forward to all of my friends... Given that so many delete them immediately, maybe that is the root of most of our governments' bad luck... not enough people forwarding the chain letters "breaks" the chain and brings bad luck you know !

 

[jrbarnett]

I work in local government in the UK and in the organisation there is a very strict internet access and email usage policy, which people have to agree to before being granted access to external email and web sites.
I would be very surprised if there wasn't something similar in place for other organisations.
I agree with taking it up at a council meeting, but perhaps another option is to forward it (with all headers) to postmaster at the site it was sent from - and tell the email administrator that as far as you were concerned this was unacceptable and ask if any action would be taken against the staff member that sent the message.

John

 

[pmonett]

johnwm:

In an age of increasingly unsecure email (spoofed addresses, wrong recipient list, etc...), how can you be sure that the person you report is really the sender of the email, or that the email was really sent on government time ?

As for shareholder value, how can you be sure that said employee did not send it on his legal break time ? Or that he will not do unpaid overtime in the near future ?

Just musing.

Pascal.

 

[lionelhill]

Please, if you work for a public organisation or shareholder-owned company in the UK, could you let me know the contact details of your line manager? I feel the need to inform him that you've just wasted several seconds of valuable time reading this message.

Doh, what world do we live in? I'm off to walk (run?) past the receptionist without saying "Hi!" cos I don't want to waste her tax-payer-supported time.

 

[svanels]

I think we just have spend too much (company) time and (company) energy debating this subject, unless we all are visiting this site in our own private time, and waisting our own private resources to discuss on Tek-Tips. Lionelhill you stated it very well!!


Steven

 

[Thadeus]

While this discussion may not be what I am paid to do in the specific, I am paid to keep up on my industry. A Tek-Tips debate on Ethics in Information Technology certainly qualifies in my mind.

More importantly, if more companies had these types of ethics debates in-house, there would be less of a need to have such discussions in public forums.

A strong ethics framework is essential for good business. And ethics are simply theoretical muscles that need to be trained and excercised for a healthy organization.

~Thadeus

 

[teash]

I think there is too much thinking going on about this. Would fowarding a few emails actually waste that much time and resources.

I am thankful that I work for a small company where this totalitarianism form of administrative punishment doesn't exist.

One person sending a few personal emails doesn't waste that much time. No more than one person scratching there head and leaning back in there chair to take a breather. Is that banned in anyone's workplace? Yet?

I know total employee control is every employers dream, however it is an impossible dream.

If work is not getting accurately getting completed, then perhaps it would be a different story, but to ban something that only shaves a piece of inefficiency of the mountain would only create resentment amongst the employees.

You see, I just wasted 5 minutes of my employers time. Now back to work I go. But this short digression allowed me to step away from a project I have been working on all morning and clear my mind of all the ASP code that has been cemented in my head today.





I really don't know what I am talking about, I just talk!