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Court Upholds Dismissal of City Web Surfer
By
Dave Hogarty
Published Mar 17, 2008
Modified Mar 17, 2008
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By
Dave Hogarty
Published Mar 17, 2008
Modified Mar 17, 2008
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Screen grab of employee web tracking software
A Manhattan court upheld the firing of city employee Toquir Choudhri for doing too much Web browsing on the City's time. Choudri, who was an education analyst for the Department of Education's Human Resources department, was fired in 2006 for spending far too much time online. He had been formally warned to knock of his Web-wandering ways, but an internal audit showed that despite the warning, Choudri visited more than 300 sites in six days, or more than 50 different sites a day.
According to the NY Sun, court papers listed some of the sites Chourdri was visiting were lonelyplanet.com [travel site], escapeartist.com [site about how to get out of the American rat race], and chinaadviser.com [travel-to-China site]. Choudri's firing may have been a blessing in disguise, because the guy obviously had some wanderlust that extended beyond surfing the Internet. But could he have claimed workplace disability because of an Internet addiction and protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act?
Some studies have indicated that allowing personal Internet browsing at work actually improves employee productivity. And this reminds us of a city employee in Albany who requested a picture with Mayor Bloomberg during a visit. When Bloomberg saw he was playing solitaire on his computer, the Mayor fired him on the spot.
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