Wastin' Time at Work

By Matt Wood in Miscellaneous on Sep 25, 2006 12:21PM

Today's RedEye feature story reports that Americans spend almost two hours a day at work goofing off. A big part of this slack time is wasted on the internet -- checking personal email, IM, shopping, updating fantasy sports teams, and reading crap like Chicagoist. Based on hourly rates, that's $500 billion lost in productivity. There seems to be a story like this every few months, but we'll bite anyway and contribute to the efficiency drain.

Many employers are cracking down by limiting internet access for employees. The Chicagoist staff just had a discussion about this last week, and the consensus was that while yes, we could understand blocking sites like YouTube or streaming music to conserve bandwidth (that costs money, you know), limiting access to other sites does more to damage employee morale than it's worth. Which would you rather have: a worker who sprints through her tasks to finish with a few minutes to spare for Gmail, or one who milks the clock and resents the boss for treating her like a child who can't manage her own time? In our day, Chicagoist was a Zen master at whiling away the workday on the web; two hours a day seems low to us. But we could also accomplish our assignments in half the time we were given, because we were happy and didn't mind working hard for a boss we knew trusted us.

So is two hours a day of slack time too much or too little? How do you piss away the company nickel?