Rocky Raccoon, Sat in His Room....

Years ago, a local teacher got in trouble by the politically correct crowd for leaving a Bible on her desk after reading it during her lunch break.

I doubt that happens much these days due to computers and the internet. During any official work or lunch break, I’m certain many, many school district employees hit the web for information, communication, or entertainment. I guess they may even access their hotmail or gmail accounts occasionally, though never, ever on company time!!! :-)

A recent issue addressed included information that some employees may use their internal district email site for personal use. Oh, No Mr. Bill!!! And, those same people are attaching files of graphics, pictures, and videos that required huge amount of ram. Yikes!!! Say it Ain’t So!!!

Hmmm!! How do you solve this problem???

Our district does have a spam filter in place that does capture many strange emails. It also does block some legitimate business emails. Not a big problem since we can view those blocked emails daily and accept or delete at our personal choice.

One curious thing about this spam blocker: it, for unknown reasons, randomly allows some interesting spam to filter through. Every day, I receive a least one letter from a lonely Russia woman needing a mate. And, there is always the Nigerian banker needing to give me $25 million US. Or more frequently, the off-shore pharmacy promising to help me bring my “ax handle to bed,” or helping to “unleash my sundown python.”

Personally, I keep waiting for the cheap bourbon and cigs spam.


Truth is, the school district does have a problem with wasted work hours by employees engaged in personal business. I wrote once about cell phone abuses. I have seen the same with folks wasting time on the internet.

Here’s an idea and a solution

First, send out an auto-opener fully explaining, again, that every email that every employee receives or writes, deleted or not, read or not, is archived…. Forever… EVER, and EVER, FOREVER!

Second, the district should send another auto-opener announcing a random audit of the email history of a number of randomly picked employees each month. Find a violator, send a warning letter. Second offense, a day off..unpaid.

At the same time, increase to scope of web-blocked internet sites….particularly those that allow private email access. There’d be a lot of hooting and hollering about losing an emergency communication vehicle, but bull tacos, office phones still exist…..as does our district email system….should an emergency exist.

Time for our school board to show some respect to those employees who do not abuse their time at work.

posted by admin @ 4:58 PM