Cat videos

With the trend of working from home one or more days a week now the norm for many companies, people have found new ways to take breaks, or worse, waste time. The internet and sites like YouTube are perhaps the chief culprit.

While working from my home office last week, I heard caterwauling from the room next door where my wife was browsing on her resplendent iMac, watching yet another cat video. It seems cats, and dogs too, are all the rage online, on YouTube, as well as reddit.com and imgur.com. Then I read about the employees at JC Penney's headquarters, in The Wall Street Journal:

"During January 2012, the 4,800 employees in Plano had watched five million YouTube videos during work hours, said Michael Kramer, a former Apple executive brought in by Mr. Johnson as chief operating officer. Thirty-five percent of the bandwidth at headquarters was routinely used for such loafing off."

According to msn.com, "That month had about 20 work days. So for 4,800 employees, that works out to about 52 YouTube videos each day while on the clock. In fact, about 35% of the Internet usage at the main office was used for goofing off."

52 YouTube videos each day? No wonder Yahoo's new CEO has repealed the company's work from home policy.

Ken Krimstein - The New Yorker