Porn, Public Employees, and Human Resources!

Happy New Year! You're Fired!

The east coast beaches of Florida around West Palm Beach are incredibly beautiful and popular tourist spots. You can't usually surf the beaches there, but they make for great views of the water from your beach cabana or a bistro.

Some City of West Palm Beach employees will have plenty of time to take in these beautiful vistas in 2009, or possibly they will be facing more stormy weather.

It seems as if a number of employees were using their taxpayer paid salaries to surf the web looking at web sites that were in violation of the city Internet utilization policy.

According to the local CBS affiliate report, thirteen West Palm Beach city employees have lost their jobs as a result of an "Internet scandal".

Workers were reportedly caught viewing

".. computer porn, and lots of it on some of the employees' work
computers. Nudity, people engaging in sex acts, and women in skimpy
swimwear.

The kinds of pictures they knew or should've known, could get them into
serious trouble and cost them their jobs."

I don't know if it was really a surprise. Actually that this took place at
all is disappointing to us," said Chase Scott, a spokesman for the city of West
Palm Beach. When they should've been working, some were looking at racy photos,
some were visiting websites with names such as "skinvideo-dot-com."

Or surfing websites looking for fetishes involving cheerleaders, foot
fetishes, and porn dealing with bisexuals, couples, and lesbians.

Not only were some of them looking at computer porn on city-owned
computers, but some were receiving inappropriate e-mails and then forwarding
them to other co-workers. That too, is a violation of city policy dealing with
"electronic communications, computer and internet use" spelled out in the West
Palm Beach city employee handbook.

Others were swapping photos like one with the caption "The assassination of
Hillary Clinton," and there were photos with racial slurs.

The Human Resources division found e-mails with religious slurs such
as "How to tell if a Catholic is driving too fast" or a "cartoon of a
cross."

In all, 17 city employees violated Internet policy and 13 of them lost
their jobs because of it. Nine resigned in lieu of termination and four were
fired."

Not So Happy New Year?

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