Accountant sacked for “ridiculous amount of time” surfing web gets £38,068 compensation
Determining a “ridiculous amount of time” is perhaps a little subjective for that sort of decision…
A Glasgow employment tribunal ruled David Innes’ dismissal was unfair despit the fact that the 42 year-old clocked up 27,500 website hits.
Understandably, David Pratt, the operations and performance manager at his employer, Scottish and Southern Energy, claimed Mr Innes must have known that “sitting at his desk doing nothing whilst going on the internet and sending emails was wrong”.
But according to the BBC, tribunal chairman Ian McFatridge said Mr Pratt, who made the decision to fire Mr Innes, had “no idea” how to properly interpret the internet usage report.
BBC: “He made no attempt to obtain advice from the respondent’s IT department,” he said.
“His view was essentially that he was faced with this enormous report and this therefore showed an extraordinary amount of internet usage.”
So the lesson here: if you are going to wile away the work hours on the internet, make sure your boss is of the technically restrained variety.
