Woman fired after keystroke technology revealed how much she actually worked.

[Floyd R. Turbo]

“I may go to the shops from time to time, but that is not for the entire day“

An Australian woman was let go from her job after her employer used keystroke technology to determine how much work she was doing from home.

Suzie Cheikho, who worked as a consultant at Insurance Australia Group (IAG) for 18 years, filed an unfair dismissal claim against the huge insurance company.

She told Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) that her employer had a “premeditated plan to remove her from the business and that she was targeted due to her mental health issues.”

But her claim was rejected by Australia’s Fair Work Commission (FWC) after it ruled there was a “valid reason of misconduct” to give Cheikho the boot, news.com.au reported.

https://vancouversun.com/news/world/woman-fired-after-keystroke-technology-revealed-how-much-she-actually-worked/wcm/ea85ada2-c6ac-4468-aef1-cbbea926e1e3

[Siwsan]

1. I had a co-worker who kept an extra coat and purse hidden in her cubicle

She'd bring them out to display in her cubicle and then leave the building for extended periods of time. Now, she wasn't too bright. People started to notice her hair and/or nails looked dramatically different, mid-day. Shopping bags would appear before lunch.

They fired her but someone screwed up so they had to re-hire her in a different department. (Union contract.) Eventually she ended up in my department. Her cubicle was positioned in a way that people on the 4th floor could watch her via the atrium. I started getting calls from friends in a 4th floor department telling me that this woman was spending all day on Face Book, watching Joyce Meyers and conducting her 'home run business' from her cubicle, using company supplies. Unfortunately, even after she was busted they couldn't fire her because of the ongoing litigation. She was still working there when I retired 3 years early to get away from her.

My old company has since been absorbed by another and I've cut ties with that whole part of my life so I have no idea what ever happened to her.

[LiberalFighter]

4. There are people like that.

[Siwsan]

6. When the HR director asked me what they could do to make me stay, I said they'd have to fire her.

The look on his face was priceless. It was my birthday, my first day of retirement eligibility, I had my finances all in order and the truth is, I was burned out because of that female and NOTHING could have changed my mind about leaving.

[LiberalFighter]

8. I retired years before I was planning to. At 52.

Worked in a factory. Had my thirty years in or would when the next year was also included. My pay for the next year was wages and not from a pension. I retired because everything else was in order and didn't need to put up with management stupidity. No regrets and my time is my time.

[Deminpenn]

18. My command had an employee kind of like that

The employee didn't leave work, but just couldn't or wouldn't learn the job. The supervisors did their best to document the employee's poor performance, but unfortunately, the employee was protected by a friend pretty high up in our directorate's management. So this employee was passed around from supervisor to supervisor until the last person to directly surpervise this employee was told to either fire him or the supervisor would be fired.

[Snooper9]

20. Well, that isn't quite as bad

As the guy who was running a porn server out of our lab.

Was a good 2 years until he got busted

[Siwsan]

23. Damn. I know of something along that same line that happened at a Navy "A" school

There was a CO who made porn, using students, in the actually school instructional dental operatories. Some of the porn got taped over with actual school related instructional stuff but on at least one one tape the legitimate stuff didn't run as long as the porn. Some students got an eye full.

He was transferred out of the school.

[Arthur_Frain]

25. And this is why unions get such a bad rap sometimes.

Deservedly so, when they defend behavior like this too. I hated when my union went to bat for people who did this kind of thing. But they always did.

[Siwsan]

26. I believe it was the department director who screwed up - badly.

She was gone shortly after they tried firing this person. Our HR director, at the time, was a joke. This female was brilliant at exploiting loopholes and a master of deflection. Trying to pin her down to talk specifics was like swatting at a fruit fly with a tennis racket. People got so frustrated they'd just throw their hands up in frustration. We had at least 3 managers quit because of her. More people refused to interview for the position because they knew they'd be stuck trying to deal with her.

I know the union reps were VERY unhappy about the situation. Some of them worked in the same departments as she rolled through so they were impacted by her behavior. I completely blamed HR and our legal department that was headed by a buffoon.

[Arthur_Frain]

28. I'm not broadbrushing all unions.

Ours was unlike yours. The stewards adopted a combative attitude from the get go.

I just wished that professional unions like I belonged to would actually police their own, but I haven’t seen it.

[Dulcinea]

2. Performance improvement plan

That's a sure sign you employer is trying to get rid of you.

[marble falls]

3. It can also be a hint to wake up and fly right.

[paleotn]

9. Not always.

Sometimes it's a wakeup call or a last ditch effort to salvage a bad hire. One is paid to do the work. That's fair and equitable.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

5. If you can't tell someone isn't working by the amount/quality of their work, does that position fill

a need?

[Sympthsical]

7. Asking the real question

Did they notice she was a problem because things weren't getting done, or were they just tracking employees?

I admit, as a WFH type, I just blatantly run errands sometimes. My partner's even worse. He runs meetings while doing just about anything else.

All the work gets done, so no one cares. However, if anyone actually watched either of us all day, they'd probably have questions.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. From the article:

Cheikho was fired in February for missing deadlines and meetings, being absent and difficult to get in contact with, and failing to complete a task which resulted in the industry regulator issuing a fine to IAG.

Three months before she was canned, Cheikho received a formal warning about her output and was put on a performance improvement plan, part of which involved her boss using keystroke technology to monitor how much she was complying with her own targets while working remotely.

[Sympthsical]

27. Gotcha

That seems well-deserved.

I've never missed a meeting because I ran off to, say, Costco.

I have attended meetings while in Costco, however.

[paleotn]

10. That's a good question.

But like most stories like this, there's a whole lot more to it I'm sure.

[Happy Hoosier]

13. Not always clear cut....

In my line of work, a lot of effort is team-based and it can be hard to identify individual contributions. We had a new hire who seemed to be smart and hard-working, and they contributed to discussions. It took a few months to really determine they were in over their heads and not contributing. Fortunately, they recognized it to, so we didn’t have to fire them. They were not a slacker though.

[Tickle]

11. When I worked for BofA

We worked from home a lot of the time. They could tell what we were doing. I once did a type and my boss called me up. I forget the name of the application but it showed me making the mistake and every keystroke I took at that time.

I mean everything from typing and not hitting the enter key to actually hitting the enter key. Fortunately for me, it was obvious how I made the typo in the host file because you could see it in my keystrokes.

[Amishman]

12. Yup, for transactional based jobs there is no hiding.

It's tricker for non-transactional jobs.

When I'm trying to figure out something tricky at work (data structure oddities / flows), I might be staring at the ceiling for fifteen minutes while I work it over in my head. My computer will show idle, but I am working very hard and being very productive.

[Tickle]

14. I get that

How many times have you woken up at 3 a.m. with the answer on something that you worked all day on.

[Amishman]

17. For me it's 2am on a Saturday half drunk

After bullshitting with my BiL for a few hours around the firepit.

[Tickle]

19. 😂 love it! Peace to you my friend NT

[Happy Hoosier]

16. Same...

… my job has a lot of scratching head and thinking about it. Sometimes, I will even take a shower to clear my head, and a surprising number of times, I’ll come up with a great idea in the shower. My wife and I call call it “the shower effect.” Fortunately, I don’t have to deal with intrusive monitoring.

[Happy Hoosier]

15. Jeebus... I could not work under those conditions...

… just another cog in the machine to monitor. Oof.

[librechik]

21. the future is grim--they can keep track of keystrokes now? Seems unnecessary and inhumane.

However, most writers, for example, are paid by the word, not by the time they spend on the keyboard.

[maxrandb]

24. I can understand the companies position, but we really have given up a shiton of rights

Reminds me if a "bullet" I saw on a Royal Navy Fitness Report:

"Works well under pressure and when cornered like a rat in a trap"

I think the first time I realized how far the American worker had fallen was when I was on recruiting duty for the Navy.

I was an E5, brand new dad, and my schedule afforded me the opportunity to work a part time job. It was with one of the big box hardware stores. It paid minimum wage.

For the "honor" of working a part-time, retail, minimum wage job, I was required to provide a urine sample, under supervision, for a drug test. The fact that I had already surrendered my dignity submitting to random piss tests in the Navy didn't matter. Failure to take the test would result in me not getting that minimum wage job. At the time, I think you even were required to take a piss test to get a job at 7/11.

My grandfather worked for the railroads, and in the coal mines of Corning, OH back in the day. He helped organize Union efforts for the coal miners.

I wonder what he would have thought about humiliating himself by pissing in front of strangers for the "privilege" to work for minimum wage.

Anyway, there has to be some give and take here, or it's just a fuedal system.