Not by a long shot. I’ve not heard of this one before. Holy crap. So a guy uses his work computer to go to an adult chat room to relieve post-traumatic stress disorder from his Vietnam experiences? And thinks he can then NOT take personal responsibility for it? And thinks he can blame it on being addicted to the internet? And going to chat rooms for post-traumatic stress led to adult chat rooms and he became a sex addict as well? Oh… my… f*(#ing… God!
I don’t know about your place of work, but ours is monitored. We have a proxy server in place that is invisible to the end user but filters a multitude of sites as well as logs ALL incoming and outgoing traffic. That’s not to say that someone monitors the logs, but that the logs are there to be monitored. We also require the end-user to sign an appropriate use agreement before that user will be granted internet privileges. Our intranet (internal to our company) is available to everyone, but internet access is NOT granted to everyone and is definitely NOT a free pass. Now, I work for an office furniture manufacturer and NOT one of the largest tech companies in the world. I can’t imagine that IBM doesn’t have such a monitoring process in place. If they do (probably a 99%+ chance), this guy is TOAST. If they don’t, it might be a tough win for the guy anyway.
The only legitimate complaint the guy may have is age discrimination. However, if IBM can show him guilty of the other stuff, the age discrimination won’t be a factor at all. My God, the guy goes to a questionable site at work and expects no repercussions? What the heck is wrong with people today?
