Blocking Facebook

Well, his business seems to be doing pretty good, so he must be doing something right.

I've always heard you get a dedicated IT guy at around 30 people.

I have my processes set in place and there's not much to do in IT, in all reality.

I mean, unless you want busy work.

But that sounds petty. And controlling. :gobble:

No, it's called calling in any of the numerous consulting IT firms to come in and do it for you so don't spend 5 of your hours figuring out something they can set in one hour.

Why pay someone a hundred bucks an hour for busy work?

Where I work they have removed all the games.

But then I have a USB drive with.... .... nevermind......

1. Just because people posted solutions that you don't like doesn't mean they're trolling (well, some of them are, and they know who they are, and they need to knock it off, but you're painting with a hell of a wide brush). If you're going to ask for help, at least have the graces to not spur people for their suggestions, even if they're not what you're looking for.
   .
2. The best way to avoid assumptions is to provide details. Coming in with snide comments about how we don't know your organization merely demonstrates that you didn't describe it to us, which, believe it or not, could have been a relevant detail for the question you were asking.
   .
3. I still stand by my position that you're looking at a people-problem, not a tech-problem. From some of your responses here, it sounds like you're a "My word is law" sort of operator, and that's fine, but that word needs to be given. If I turned off your ability to, say, report posts, and didn't bother telling you, that'd be rather passive-aggressive, wouldn't it? All it takes is the following simple sentence and the balls to stand up for it: "Using Facebook during business hours is a firable offense."
   .
4. A good manager, whether it be you or the guy you've hired for that role, knows that your word is law. If you say not to use Facebook, then they are being directly insubordinate if they do. If they do that, then they lack the respect necessary for the position, especially in a call center situation. There's a reason why call centers have very strict policies and guidelines, as I'm sure you know.
   .
5. Let's say that, instead of Facebook, they were hitting up the web sites for MSNBC or FOX News, Wikipedia, etc., etc. Would your reaction be the same? If so, then you need to block them too. In fact, if you're really concerned about this issue, then you need to use a whitelist of sites they can visit rather than a blacklist of sites that they cannot. If you're going to go down this road, you can't fall into the trap of blocking 'entertainment' sites with the reasoning that they kill productivity when, really, a news article can do just the same. I'd be far more likely to read Ars Technica at work over hitting up Facebook.
   .
6. And speaking of Ars Technica, my workplace is fine with me reading it there during slow spots. They're fine with the secretary and graphic designer hitting up Facebook when it's slow too. Why? It's a perk. It is something that is going to cost you almost nothing, but raise the quality of the work experience for the employee. It's win-win. If they're using it irresponsibly, that's an issue, but that's what your manager is supposed to be around for - making sure that people's time gets managed.
   .
7. And if people using Facebook is costing you money, then that is a serious issue that does warrant termination, no matter the season, because it'd mean that the culprits would have to be egregiously irresponsible.

The short version of all of that? It doesn't matter what you implement technologically, and I'm not saying that you shouldn't implement something altogether, I'm just saying that it needs to compliment a firm written or verbal stance from management in order to attach a consequence to an action - it leaves room for no ambiguity. And if this is a group of quality employees, that will cause absolutely no issues.

It's about keeping your employees happy, so they go above and beyond instead of merely doing a perfunctory job.

It's also about the response we got from Apostle, which didn't help to dispel the image.

Did you mean to reply to my post with that response?

I asked for technical solutions to a problem, and folks decided they were going to say "Screw that, we're gonna troll."

There is no reason to provide any details. I don't care to provide details. I just wanted to know if someone here knew how I could block Facebook.

OK. That's fine if you stand by your position. I will assume that you don't know how to block facebook from coming through proxies.

Yes. My manager knows that. I also know that you have to pick which hill you die on. Due to the time of year, the length of time it takes to train new people, and the great cost to us in lost sales when we train new people, I really just wanna block facebook.

I don't care if they visit those sites. Facebook is a big problem for my organization right now. That's why I started a thread asking about how to block it.

OK, your point? We're in different businesses.

Time. Time. Time.

Wrong time of year. The hill battling will come, but not now.

Something tells me that he just wants to block Facebook.

Apostle, show us on the doll where Facebook touched you.

I actually use Facebook as a marketing tool.

Why are you wasting your valuable time doing that? You should hire marketing people to do marketing!

So do I. Unlike you, I've sold things through it. Twitter too.

That said, what does that have to do with the thread topic?

I've had jobs where supervisors tried to micromanage every minute of my work day and denied me a few little baubles or distractions to relax the mind while I was between tasks. I reciprocated by doing the absolute bare minimum required to keep the job while I looked for another.

Then, when I became a supervisor, I vowed to never make those kinds of mistakes. It's worked out well. I've prospered. They've either gone out of business (private sector) or been relieved of their duties (public sector).

Turnover and incompetence were major factors in their failure. Keeping good people is always worth the cost.

Again, I'm not sure how just blocking Facebook equates with denying a few little baubles or distractions. At worst, it's only denying one little bauble or distraction.

Yup. If your people are playing on Facebook to the point it's actually decreasing productivity, you don't need to block Facebook, you need to be firing the lazy bastards.

I wish you all nothing but prosperity in your businesses.

It's Apostle. Facebook is just at the top of the list but I'm sure he's working hard on getting rid of all the little baubles.....

We're not a government agency. You might have objects of amusement at your place of work, but unfortunately private businesses can rarely afford a "jester."

See I was right.

Apostle's probably the type of boss that's going to result in a former employee coming back and shooting the place up.

If that's true, I'm the kind of boss that can put a stop to that with one shot.

Doubt it. For all your bragging about firearms you're employees know to shoot you in the back of the head/shoot you first.

What makes you think my employees even know I have a gun?

Well I would bet that at least one or two of your employees know about Wordforge, if they have ever done more than a 30 second Google search for information on you when offered a job at your small business it would quickly lead here.

edit: http://www.wordforge.net/showpost.php?p=1835418&postcount=12 Your post here suggests that your employees know that you are both a supporter of concealed carry and of being able to carry in the workplace. They would have to be pretty dense to not put two and two together.

edit 2: I also reject the idea that responding to the question with anything other than a step by step guide is trolling. This is a discussion forum, not a consulting firm. If you want instructions with no commentary the first page of google results for "How to block facebook" looked like it contained a few promising results.