Got ratted on for slacking off...but I wasn't. Would you be ticked?

[Effington]

Indulge me as you read my meaningless rant.

I started a new job about 5 months ago, and it's been pretty good so far. The pay is pretty good, the people are nice, the work isn't too difficult but not boring.

Anyway, protocol has it that most of us eat lunch at our desks, for whatever reason. Everyone is friendly but no one seems to socialize more than work related stuff; everyone in the division is significantly older (40+). So today, I was at my desk eating lunch and just messing around playing freecell, and I must have just thrown my sandwich away when my boss's boss walked by my cube, and all he saw was me playing freecell. It was like 2:00pm (I took a later lunch than normal because I got involved in a project earlier), and apparently he thought I was bored, and told my boss to give me some work.

My boss is really cool so didn't make a big deal, but he did say that his boss was kind of ticked to see me playing freecell at 2 in the afternoon. I didn't say anything because I didn't feel getting defensive was the best move, I actually think the boss was more mad at him for not giving me enough work, when that wasn't the case.

So far I've made a good first impression, in fact today they yanked away a report from a manager and said I should do it going forward (because I was helping/doing it with her before anyway), and wanted me to improve it. However, I don't want to give the impression that I'm underworked...even if I was, I don't want them to start loading me down!

Anyway, I'm obviously not going to be playing games at my desk anymore...but don't you guys think it was kind of crappy for the boss man to report the issue? I was technically still on lunch, and although I can see why he didn't see it that way...I still think he should have let me be. All that he did was make it so that I'm never going to eat lunch near my desk again.

 

[Bible_Belt]

The big boss on the one hand followed protocol by going through your boss. It's not snitching if he outranks your boss. If he said anything to you directly, that would be micro-managing on his part. On the other hand, the most successful CEOs and corporate officers I've seen have charisma and don't spend much time being negative with people, it tends to be counter-productive. What the big boss guy really should have done is stopped and said a very pleasant hello, maybe asked you to look up the weather for him or doing something to make it painfully obvious that you are playing a game, then bid you a friendly goodbye without ever acknowledging the game on your computer. He would have seen the sandwich wrapper in the trash and figured out you were on lunch if he did that. But he was probably having a bad day, maybe due to his boss being a d!ck to him. A55hole bosses never really go away as you move up the corporate ladder. Even the CEO has the board of directors and shareholders riding his ass.

 

[theunflushables]

We have a simple but effective solution to that problem at my work. We each have a manilla folder that on one side says "On Lunch" and on the other "On break" we then put that somewhere visible when we're taking lunch or break. It keeps us from getting yelled at for slacking off when we're not.