Should You Do Your Holiday Shopping at Work?

Like everyone else you probably have a lot of holiday shopping to do. Back in the day I remember spending my lunch hours searching for gifts at nearby stores. You can get a lot of shopping done in an hour if you put your mind to it. Nowadays I find it much more convenient to shop online. If you're looking for bargains, the Web is often the way to go. Since you probably have a computer on your desk at work, you don't even have to wait until your lunch break to shop, right? You'd be in good company. A CareerBuilder .com survey showed that this year almost one-third of workers (29%) planned to shop online while at work. While you can shop while at work, the question is, should you?

Consider this: The 2007 Electronic Monitoring & Surveillance Survey conducted by the American Management Association and The ePolicy Institute found that 66% of all employers who responded to the survey monitor their employee's Internet connections at work. Well, so what? Would they actually fire you for doing a little bit of shopping? Maybe. Thirty percent of those employers reported firing workers for misusing the Internet. Read more about Electronic Monitoring at Work.

Additional Reading:
Surfing the Net on Your Boss's Time
Twenty-Nine Percent of Workers Holiday Shop Online While at Work