BYD employee died suddenly, Gome held responsible employees for fishing, and workers discussed the balance of work and rest

Written by Wei Yining of AI Finance

Editor by You Yong

On November 16, an employee punishment notice issued internally by Gome became a hot search topic.

According to the documents, throughout September, the Gome headquarters investigated non-work traffic of employees at the headquarters and found that some employees occupied the company's public network resources in the work area and engaged in matters unrelated to work.

These 11 employees are mainly playing games, chatting online, watching videos, listening to music, etc. For example, one of the asset center employees is a typical heavy video user. She/he used 13.4G of traffic in 4 days, all of which was spent on Tencent Video, Douyin and iQiyi. According to Gome's conversion method, 800MB can be used to watch one hour of video. This employee watched 16.75 hours of video. And if we calculate based on the 2 hours of watching videos during the lunch break, it is only 8 hours. This employee obviously spent more than this time watching videos.

Late at night on November 17, Gome Group responded to the matter, saying that the relevant employees engaged in non-work related matters during working hours, which far exceeded the appropriate and reasonable scope of work-rest integration and violated the employee code of conduct. . Gome advocates the spirit of struggle and practical actions, remains alert to "fishing and lying" at work, and will investigate the leakage of internal reports.

At the same time, the news of the sudden death of a 36-year-old BYD employee quickly became a hot topic, and he himself was also revealed to have been working night shifts for a month. Throughout October, he worked about 280 hours.

One is that the body collapsed due to high-intensity overtime work, and the other is that employees in large factories were monitored and reported for frivolous activities, which have triggered heated discussions about beating workers.

1. How does the company know that you are fishing?

In recent years, with the popularity of "996-style overtime" in major enterprises, "fishing" has also developed into a hot word in the workplace. Many employees use fishing to fight against involution, and there are even various online Tutorials on fishing and pretending to be off work, such as choosing novels and video software that look like office software, and hanging a coat on the back of the chair when you get off work to create the illusion that you will come back at any time.

However, no matter how you improve your fishing skills, you will eventually have nowhere to hide from the company’s surveillance.

According to Gome’s report, the apps accessed by these Moyu employees include Tencent Video, Douyin, Youku, Kuaishou, NetEase Cloud Music, etc. Zhang Chuanshi, public relations director of Gome, said that after internal calculations, the non-work traffic used by these fishing employees every month is more than 10G, which is equivalent to an average of 3-4 hours of video viewing per day, which is far beyond the scope of work and rest.

The outside world was once curious, how did the company know that its employees were listening to music and watching TV shows? AI Finance and Economics learned from many technical employees that as long as employees use the company Wi-Fi, the router will record which websites and apps the employees have logged into, as well as the login time. This method is very common among major manufacturers and is technically very easy to implement.

Many lawyers said that the company's approach did not violate labor laws or invade privacy because the company was only monitoring intranet traffic and did not directly check employees' chat records and other content.

However, these monitoring can only know which apps and websites employees have logged into, but will not know what content employees have viewed or what they have done. AI Finance News learned that some Gome employees no longer dare to use the company's Wi-Fi and have switched to their own 4G network to avoid being tracked.

In fact, this approach of Gome is not new. Previously, the American company Amazon adopted a more advanced monitoring method: monitoring employee work efficiency through AI. In 2019, it was revealed that Amazon uses an AI system to monitor employees. The system can track the work efficiency of logistics and warehousing employees. Once they are away for too long and their work efficiency is low, the system can issue dismissal instructions. According to media reports, more than 900 employees were laid off.

In addition to monitoring fishing behavior, major companies are also strengthening the control of leaking internal documents and intranet information.

This monitoring method includes screenshot watermarks, intranet access records, and even office cameras.

2. The method of fishing for workers

Until now, overtime is still a common way of working in many companies. Recently, Inspur Group, a well-known IT company, has been on the hot search list because of its "overtime work slogan" in the office.

These "ironic slogans" are catchy to read, such as "If he adds me, I will also add, if I want to run away There is no time to wait. When major Internet companies have abandoned "996" and introduced five-day work systems, Inspur Group has gone against the trend, which has immediately aroused strong concern. At present, the labor inspection department has intervened in the investigation.

These examples fully demonstrate that although society has paid enough attention to the "996 phenomenon", encouraging overtime is still a common practice of many companies. There are two main reasons for working overtime. One is the management system and methods of large enterprises, and the other is that working overtime to show a hard-working workplace culture has become a habit.

In large companies, work is often filled with meetings. A project involves multiple departments such as product, R&D, and operations, and everything must be coordinated. Many times, an employee needs to write many identical reports. , repeat the same report in meetings of different departments, and use the remaining time to do what you are really responsible for.

Even if the work has been done, in a company with a prevalent overtime culture, you cannot get off work on time. You need to "show off working overtime together, create the appearance of working hard, and show your own value."

Under such overtime work, many migrant workers not only lost their lives, but also quickly experienced "red lights" in their bodies, ranging from dizziness and nausea, chest swelling and pain, cervical and lumbar problems, to sudden fainting. He collapsed and was sent to emergency treatment. Therefore, the migrant workers had to consider fishing to adjust themselves and achieve self-rescue.

There are many ways to catch fish. Some people play games, read novels, watch variety shows, TV series or short videos. Some people take advantage of their free time at work to chat with friends and check social media. Sometimes, Moyu employees will deliberately choose video and novel software with interfaces that are more similar to office software. Sometimes, they will pretend to smoke or go to the bathroom, go to the elevator, downstairs of the office or bathroom to get rid of the eyes of their bosses and colleagues and let themselves go. Enjoy fishing.

In Japan, which also advocates overtime culture, some "social animals" have proposed the "paid shit theory": if you stay in the toilet for 10 minutes during work every day, you can accumulate 40 hours in a year, which is equivalent to 5 days if rounded up. of paid annual leave. In order to solve the problem of employees occupying the toilet for too long, some large factories have installed signal jammers in the toilet. However, for employees who are always dominated by office software, being able to temporarily escape from the Internet is another kind of relaxation.

In addition to rest and relaxation, some employees fish not just for entertainment, they fish to enrich themselves. An employee of a large factory told AI Finance and Economics that she started preparing for the MBA exam last year and devoted all her fragmented time to teaching materials. She read during her lunch break, memorized vocabulary while waiting in line for dinner, and spent a large amount of time studying on weekends. Her hard work paid off, and in the end, she was admitted to the MBA program. Another employee of a large factory who is about to resign said that while he was fishing at his work station, he was learning about fund operations and studying how to make money.

But is fishing really a good way to prevent sudden death and ensure good health?

Perhaps not. When working for about 12 hours a day, no matter how good at fishing, lack of rest, exercise, and prolonged sitting will cause irreversible damage to the worker's body. Fishing can temporarily relax the brain, but it cannot save an overworked body.

In the eyes of some migrant workers, fishing is not sabotage, but another form of self-regulation.

However, from the perspective of the company, employees need to perform their duties during normal working hours, and the behavior of fishing obviously violates the company's management discipline. If such behavior is indulged, it will undoubtedly affect the company's efficiency and management system.