Government employees say they're only watching porn at work because they're bored

Government employees say they&#039;re only watching porn at work because they&#039;re bored

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last updated 8 January 2015

An employee at the Federal Communications Commission told investigators that the reason he watched up to eight hours of porn at work every week was "out of boredom." A FOIA report revealed that he is far from alone in having both too little work to do and a rampant porn consumption habit. A Treasury employee who had viewed more than 13,000 pornographic images at work "stated he is aware it is against government rules and regulations, but he often does not have enough work to do and has free time," said the report.

It is unlikely that these and similarly bored federal employees will undergo significant discipline for their misconduct. In fact, poor performance in government employees is sometimes even rewarded. A Commerce Department investigation revealed this week that paralegals at the U.S. Patent and Trademark office were paid salaries as high as $80,000 per year, with $3,500 annual bonuses, while spending their days watching TV and doing the dishes at home, with the full knowledge of their supervisors.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.