It’s a bigger question than just a quick peek at the ol’ gmail, obviously, as conventional wisdom has it that billions of dollars in workplace productivity is lost every year to workers blogging, internet shopping, IMing, Twittering, porn surfing and gawd knows what-all else when they’re supposed to be inserting Cog A into Wheel B. (One recent study, however, contradicts this, suggesting personal social networking during office hours actually increases productivity.)

Anyhow, the ethics underlying the issue of workplace web surfing just struck me more deeply today than usual. Perhaps it’s because my temp gig pays by the hour, for a specific time-limited task they need completed. Obviously, they know they didn’t hire a drone, they hired a human, and I as a human would like to remain connected to the outside world while I’m doing my job. Still, I acknowledge that they provide their online resources for business purposes, not kicks and giggles.

So, I just tried to keep it to a minimum, using the ‘net to keep me in the loop but not distract me to the point where my employers-du-jour could argue they aren’t getting what they paid for.