Miscellaneous

Microsoft Helps Keep Lawyers Employed

Via the Tax Prof, there's a wacky but legitimate employment law issue arising over computer boot-up times:

Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ...

This is for real, too. And Windows Vista is not helping matters. For example, for some stupid reason, because of Vista, my Internet connection goes down twice a day, without fail. And the only way to get it back is to reboot my computer. That's an extra 10 minutes, at least, plus the initial boot-up and log off at the end of each day. If I were an employee, I'm sorry, but I'd actually like to be paid for that time.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on November 18, 2008 (boomark / email).