I remember we once had a programmer who wasted hours on a PHP board long before we used PHP. He also fell asleep on the job because he was doing it at night as well. ;-) We told him he would need to stop accessing the board in work time. Unfortunately he persisted, so we called him in again and told him that we were left little choice but to block the board at the router. Had he circumvented the block using a proxy or similar, we would have taken it very seriously. But firing certainly wasn't the first option. It never is for a valued employee.

Agreed. Obviously, in that situation, had the person persisted in accessing the board, then it was clear that the person was clearly defying orders.

My personal opinion, firing should be the last resort. It should be one where any reasonable reaction would be, 'yeah, i agree, he/she needed to be let go'. In that instance, firing is usually better for both sides....anything less than that, and it leads to future issues.

We don't know the full story in this case, because N has chosen not to tell us. However, it does seem likely that the specter of "taxpayer funds" may have contributed to the response from her publicly funded employer. All other rationalizations aside, the sending of these sorts of letters seems a most dismaying conclusion to a dispute that started with one party's dislike of UT.

good point!