What I always find to be so frustrating is that I see co-workers doing non-work related things with the company's resources all the time: long personal telephon

What I always find to be so frustrating is that I see co-workers doing non-work related things with the company's resources all the time: long personal telephone conversations, online shopping, reading sports or politics-related content on the internet (especially fantasy sport pools). Oftentimes, the boss is aware of this and doesn't seem to mind. The people who do this are not the most skilled employees either. Yet, if I want to spend my "downtime" learning new technologies (which could actually help me do my work better), I feel like I have to hide it. It would be nice if you could work on your own projects at work in the open as long as you weren't accessing internal company servers. I'd even be willing to bring my laptop in and connect it to the external-only wireless network if the company required that. When I can't improve my skills while at work, I feel that I'm wasting my time.