4 ms·
I have a company. Our first employee (twenty years ago) had a serious MUD addiction. While a decent and hard-working fellow, he couldn't resist playing his MUD
by kieckerjan 6y ago
I have a company. Our first employee (twenty years ago) had a serious MUD addiction. While a decent and hard-working fellow, he couldn't resist playing his MUD on the job. That was easy enough for him: one of his many terminals was dedicated to it and he would enter a command every few minutes or so. He got a couple of formal warnings before refraining from that behaviour (or he got better at hiding it). Before he came to work for us he had flunked university, and I am pretty sure MUD had to do with that. People who knew him before said he always hung out at the college computer club instead of attending courses.
- seneca 6y agoYeah, MUDs were very much the spiritual precursors to the modern MMORPG. Both have the same extremely addictive property.
- orthoxerox 6y agoEverquest was basically a Diku/ROM/Circle/Smaug MUD in 3D.
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoFor years I had a LambdaMOO or related client open and chatted and did side stuff while I was working, while waiting for compiles, etc. I didn't have any productivity issues as a result. In fact it kept my brain sharp amid the mindnumbingly boring boilerplate JavaBeans transformation code or whatever I had to write. I have a coworker who has his screen split with twitch running on one side all day. He's one of the most productive and smart people I know. So I dunno, was it necessary to be 'formal warning' him?
- shostack 6y agoI'm curious how much "productivity" is lost from employees chatting about non work related things in Slack. I also wonder how it would compare to the time this person spent in his MUD.
- catacombs 6y agoHow did you find out your employee was on a MUD at all?
- kieckerjan 6y agoWell, at that time we all shared a small office and the screen was pretty recognizable.