Should We Expect Privacy in the Workplace?

There was a report on public radio the other day about something to do with the workplace. I don't remember what, but at some point the reporter remarked that an employee of the large company under discussion was outraged that the employer dared to read his emails which contained private information that the employer had *no* business looking at. His numerous emails that had been written and sent on company time using the company's computer running the company's software.
I find this mystifying. Not that the company's goods had been used for private purposes – I am guessing that anybody with access to a computer at work will have used it to send personal messages at one time or another. Will, in fact have made private phone calls, filched ball point pens, taken an extra ten minutes for lunch, and taken any of a long and varied list of liberties that the employer might not, strictly speaking, approve of, although it would be naive indeed if the company were truly unaware that such tiny felonies were a daily affair.
What was the eye-opener was that the employee who, having been caught red-handed and asked to spend more time on his actual work, for which he was paid, and less on his private conversations, instead of saying, demurely, “Oh, yes, sir, it won't happen again, sir, I'll get right on that report, sir” and then scurrying off to look busy for a week, tops, before figuring out a way to continue his malfeasance so as not to get caught a second time. Instead of taking this very sensible and mollifying course, this quarter-wit threatened to sue the company for reading the rubbish that he shouldn't have been writing on company time to begin with.
What was he thinking?
This is another example of Our Society's failure to expose the young to reality. Somebody had failed to sit down with this young imbecile and explain what it means to get and, more importantly, to keep a job. Maybe some respectable institution should issue plastic cards to be read to prospective new hires and then given to them to study at their leisure. The card should say something like:
“OK we will hire you. Here's the deal: We are buying from you 40 hours of your time each week excluding holidays. These are our hours and we will do what we like with them. This will not include taking your dog to the vet, picking up furniture from Walmart using the company's truck, or slipping out for a long lunch with your college roommate.
The computer on your desk is not provided so that you can while away an idle morning playing solitaire or forwarding pictures of kittens to your mother.
When your supervisor gives you a task with a deadline of, say, Friday, what is meant is that the task should be completed before Saturday. This Saturday.
Any items under this roof that you did not, yourself, bring here are not yours. The stationary cupboard is not your source for household supplies; those felt-tip markers belong to us, not to you, along with the staplers, post-it notes, and printer paper stacked nearby.
If we catch you stealing our stuff, malingering, texting your friends on our time, using our materiel for purposes unrelated to our needs, we reserve the right to kick your butt.
Do you understand?”
I am reminded of a young man at one of my previous places of employment. This place generated a lot of data and generated endless reports which took up huge chunks of space on the in-house servers. These were very large servers, but every now and then they would approach capacity and the Keepers of the Data would scan through them to find who was taking up the space. Then they would natter at the responsible parties to purge, archive, or move it.
The young man in question was one of these quiet introverted people who never made eye contact and who spent his days alone in a dark windowless room full of computers doing something with data files, so it was not a surprise that his account on the servers very nearly outstripped those of all other users. What was a surprise was that much of the space was taken up with photographs, which he did not work with. This excited the curiosity of one of the Keepers of the Data, who was having a dull day anyway, so he opened one to see what sort of maps or micrographs or field trip records our young man might have accumulated. What he found was hundreds and hundreds of high-resolution pornographic pictures.
What happened next was that probably the most extensive collection of porn in all New England vanished without a trace, and Our Boy got his butt kicked. It could be argued that he was not the brightest star in the firmament, but even so, it is significant that the young ninny did not threaten legal action for invasion of his private fantasy life on company time.
It could be that as jobs become hard to get and good jobs nearly non-existent, the idea that the workplace is merely an extension of our home life will gradually fade as both employer and employee come to understand what each owes the other. However, in the fine American tradition of “Anything worth doing is worth overdoing” there are disquieting symptoms of a movement toward the workplace moving into the home. It is already fairly common for companies to demand that its employees not smoke at all, anywhere. I understand that some are moving toward prohibiting all alcohol use. Next up, what? Overeating? Trampoline use? Using the Lord's name in vain?
I realize that moderation is not a notable feature of the national character, but I dream of a time when our time at work is time for work and then we can go home and forget the buggers.