Is there a link beween Tim Peake and Bogdan Barbulescu?

A Romanian court found a company innocent of violating an employee’s rights, after the company read his emails. The two weather men looked at their keyboards.

Weatherman  1 : What are you doing?

Weatherman  2 :  Just sending a text to my wife telling her I’ll be a bit late home tonight.

WM1 : But it’s work time. If our courts rule as a Romanian court did, the Met Office can look at your phone and see you were texting instead of working. One chap called Bogdan was sacked for it. He took the company to court and lost.

WM2 : It took ten seconds.

WM1 : Perhaps, but I bet you were thinking about it for at least 5 minutes before you sent it. Bogdan had been emailing his girlfriend from a work email account.

WM2 : Maybe my crime was less serious, because it was my personal phone .

WM1 : Yes. What did he do wrong? Was it thinking about his girlfriend during work time, or using the company’s email accounts? The company had imposed a total ban on private internet use at work – so Bogdan would have been sacked either way.

WM2 :  You are saying I have to be totally focused on my work and avoid all distractions. That’s unreasonable. Even Tim Peake stopped work to admire the planet during his space walk.

 WM1 : But he didn’t call up his Mrs did he and say he’d be late home for tea.

WM2 :  He’s going to be very late home – he’s up there for another few months.

WM1: The TUC said staff are less productive and healthy when snooped on. Trust has evaporated.

WM2 : Don’t we all day dream and let our minds wander a bit? That cleaner polishing the Aston Martin in the showroom dreams of owning one.

WM1 : But if she borrowed it to nip out to the shops she’d be in trouble.

WM2 : She needs to be subtle. If she test drove it to check the brakes were working, she might get away with it.

WM1 : And if Bogdan had written “hello darling, this is a great place to work and I want to stay an extra 5 minutes tonight” that could have been okay.

WM2 : The sandwich maker nibbles a bit of company cress, not to test it but because he likes cress.

WM1 : It’s probably a question of degree. The odd message, the occasional nibble, even sitting in the driving seat – they are all acceptable. Bogdan’s mistake was to use the company’s time and its resources.

WM2 : So did Tim Peake. It’s not his space station.

WM1 : It’s harder to dismiss an astronaut whilst he is in orbit. You can’t tell him to empty his desk and walk out the door.

WM2 : They could give him a verbal and then a written warning.

WM1 : They won’t, it’s bad PR.

WM2 : So what’s Bogdan going to do now?

WM1 : I hear the European Space Agency are looking for astronauts.....