No Solitaire for you!

Solitaire Costs Man His City Job After Bloomberg Sees Computer

The Times: Edward Greenwood IX was fired Jan. 30 from his job as an assistant in the city's lobbying office in Albany, not long after the mayor spied the game on his computer screen during a Jan. 4 visit to the state capital.

Mr. Greenwood, 39, said he was dismissed with no notice, and no severance pay, after working there for six years. He earned about $27,000 a year for duties that included sending legislative bills to city agencies and copying and circulating office memos.

Mr. Bloomberg confirmed yesterday that Mr. Greenwood's firing offense was the game of solitaire, saying that city employees were not paid to play at the workplace. The firing was first reported yesterday by The New York Post.

"I expect all city workers — including myself — to work hard," Mayor Bloomberg said during a news conference in Midtown Manhattan. "There's nothing wrong with taking a break but during the business day at your desk, that's not appropriate behavior."

In response to a reporter's question, Mr. Bloomberg, who built his own financial information empire, added that his own lack of computer skills had probably kept him from using his work computer for anything else.

Mr. Greenwood said yesterday that he always finished his work in a timely fashion, and that he played solitaire only when there was nothing else left to do, usually a few times a week or during lunch breaks.

"Any and all work I had to do, I did with a passion," he said. "If I have a stack of things to be done, I'm not the kind of guy to put it off."

You know, I really liked Mayor Bloomberg during his first term. He got things done, brought a good management philsophy to City Hall, and generally seemed to be someone with a good heart who had his priorities in the right order.

But starting with his oddly angry and unprofessional demeanor during the transit strike, it seems like Mike's been drifting a little in his second term. He seems increasingly to be feeling his oats--like he has nothing left to live up to and can throw his weight around.

Which he can; his electoral mandate gives him the right to impose his will on the city for the next four years. But I'm pretty sure the voters of this city would rather he use this new-found confidence and edge to get the city more education funding or to clamp down on handguns or to fix your broken ACS department. Rather than taking his wrath out on $27,000 a year employees who you catch with solitaire on their computers. Why not just give the guy a warning, put the fear of God into him?

I guess that wouldn't have given him a chance to grandstand a little, to stress the sober work ethic that's made him a billionaire, to signal it's no longer business as usual. But it's like hunting rabbits with an elephant gun--it makes you look bush league, and is a waste of everyone's time and energy.

And it just enhances a growing suspicion in many people that this mayor's a bully.

Image of Mayor Michael Bloomberg by Antony Zito.