Solitaire Tester Caught Making Spreadsheets at Work

Redmond, WA--

A Microsoft Corporation employee was disciplined Friday for making spreadsheets on company time. The man, Bronson VanVleet, 25, worked in Microsoft's Solitaire Game Testing Division where his duties consisted of testing various demos and applications for Microsoft's most popular Windows-based one-player game. His employment was immediately terminated.

Theodore Zune, a spokesman for Microsoft, stated the company had a "zero-tolerance" policy for violations such as VanVleet's.

"When people come to work at Microsoft, they are not paid to work on spreadsheets and write memos," Zune said. "They are paid to play games. Period."

In a prepared statement, VanVleet said that he was "profoundly sorry" for what occurred, but that "playing Solitaire all day can be a real drag sometimes."

"I can really only play for a couple hours at a time before I need to take a break," VanVleet went on to say. "It's a sweatshop. It's madness."

Microsoft management began to suspect VanVleet was violating company policy last week when a manager approached VanVleet's cubicle to give him a memo. VanVleet was not at his desk, and the manager left the memo on his chair but noticed several spreadsheets windows open on VanVleets computer.

"I saw six or seven spreadsheets open," the manager, Quinton Baxter said. "And they were definitely not work-related. Had nothing to do with Solitaire at all."

Baxter then ordered a review of VanVleet's computer use and discovered that over half of his work time was being devoted to making spreadsheets.

When confronted, VanVleet admitted to working on the spreadsheets, but argued that he was using them to help the company.

"Sure, I was doing some personal stuff with them. But I was also working on some things related to Microsoft," VanVleet said. "I took some accounting in college. I had a strategy- I was really going to save this company some money. I guess I'll have to take my ideas elsewhere, like Apple, for example. Suck on that, Gates."

Baxter stated that the company reviewed VanVleet's spreadsheets and found "very little, if anything that could be of use."