Baltimore City Worker Spent Half His Time Watching Porn

Toiling for eight hours a day at the Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant certainly doesn't sound like a ton of fun. But if you're a City of Baltimore employee, it would probably behoove you not to a) bring a porn DVD in to pass the time, and b) spend a mind-boggling amount of paid time watching said DVD. That's what one maintenance supervisor found out after he was recorded viewing X-rated material on his work computer for 39 hours over a two-week period, per the Baltimore Sun. Baltimore IG Robert Pearre Jr., whose office issued a report, tells the Sun the city received an anonymous complaint. Then city investigators rigged monitoring software on the employee's computer last August.

Over an 82-hour period, the man not only logged 39 hours of steamy viewing—he put in a six-hour, 46-minute porn session during one eight-hour workday, per the report. But maybe he was performing his job while the characters were … performing? The IG report notes the DVD was watched in "full-screen mode," suggesting "little to no work was being performed during the time that pornographic material was visible on the screen." The report estimates he earned $1,166 while watching the DVD, meaning an extrapolation over a year would mean $28,400 lost to adult activity. Pearre, meanwhile, says the porn part was irrelevant: The worker was using city time and equipment for non-city functions; he was suspended without pay in September, fired in January. "It would have been the same if he were watching sports," Pearre says, per the Sun. (The Pentagon warned its missile staff to lay off the porn.)