The Misguided War on Solitaire - Cheddar Explains
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- čas přidán 5. 09. 2024
- Solitaire and minesweeper were the first games that came automatically installed with Windows. As more and more employees played these games, politicians wanted to crack down on availability because they said it hindered productivity. However, science shows that small breaks actually help employees tackle problems. So what's the answer, remove all distractions or are they needed?
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My boss once yelled at me when he figured out I and some coworkers were playing CS:GO on company computers during lunch time without inviting him.
That took a drastic turn right at the end.
“They got us in the first half not gonna lie.”
The last three words of that sentence are indicative of many managers.
the boss.. "WOW! JUST WOW!" you: "yeah I know we should be wor.." DE DUST IS MY FAVORITE MAP! YALL DIDNT THINK TO ASK ME?????
i missed this comment somehow, but i find this amusing. honestly, i'd probably be that boss. perhaps not with CS:GO as i don't particularly enjoy FPS. and perhaps not yelling. as long as work is not being disrupted and the company computer systems aren't being compromised, workplace gaming should be tolerated. people tend to focus better and be more productive when they're actually relaxed/content in life. [what a novel idea!]
One thing your video didn't cover. If a worker is bored, they might go try and talk to their coworkers to pass the time, making them less productive. But if they find something on their computer like a game to keep them occupied, they won't waste the time of another worker that's actually getting stuff done.
Also it's easier to alt tab from a game to something productive than it is to leave a conversation that has already started.
Why aren’t you President?
That is honestly a great point. when there is nothing to do you will find someone to procrastinate with you. now instead of one persons mind wandering its 2. When 2 people are talking about that new movie or new game boom suddenly anyone in ear shot is part of the forum and the idea of working just seems Ludacris at that point. where if the person across from me is playing a game to me they are looking at their screen probably working harder than me so I should keep my nose down if I am to keep my job. lol!
I'm a software engineer. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is to load up my brain with all the information I need to solve a problem, and then... forget about it. Go do something else that keeps my _conscious_ mind busy while my _subconscious_ mind grinds away at the problem. An hour or few later... a sudden eiphany, and we're off to the races again. I've easily played 15,000 hands of Solsuite's Lady Palk-t one point I regularly finished games of it in under a minute and a half.
Sounds wrong, but i have done the same just never really on purpose
I miss pinball.
There's a simulator for android. You can download it in the play store
@@zamundaaa776 yay
Honestly that game and some bomb music on repeat
We have windows 7 at our school so most of us when the teacher is not watching we play solitare
@@ccrky That WHATS UP MAN!!
I remember being in high school and I was taking a photography teacher, he was one of those cool teachers that as long as you did everything you needed to for assignments and didn't interrupt his 5 minute lecture at the start of class, you had more or less freedom to do whatever you liked with your time.
So me and my classmate were the kind of kids who would compete to see who could get all their assignments done first so we could get on minecraft because that was trending while I was going to high school.
One day our teacher is out and we are assigned a substitute. Someone had neglected to inform the substitute that our classroom had an unconventional structure. So she goes through the notes and releases us to do our assignments. And in this classroom and any other at our school where students have access to the internet, there are the teachers computers who can have full remote access to any of the students computers in their classroom. So I'm playing solitaire and the substitute shut it down on my computer and told us not to play games. Being the smartass kid in a photography class I decide to screenshot me playing solitaire and set it on a full screen display on my computer. About 5 minutes go by and she notices that I have a game of solitaire and again goes to shut it down. But much to her frustration she is unable to close the window. Being the kind of person who has only a basic understanding of computers she gives up on the effort to shut down my games of solitaire during that class.
Aric Castro dude I did the same thing with a flash game, I had to go out to the hallway and sit
Lol like a boss! What would have been even better was putting on a pair of sun glasses on while she was trying to shut your wallpaper down in vain.
I actually played GTA4 in the office. I literally did same amount of work in 15 minutes while it took 10 hours for other colleagues. Knowing how to use MS Excel in expert mode can come really handy.
The boss caught wind when he heard, “Hey Niko, it’s your cousin! Let’s go bowling!”
I did this! Ugh... I thought I was the only one! I turned 6 hours of excel information logging into about 10 minute of logging information onto one spreadsheet that shared the data with all the other sheets...
Then I played an old age of empires game. For hours.
@@JUGGERNAUT____ sounds like the CAD classes i took would get most projects done in a few minutes then play games on my computer till class ended
Before retirement I was employed as a manager in an insurance company. My boss once derided me because he observed my subordinates playing solitaire on their computer while talking on the phone. I pointed out that solitaire does not require much in the way of brain power and the computer interaction was a way to reduce the stress induced by irascible clients (of which there were many through no fault of my subordinate). I asked my boss which he would prefer the employee mindlessly using solitaire as a stress reducer of have employees react in kind to the threats an insults they invariably are on the receiving end of. I feel the stance against employees using their computers as a means of reducing externally induced stress is a sure sign of incipient authoritarianism (as illustrate by the "know nothing" legislator in the video).
Well said. I hope he did agree with you
Well, he wasn't excessively intelligent for one thing and I don't think he really understood either the game or the issue at hand.
Considering most people in upper management positions are usually there due to connections and social position rather than merit or intelligence, it's not surprising they can't grasp the concept of stress reduction outlets as anything other than a distraction. Not only are they too stupid to understand the science behind it, they have no way to relate. After all, these are people who likely never had to deal with the level of stress or burnout the average employee does.
Well said, even if he didn’t agree with you, at least you sounded eloquent while you said it
@@kysier6015 Don't forget the phenomenon of getting "kicked upstairs" - they know the job but aren't good at it, so rather than let them drag down production they get promoted to a position where they can instruct others while doing as little damage as possible.
This is why upper management generally has little in the way of influencing the flow down in the grist mill. They go to meetings, discuss productivity and profits with others on or near their level, but are kept far away from people actually doing the heavy lifting.
Personally, I prefer FreeCell. It requires a bit more strategy, and more than 99% of the possible game layouts are winnable, unlike regular Solitaire, where you can only win a little over half the time.
Try Klondike. It's painful to watch my mother play it, impulsively till winning a game, on random difficulty, with what I'd estimate is an 80-90% rate of failure.
The only windows card game I ever became attached to myself is spider. I don't really play it all that much anymore, though.
Windows help said that all FreeCell games are guaranteed winnable.
@@ETXAlienRobot201 Klondike is just the real name of what Microsoft calls just Solitaire.
Sie, Evan Setiawan they are supposedly specially picked, but my dad went on a completionist run a few years back and iirc he actually foiund 1 or 2 seeds that were unwinnable. I don't have the seeds at hand, but he might. :)
@@sieevansetiawan4792 They're lying. There aren't very many unwinnable games, but there are a few. It's much more likely that you'll make a wrong move somewhere, and lose that way, than that you actually have an unwinnable game.
Boss makes a dollar, I make a dime, that's why I play solitaire on company time.
Don't give a shit about "workplace productivity".
With work from home orders in place, I can sleep in, play a couple hours of GTA V and still manage to get my work done
Fascinating! I do agree with micro breaks, especially when you are actually forced to wait 1 or 2 minutes due to the nature of the job. I had no idea that Solitaire was so widely played in the workplace in the early 90s. I guess it's before my time of becoming a working member of society.
adults in the 90's = "boss" key
teenagers in the 90's = "hide the open porn windows from mom" key
good ol ALT+TAB
Always fun when you don’t remember to check the volume level...
Porn: “uhhhhhh!”
You: “Oh shit“
Mom: “Honey what was that?”
What employers don’t understand is that instead of gaming, staffers would slouch off by other means.
Sometimes I sneak a few moments to catch a pokemon in Pokemon Go during the work day. It's just a minute at a time, every hour or so. It definitely helps me recharge if I'm feeling stretched thin by a project.
My coworker who plays Pokemon Go seriously bugs me.
"Do you want to grab something to eat after work?" I say sure. But when we sit down at the restaurant, she constantly checks her Pokemon Go app instead of talking to me. Wow.
You forget that if companies had their way they'd remove the bathrooms and force workers to just hold it until the end of their shift. By which I mean the extended shift that takes it up to 45, 50, even 60 hours a week that you're not paid for but if you don't stay for you're "not a team player".
At more modern companies, they sometimes have a corner with a TV and a playstation. So, if you need a little break, you can play a game on a playstation if you want.
Wow, companies that care about their employees. That's a first.
Solitaire was also important because it helped people learn to use the mouse and GUI if they were familiar with command lines or had no computer experience.
Wow did you actually watch the video? They mention that quite a few times in there.
Office workers always have engaged in activities that are considered time wasters. The thing is, people can only stay on a single task for so long. After that point, productivity actually drops. Typically that time is around the 45-50 minute mark Solitaire provided an easy outlet. You take that away though, people will simply find another way to distract themselves for a few minutes to reset.
You should do a video on cheddar cheese
I used to work at a bike shop where I did builds/repairs in house and over the road. I had my personal laptop at work because it was more powerful than my work Chromebooks, so if I needed to find parts or make orders or anything I could use mine, and I always only kept the inventory/accounting programs on the company Chromebook.
I have Clone Hero on my computer and whenever I used to take my breaks I used to play some songs, I kept my guitar hidden behind my desk, not really for my coworkers and boss, but for customers and visitors not to see.
I used to take a 1/2 hour lunch or just clock out and hang out there and play. The shifts were scheduled kind of weird so spending all day (12+ hours) at the shop but only working 8 was common, because I did a mix of over the road and in house repairs.
I stopped working there because of health problems that interfered woth my life but I loved that job and if I ever get better I'd definitely go back.
I can't believe you got through this whole video without an office space reference
redyellowpink01 “I took something...” [printer destruction mode on]
I never quit understood how that damn minesweeper game worked.
If you klick on a square without a mine the square shows a number. That number is how many mines it has adjacent to it. With that information you deduce where there are mines and where there aren't. (for example, if you have two spaces which says 1 with only one space shared between them you know there is a mine there and that every other space around them is free.)
It took me a long time to figure out how it worked, but once I did, it became one of my favorite games
I did figure that out, I just don't get solitaire its super hard!
Read "help" from the menu.
Once you get it, you're going to play it for an hour. =)
It's like Sudoku, but with bombs.
My dad was a freelance I.T worker and I was dragged to alot of large offices as a kid and I just remembered every computer having a document open but a page of either solitaire or asteroids on in the background as well.
"Windows 3 ushered in the era of personal computing" In 1990? Me and my TRS-80 Model III must have been time traveling. I bought it in 1982. Oh and the "mouse" was a thing well before 1990 as well. In fact, The mouse and hypertext were invented in the 60s, GUIs in the 70s. The Macintosh came out in 1984 and Windows ITSELF came out in 1985.
I never knew you could mark mines by right-clicking in minesweeper! And I was under the impression that I had finally understood how to play it...
In high school I was that one student who wasn’t always talking but on my phone for pretty much the entirety of class. How so? Well either it was sitting inside my binder so the teacher couldn’t see or just on my desk.
I actually was listening to the teacher’s lectures and also doing my work, I usually got it done pretty fast and actually remember about everything for the test.
Games definitely help productivity within reason. A short 2-3 minute game especially if it has light problem solving elements not only recharges me but can help me work through tough problems at work by getting me to look at something else. Trying to focus on one task for 8 hours straight just isn't how my brain works best
What was said: Small 10 minute breaks where you distract yourself is good for productivity
What I heard: PLAY GAMES ALL DAY EVERY DAY!
I've got Windows 10 - I miss the Solitaire game on my computer. BUT we do have Hearts which I still like.
The 47 people who disliked this video are the bosses.
You say "Windows 10 didn't come with Solitaire", but neither did Windows 8, and I don't remember seeing it on Windows 7, either. All of the popular pre-installed games from Windows XP were abandoned, thereafter.
WFH has to make managing this harder, yet most companies are seeing a boost in productivity. My thought, most people such as myself are taking little cheat breaks since no one is here to watch. but then to make up for the cheat break I am working harder in-between while feeling less burned out.
one of the best channels out here in youtube. Just like Vox! love it
BIg D "just like vox" is not a compliment I'm afraid.
Mbeluba vox is a whole lot better than vice
@@dramamine755 that ain't a compliment either
Minesweeper was bigest fail cuz he show how to use to button at one time to finde mine. But 85 % of player dont know that options.
any business blocked like that should sue for equal access.
You mentioned the Boss key, but not Tetris. The PC Tetris game had a boss key as a gimick, claiming that it was introduced by Soviet programmers because Tetris was banned.
3:27 why do you mention that so casually? This is an injustice. It's a horrific thing that people are having to work though their lunch breaks and are getting less vacations. Late stage capitalism
Story Breaks Down to This Humans/Employee's are not Machines!!!
But.... Windows 10 came with Microsoft Solitaire Collection which includes Klondike????? Come on man
actually it's a separate install from the store and is also riddled with ads and pushes XBOX Live registration in your face. Not a fan of Klondike. I observe this pattern with my mother that she doesn't really have that stop button... She plays four of the five games not on a per session basis, but on a per-win basis. And on a random difficulty! Klondike is particularly unforgiving in that setting... legitimate argument for wasted time, but she likes the challenge?! The game is practically RIGGED! I don't see it as a challenge, I see it purely as gambling. The other ones you usually could beat if you knew how to play them. I have yet to see how there's a strategy to klondike besides pray to the RNG gods.
The video isn't technically wrong. The game is certainly still available, though. (also, if you have the executable files, you can run the old pre-installed games without a hitch, including the 3D pinball game they dropped simply because "a floating point rounding error appeared and we couldn't fix it")
@@ETXAlienRobot201 3d pinball?
yes, what about it, exactly?
@@ETXAlienRobot201damn bruh how I find this ish
did some quick google searching
archive.org/details/SpaceCadet_Plus95
This live video truly saved my life
A big F to all the big bosses who treat employees like robots! We work to live, we don't live to work!
This made me nostalgic af for solitaire, free cell, and minesweeper
To piss off an overly micromanaging boss in the mid 90's I used a screenshot of a solitaire game in progress as my wall paper.
As a boss I would have created a "No Appearance of Gaming" rule and sent out a company-wide email explaining the new rule.
I found solitaire to be a good way to clear the mind between tasks. I don't understand playing it for hours tho.
There is a time and place for games. Especially at work. All of the jobs I’ve worked at had a x2 15min break if work flow allowed policy. So yeah, use the time but don’t abuse it.
Funnily enough, Windows 2000 Professional RC2 had its own bosskey. Press the Esc key and it would hide the game to the taskbar as an Excel document. If only they kept it in lmao.
Windows 3.0 wasn't an operating system. DOS was the operating system at the time.
Windows 95 was the first completely graphic OS.
That's pretty much all most office drones do, anyways.
It was Windows 3.1, IIRC. 3.0 was dead on arrival.
cool videos,keep it goin.. love the explainer, especially with anything history
Short version: omnivore predator-scavengers aren't built for sitting in front of glowing minerals and polymers for half the waking day without some kind of occassional entertainment.
Ctrl + Windows + Arrow is another good boss key (though you need Windows 10 and multiple desktops open)
Works at school too! Plus, it works on fullscreen games, alt+tab doesn't.
1:34 you’re telling me this is NOT Brian David Gilbert from @Polygon???
Wait! You can right click in minesweeper!🤯 How did I never know this?
I open solitaire and minesweeper everyday. It's the best break available.
*_>_*
Yes.
There should have been s episode of the office where everyone is distracted by solitaire
So you're saying that we should ban bathrooms...
i think a doctor would know how important bathrooms can be to not only the human physical systems, but also their mental ones.
@@escaper59You could ban bathrooms and then provide free adult diapers instead to alleviate any health concerns about a person not expelling their bodily waste in a timely manner.
I actually learned about this from my grandpa who actually experienced this
Editing needs to be tighter
Yeah, but people aren't machines, and you cannot expect 100% efficiency. If you want that, get robots. A few minutes fucking around with a game or two can be as good as a 20 minute break.
Tell me about free cell :)
In the last 30 years, productivity has gone up over 200%. While wages only 17%....play away I say. Fuck the corporations. Maybe they need to offer a fair wage based on profits and inflation instead of complaining about a fucking game reducing productivity.
No, alt F4 gives you $100.
Lmao you guys skipped windows vista 😂😂
S. V. Villano most people did...
Solitaire was the best thing ever while slacking.
I still don't understand the concept of Mind Sweeper!😂
Lol, I'm playing minesweeper now on a Windows 7. I play it while I watch videos.
All my restroom breaks r game breaks
In windows 10 there's minecraft
Personal Computing was not ushered in by Windows in 1990. The best selling and most popular computer models in the home aren't even from the 90s, according to Guinness World Records.
This stuff looks different from the employers perspective. When paying people from your own wallet .
I never got solitaire
Time well spent? What a crock!
I feel bad when I clock in the time spend on the toilet. I am literally being paid for taking a shit.
It's all just human needs.
We're also paid for taking lunch breaks, drinking water, breathing, and talking to other humans.
We'd go crazy if we worked as efficiently as robots.
So you feel bad for taking care of a necessary human function?
You should feel bad for the time it took you to ponder such a senseless feeling.
That's just why Microsoft said they made it. Here's the real story czcams.com/video/3x5VAg1HJIg/video.html
If only they had minecraft pre installed on every computer
I shit on company time. 💩 I need my 22 minutes 😎
Thats a nasty keyboard
Hmm why was I sent here🤔
the speed of this video is 15% too slow
I'd fire them all for having such shitty taste in games.
It wasn't a hit with me. I found/find it incredibly boring.
fifth
Boomer bosses
Automation.
Yup, soon, AI will replace these people.
@@ropro9817Yeah because AI is so much better at Solitaire
💙
13th
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