It’s just another manic Monday and you wish it was Sunday. But don’t fret; at least you can do some online shopping while at work. According to recent surveys by Yahoo and SurfControl, almost everyone else seems to be doing it.

Research shows that the heaviest Internet retail volume occurs on Monday and tapers off as the week progresses. After a busy in-store shopping weekend, consumers want to log onto shopping sites using their company’s broadband connection. And it looks as though bosses are tolerating it.

Estimates show that 30-40 percent of employee Internet use is not business-related. Moreover, SurfControl’s survey of 1300 companies with web-access shows that 67 percent of them do not restrict employee access to online shopping sites while 70 percent do not limit the use of auction sites like eBay.

On the other hand, control is extended to prohibit the viewing of sexually explicit sites and web-based email like Hotmail and Yahoo.

“It’s clear that corporate America does not consider shopping as much of a risk as pornography and web-based email,” stated SurfControl’s senior vice president of marketing, Susan Getgood. “Companies are more tolerant about online shopping and focus more on monitoring abusers.”

Yahoo’s survey reports that more than a quarter of all employed online users did some of their shopping via the Internet this past holiday season. Fifty-six percent of them say their bosses were aware of the activity, as well.

Conducted by Harris Interactive, the study also shows the following:

Of people who shop online while at work during the holidays…

• *35-44-year-olds are most active with 36 percent indicating intent to shop from work
• *29 percent of men and 26 percent of women shop online for gifts at work
• *57 percent of respondents shop during lunch or on break
• *24 percent say they are likely to stay late at work to shop online; 29 percent of single people and 19 percent of married people will stay late

Many companies have updated their policies regarding the types of Internet use that is restricted for employees. However, almost all of them consider limited personal online and email use acceptable, as long as it doesn’t interfere with work.

In other words-don’t get carried away.

According to a 2001 study by the American Management Association, 63 percent of 1,627 businesses do make some effort to track employee Internet use. If an employee is abusing his/her privileges, the data is absolutely there to back it up.

Andy Rooney once said “Computers make it easier to do a lot of things, but most of the things they make it easier to do don’t need to be done.”

He must not be an avid Internet shopper.

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