The Herald reports:

A Boston public works employee suspended twice for sleeping on the job faces firing after allegedly torching a Mattapan home in a boozy spat over a necklace, authorities said.

Interesting: The Boston Department of Public Works is under investigation because of workers allegedly falsifying time cards, but the DPW director gets suspended because he did something to encourage an employee to do her work.

Oh, sure, that something was letting her telecommute from Venezuela for awhile, but there's no indication she did anything wrong or didn't do her work (even the city mouthpiece acknowledges she faces no punishment because she asked for permission).

As somebody who telecommutes, I'm thinking Hizzoner doesn't really get this whole computer-networky thing. If this woman's job consisted entirely of working on servers - and she was a systems analyst, not somebody whom the public would ever contact - it doesn't really matter where she is physically as long as the phone lines stay up. A server doesn't care if you're accessing it from down the hall or the other side of the hemisphere. VPNs truly are wondrous things, as are reliable phone links.

Good to see the mayor is cracking down on lazy Public Works employees, but why do stories like this always seems to mention how this isn't the first time an issue like this has come up?