Despite being so normalized, the eight-hour workday still covers a lot of time. Some folks, if not constantly supervised, will find their own ways to get stuff done in this time span that are not at all related to work.
Employees shared the brashest, most clever, and most hilarious things they or someone they know did on the job and got away with, all while pretending to work. People gave examples ranging from overlooking a shoplifter all the way to full-blown visits to the gym. So if you are reading this at work, you are in good company, get comfortable, upvote your favorite examples, and comment your thoughts below.
#1
I used to work in Tesco and my manager was an absolute legend. End of shift he would tell us to help ourselves to anything that was out of or just about to go out of date. Anything that was left (which was a lot) he would take with him and hand it out to the homeless.
His attitude to the upper management was “f**k them, none of us get paid enough to give a f**k”.
RIP big John……
#2
If I get sent to a shoplifting where the person is lifting one single sandwich or a pregnancy test or something like that I make it go away by helping the person “find” a couple quid in their pocket to pay for it and writing the call off as a misunderstanding.
20th-century workers often had to deal with workloads even higher than ours. Ten and nine-hour days were standard in many factories. Workers and unions would often strike over it, demanding fewer hours, but it wasn’t until 1914 that major companies started to decrease the length of the workday. Henry Ford, the most unlikely ally to workers, was instrumental in this time span becoming standardized.
Two years later, the Adamson Act saw a Federally mandated workday length specifically for railway workers. Once this precedent had been set, it became more normal, all the way up to this day. We still use “a 9 to 5” as a quick way to refer to any given workday, despite the fact that remote workers have very mixed schedules and service workers tend to have other kinds of shifts.
#3
Everyone thinks I’m being helpful and cleaning up when I carry the pallets outside…nah, I’m fussing the cat that lives out there.
#4
I’m sticking googly eyes on everything. Plant pots, monitors, the tea tin, the milk. Everything. I do it openly, I don’t hide it, and yet no one has noticed it’s me. Just constant “where are the googly eyes coming from?” when suddenly there’s one on the outside of someone’s lunch box in the fridge. I started an entire year ago and convinced the cleaner not to pick them off.
#5
On site plumber on a very large industrial site. I keep all the scrap organise it and weigh it in every 3 months. Make around £200-300 each time. No one’s knows been doing this for at least 5 years now. My way of sticking it to the man and also helping out the planet slightly.
Modern managers, despite their best efforts, need to realize that just because a workday is eight hours, doesn’t mean an employee will actually spend every last second working. This is not to say that they aren’t productive, but some organizational research suggests that office workers might spend as little as half their time directly engaged in doing tasks.
#6
Walking my dog.
On my at home days I take my dogs out up to 2 hours to the fields and the woods. I manage to get good signal, so I’ve replied to messages, and emails whilst sat on a log watching them eat mud.
#7
I join every zoom meeting a few minutes late to avoid the awkward small talk
#8
I constantly turn a blind eye to shoplifting because I can’t possibly justify humiliating or punishing someone for having little to no choice but to steal something they need ( band aids, tampons, etc) that they obviously can’t afford
As much as it might annoy higher-ups, even a productive worker needs to take little breaks to wind down. Just checking one’s email or taking a five-minute walk can help the brain reset and actually make the employee more productive in the long run. Some in this list have mentioned going to the gym, which is time-consuming but could be a great stress reliever if done correctly. But it seems that most managers aren’t ready to have that conversation yet.
#9
My wages have been wrong for the past 6 years I’m supposed to be on a lower wage band instead I’ve been getting £167 more every week for the past 6 years!! Woop woop
#10
I leave an hour early every day – as does my manager. If they can’t be arsed, why should I?
#11
Three times a week, on my WFH days, I go to the gym mid-day. I couple these sessions with lunch – because I’ve noticed lunch time varies for everyone in my company from 12:00 to 14:30ish, so it gets quiet. This gives me enough time to go to the gym, workout, get back home and then have a quick pre-made lunch.
Honestly because of this I am also much more productive – I come back relaxed, energized and I feel that dividing my day in two distinct parts is more manageable. Also my workouts have benefited, I go the gym at my peak and I’m no longer tired and cranky and this translates into my performance. There’s also less slacking off cause I know I’m on the clock. And with the workout out of the way, I can enjoy evenings more – without having to wake up at the crack of dawn and go to the gym then.
And it’s important to remember that not all work is created equal. Many jobs burden people with unnecessary busy work, perhaps to create the appearance of productivity, even when all it does is tire people out without any benefits. Business analysts believe that in many companies, up to 40% of work is really just busy work that could be delegated or left until later.
#12
I wrote a novel during my probation period at the most recent job.
#13
I use my Monday morning to clean my house and do my laundry. On a Tuesday mid morning I go do my weekly shop. On a Friday I take a nice long lunch break. Then throughout the week I like to watch YouTube or TV shows while I’m working. I’ll also do home admin stuff during the week as well if needed. I’m meant to work hybrid but gradually reduced the days I went into the office, no one said anything so now I WFH full time.
The key to getting away with it is hitting deadlines, making sure you don’t miss meetings and being helpful if someone messages you. All the ‘being away’ goes very much unnoticed and no one really cares. Also use the, my internet dropped out excuse sparingly when you’re late to reply.
#14
I once had a temporary agency warehouse job. I reported to all the right people but wasnt on anyones list. I still got paid. I spent the next 6 months wandering around with an empty cardboard box doing bugger all & still getting paid!
Of course, for every worker just doing their own thing while on the clock, there is a manager making time and effort to self-sabotage by overloading their best employees and just creating difficulties. If you want to hear more about one such case, We has got you covered, check out our article on a woman who ended up maliciously complying with her manager’s demand to “do more.”
#15
We went fully remote over covid. I get a solid 3 hours of work done a day. The rest of the time is side project, gaming, browsing the web, etc.
I stopped feeling guilty ages ago as I get FAR more done now than I ever did in the office and get a ton of praise for it so everyone wins.
#16
I’m in the office 3 days a week. Because home working is so widespread now, I’d say 75% of the time there’s nobody in who I have anything to do with. So I’ve realised nobody is aware what time I leave. I’ve started leaving at like 4:15. It’s great.
#17
Using cleaning chemicals to actually perform my job properly, despite being a water only job. Like f**k are you getting grease and grime off a floor with just hot water.
£5 bottle of 5L degreaser, makes a 1 hour job 20 mins.
#18
Very rare, but sometimes, I get my full breaks.
Cries in NHS.
#19
I wfh, I take my lunch break then after eat my lunch at my desk.
I still do work, but I have double the break.
Work in tech and so much stuff can be automated. You occasionally get one of those horrible repetitive jobs for an audit or some such. Oh, you want me to spend 3 days gathering all this data, sure! I spend an hour or two writing the automation script. Enjoy some downtime for a couple of days then run the script that spits out the results in less than 5 minutes. Boss thanks me profusely for my hard work on this laborious task whilst I sit there laughing!
#21
One job I had, I got annoyed at the smokers taking so many extra breaks on night shifts, so I just started tools downing whenever they went out, and sneaking off for a shower during one of their smoke breaks near the end of the shift.
Wasn’t any team leaders on nights, and while the group leader in the office definitely noticed the clean/slightly damp hair a couple of times, he knew he couldn’t say anything without me calling out his fellow smokers.
#22
I work outside, often away, or at home unsupervised. 8 hour days.
There have been days I’ve got up, made a couple of phone calls, then gone back to bed.
Other days, like today, I’ll be out on site for an hour, then I might head into town for a mooch around.
I was working with my boss a couple of weeks ago. We were done by 11am. We went on a bar crawl for the rest of the day. He’s just as bad. Runs his own fishing guide business on the side.
#23
I’m a home worker. I roll out of bed 5 minutes before my shift starts, pop on a presentable shirt in case I’m about to head into a meeting, and then boot the laptop up. After 30 minutes, when I know where I stand with the workday, I head off to brush my teeth, and get showered and dressed.
Not much of a difference, but it’s 20-30 minutes of my life saved every day. It has lead to some awkward situations when I come into an emergency at 9, and I’m still sitting in meetings by midday in my pyjama bottoms.
#24
My previous employer was lax as f**k with IT equipment, every year my team would put a requisition request in for new laptops and every year IT would send us each out a brand new, top spec Dell XPS.
Not once did they ask for the old machine back and the department manager was completely uninterested so we kept them.
I must have had upwards of £10k in laptops from that place in the handful of years I worked there.
#25
I’ve been moving from a flat to a house over the past couple months. Pretty much all of my house hunting, bill redirects, notifying the bank of change of address etc etc gets done during work time. I basically never do “life admin” off the clock.
#26
Farting.
I’m really, really good at silent farts and weirdly, no one ever suspects me. They blame it on Janice every time
#27
Built dozens of kayaks using company resources. I donated the local scout group ten and built myself a grp river shooter with a layer of Aramid.
#28
I was forced to sit through a particularly boring training session over Teams not too long back, on a system I wouldn’t be using. I spent most of it on mute with my camera off playing Zelda.
#29
I had a friend my years ago who went on a skiing holiday, but still took calls and emails at the top of the mountain cause they didn’t have annual leave
#30
I have 4 screens in my home office. I only need 3 to do my job properly.
The 4th screen is spent watching YouTube, playing games and f*****g about on Reddit.