How some people get away with doing nothing at work

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https://www.vox.com/money/23733244/bull ... hing-to-do

That's an interesting article. It's also interesting to consider the difference between doing nothing at work versus doing very little work. Only a minority of people get away with doing nothing at work, whereas far more people get away with doing little work.

In most large corporations in the stockmarkets, the majority of the employees do little work. A minority of naive suckers work hard for the benefit of the majority who do as little work as they can get away with.

This the reason why you'll see many large corporations that have thousands of employees that achieve little. With such an army of employees, a corporation should be capable of achieving big things in little time, but no, they don't achieve much with thousands of employees. The general rule is that the higher the number of employees, the greater the inefficiency and avoidance of work.

I don't criticize employees for avoiding work. If you're stuck in a job with an abusive or exploitative employer, then it's smart to try to do as little work as possible. It would be naive and gullible to work very hard and sacrifice your life for an unethical greedy employer.

Walk quickly and carry a clipboard.
I was taught that early in my career.
Worked like a charm.

Add a second person, hard-hats and hi-viz vests and you'll never get harassed over spraying graffiti again.

____________

At my job at home Depot it appears that the employees that are "in" with the boss get away with doing next to nothing. Everyone has subconscious biases. "At will" employer. Maybe they are having sex with the boss. Whistleblower retaliation.

Another thing they suggested was tapping your fingers on your desk, like you're thinking hard.

In my early years, my coworkers would hand off their scut work to me.  I ended up getting paid overtime for doing their jobs as well as mine.  Then came the day the Boss called me on the carpet to explain why.

3 out of 12 people lost their jobs that day, and my duties were strictly defined from that day forward.

I learned to say, 'No' whenever someone asked me to do their work for them.  Didn't make many friends, but it was the beginning of my rise through the ranks.  My coworkers had to learn how to do their jobs and do them right.  Some didn't and they fell by the wayside.

Sucked to be them.

Although that clipboard tip is commonly repeated by people, surprisingly nothing happens even when your manager suspects that you're avoiding work. The manager just ignores it because he/she is doing the same thing. (Not always. Exceptions exist, of course.)

Only in government can you sit on your ass and do nothing forever. In private businesses, eventually the day will come when the inefficient, the useless, the shiftless will be separated from the company.

A smart employee understands that when they are given little or nothing to do, even if the paychecks keep coming, its best to find employment at a business where everyone is busy.

Yes, but the even smarter employee (or rather the ruthless employee) learns to become adept at appearing valuable to the corporation even when doing as little work as possible. Nowadays employees use increasingly sophisticated techniques to make themselves look worthwhile retaining.

Alternatively, some other employees use a different psycho-trick: Instead of making themselves appear valuable, they kiss the boss's as*hole or f**k him. I don't mean literal sex. I certainly also didn't mean literal ass-kissing either. I meant, for example, if you determine that your boss is a big narcissist, then you appeal to his narcissism. Then even if he suspects that your value to the corporation is minimal, he finds excuses to keep you because he enjoys you so much.

Working hard and diligently puts you at risk of losing your job in a large corporation. It also increases your risk of being bullied by your coworkers.

Every few years, the CEO decides to "trim the fat" by firing 5-20% of the employees. You would expect that the firing criteria would be something like "Fire everyone who seems to be lazy", or "Fire everyone who works on projects that we don't really need", but no, that's not what usually happens. Too often the criteria is a specific number of employees such as firing exactly 10% of the employees.

If you have a habit of working hard and diligently, this means you devote most of your working hours to actually working, not to other activities such as ruthless socializing and ass-kissing to improve your popularity and perceived worth.

Therefore, what happens when your manager receives the order from the CEO to choose a specific number of employees to fire? Too often, the manager chooses to fire the hard-working employees because these good employees spent so much time working that they didn't perform the necessary socializing and ass-kissing in order to be liked. Thus the manager fires the employees that he/she least likes, and these least-liked employees are commonly the hard-working employees. The employees who are liked and favored are those who work less and socialize more (where "socialize" actually means ruthless manipulation and social climbing).

Exceptions exist. Note I said "in a large corporation". Small private businesses operate differently, especially if the boss is the owner of the business.

One time I was a middle-manager in a corporation where a bumbling incompetent forklift driver survived multiple rounds of lay-offs. I wasn't his manager (he was in a different department). He regularly destroyed things by mistake. He crashed the forklift into things (but never into people), and he let things fall off the forklift and break, and he drove the forklift over things and broke them under the weight of the forklift.

Every time a lay-off round occurred, he wasn't selected to be among those laid off, because staff members enjoyed him so much. He was constantly the butt of jokes. He made his coworkers feel better about themselves, because they compared themselves with him and noted how much better they were than him. He was regularly mentioned in smalltalk that amused people, because people were amused every time he accidentally damaged, destroyed, or lost yet another piece of equipment. Nobody felt threatened by him, and nobody felt envious of him, because he was obviously very incompetent.

He was still employed at the time when I quit. Unfortunately I never discovered whether he was genuinely incompetent versus a secret "genius" who pretended to be extremely incompetent in order to keep his job in an ingenious manner.

One time I did try to have a little manager-to-manager chat with his manager because I was curious to know whether he was faking his incompetence, but his manager didn't seem to understand my question, or felt uncomfortable discussing it because the truth often makes typical people uncomfortable. So I never discovered the answer, but either way, a genuine bumbler or a fake bumbler may well be favored over a hard-working diligent employee in some corporations.

Last job I had, allowed a mid morning 15 minute break, lunch, and 15 minute break which was an hour and a half before closing time. I often saw one of the floor managers cram six cigarette breaks into that last hour and a half.

Would often see a small group of 3 or 4 workers hide beside the outside of the building to drink coffee.

Don't know how they did it. We were a very busy work site.

this is strictly a white collar phenomenon. the working class by and large works hard for little money and can never get away with slacking off even a bit. even if the boss is distracted, there are computerized minders that make sure nose is firmly and persistently on grindstone.

Oh yeah, in some jobs, your work output can be measured objectively, and this makes it difficult or impossible to avoid work. For example, if your work output can be easily measured by counting the number of physical components that you produce per day. In a white collar job, your work output is harder to measure therefore easier to fake. Basically, the lower you are in the social hierarchy, the harder you're required to work, and the less you're paid. Society stinks.

I'm joking here.
The reason I heard that trick was that one of my supervisors did it.
Turned out she was sleeping with her boss.
Turned out she left her husband and young son to be with her boss.
Turned out her boss died of a heart attack right after.
Turned out her husband and son wouldn't take her back.

Sucked to be her.

It didn't work like a charm for me to do that.
I had to paddle water faster and harder than everyone else.
I was never able to slack because just existing in a social environment was hell.
Doing my job on top of that, and single parenting, nearly killed me.
Literally.
I'm still recovering.