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How to get away with doing nothing at work
Loafing at work is fast becoming an art form. Looking busy and achieving nothing takes skill and preparation, so if you've ever been caught out by your boss, here's how to make sure it doesn't happen again (without having to get down to work)
For run-of-the-mill workers, the key to loafing is to create an illusion of purpose and industry that deflects the scrutiny of superiors.
The late, great Spike Milligan used to tell a tale of his army years, during which one inspired loafer took to wandering around with a tin of DDT (insecticide). If ever anyone challenged him to explain what he was doing he snapped sharply to attention and replied 'de-lousing sir'. Nobody ever enquired further and he would be free to carry on doing precisely nothing in peace.
We're not saying that you should take to schlepping around large containers of poison (although this may still work in the military, prisons, and fast-food outlets) but the key points to this technique are as true today as they ever were. The first is that if you want to spend all day doing sweet Fanny Adams then you'd better have a cover story. The second is that whatever that story is you must be prepared to launch into it with conviction and the kind of enthusiasm that suggests nothing would please you more than to explain it in incomprehensible detail until your interrogator's ears bleed.
When it comes to a cover story there's nothing like a good prop and we've come a long way from the DDT tin. Today's loafers have at their fingertips an armoury of high-tech tools.
Once the great trick was to always be seen with a clipboard. Clipboards speak volumes about business, importance, and those endless 'jobs' like 'stocktaking' and 'time and motion studies' that were always nothing more than the inventions of loafers looking to do as little as possible before knocking-off time came around again. The trusty clipboard (and its executive brother, the bulging file) can still come in handy but if you really want to get away with it these days it's time to go digital. Digital devices add a whole new dimension to loafing because their very presence intimidates the Luddites and their multi-tasking flexibility makes it hard for even the initiate to call your bluff. Proof positive of this is the evolution of the uber-loafer - the king of the freeloading food chain. Posing as 'systems administrator', 'network engineer' or any one of a dozen similarly meaningless monikers, these geek gods have reached the noodling nirvana where they can face down anybody from line managers to the CEO. This is done with nothing more than a withering look and a sarcastic outpouring of gobbledygeek. A typical example would go as follows:
Baffled CEO/MD/HR exec:
'So what exactly have you been doing for the last three weeks?'
Uber-loafer [sighing at the pathetic inadequacy of the question/questioner]:
'Patching the Unix kernel.'
CEO/MD/HR exec [even more baffled]:
'Patching the colonel?'
Uber-loafer [with the exaggerated patience normally reserved for small children]:
'Upgrade, protocol, security, TCP/IP, parallel-processing, cluster, hacker, hexadecimal, three-speed, cupcakes...' [the final words of which are normally delivered to the back of an already retreating questioner].
You don't have to be an uber-loafer to take a leaf from their book. Even the humblest warehouse worker, if wielding one of those brilliant, handheld data input devices, is in a position of strength because nobody, not even the person who bought them, really knows all the things you might be doing with them. Other examples include Blackberries ('of course I'm not skiving; can't you see I'm emailing?'), laptops ('Fragfest' All-out Hover Tank war? Certainly not; it's a 3D graphic representation of next-year's projected margins?), or any kind of spreadsheet (make sure you can bring up an elaborate diagrammatic representation with a triumphant punch of the button).
Defining idea...
'Look at me: I worked my way up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty.'
Groucho Marx
Excerpted from Getting Away With It by Steve Shipside, priced £6.99, published by The Infinite Ideas Company Ltd.
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