How long could you getaway with doing absolutely nothing at your job?

It would make a good Seinfeld episode, no?

It is a fun question to consider, even if I wouldn’t be interested in carrying it out. I quite enjoy my job as a college professor.

But I can imagine that if I posted signs on my classroom doors and put some lectures online, then I could probably get away with an entire month during the semester before student complaints reached administration.

There was evidently a professor who no-showed the last 4 weeks of class. Admin didn’t find out until he was absent at the start of the next semester.

Apparently about 7 years. Could have been longer but I finally got bored and got a new job.

I already have that “side gig,” now I need that sweet Christmas party office job.

Two documented egregious examples of what is rife :

1.)The UAW (United Auto Workers) had a contract that stipulated that its production line workers could not be fired or laid off if there was no work for them. So there was a room in the plant where guys would sit for their shift and do whatever, this was before iphones and tablets. Went on for months in months in many cases.

2.)City of Boston had a mandate that it had to have X numbers of minority teachers. But several among those hired were deemed incapable of fulfilling the job demands, so they had to sit in the back of a classroom and "watch" how it was done, at full pay. Some eventually were assigned as "hall monitors" at full teacher pay.

People do this where I work and have been here for years. Many are Itinerant -meaning providing educational services by traveling from district to district working with one or two students at a time. Many never show up, just shoot email saying they stopped by, but the classroom teacher wasn't in. This happened to me recently as such a service provider emailed me saying they stopped by, but we weren't in the classroom, yet I was there.....

So to answer your question specifically ....If it is in the education field probably entire careers, if they are good at fudging documents and no one turns them in.... now some other occupations probably only a few days... maybe weeks.

5 min. Daily, I feel like a Kung Fu master taking on multiple attackers simultaneously.

I'm an IT system manager at a tech company.

Gramps wrote:

why>?> wrote:

Why would you want to do nothing? It's not just dishonest, it's boring. Time goes much quicker when you're busy.

Government employees that are political appointments or the relatives of powerful people are notorious for it. They get no show jobs with little or no responsibilities, same with union leader hacks.

Enough with the bashing of public employees that perform vital services. Also please tell me what it is you think a union leader does? Not just what your out of date stereotype is. My union leader was a nurse for 30 years, became president of our local after a democratic election, and now leads bargaining campaigns to get employers to pay workers better and to maintain our benefits. Without my "union leader hack" my employer would, without a doubt, slash everything if they had the chance to (i.e. without my union). Get outta here with that trash viewpoint. Just because you're a conservative doesn't mean Unions are bad. We even let the conservative union members get the same raises and benefits we do...

Signed,

An actual Union Member

I don't think unions are bad at all...without them, we wouldn't have in place many of today's workplace standards...safety being the biggest example I can think of.

My biggest gripe is that when times are good, you want your piece of the pie. When times aren't so good for a company, you refuse to compromise until the company threatens mass layoffs/closures/job loss.

There are firemen who definitely go weeks without doing any work. In the summer they will wash the trucks and stuff, but they mostly get paid to sleep. Lots of drinking on the job too.

Old Man Runner wrote:

I don't think unions are bad at all...without them, we wouldn't have in place many of today's workplace standards...safety being the biggest example I can think of.

My biggest gripe is that when times are good, you want your piece of the pie. When times aren't so good for a company, you refuse to compromise until the company threatens mass layoffs/closures/job loss.

Yeah maybe there's a small part of truth to that but in my experience I have see a lot of companies making a lot of money doing everything they can to make more money and pay workers less. Free economy sure, but it's good to have a Union to open up the books and serve as a check to unchecked greed.

It's absurd for some of the really big companies like Walmart and Amazon to push anti-Union vile on their workers who, in turn, make peanuts. That kind of an argument might have made sense in a time where a handful of companies didn't drive the economy.

Nancy P wrote:

I can’t remember the last time I did anything productive.

Every now and then I take trips overseas and find a way to get reimbursed. I got caught last week though, and has to cancel

Well thanks a lot for coming to work today, Nancy!! CVibg on the wall sucks. I wish you could have gone 36 days!! LOL

this^

I work for a company that made record profit last year (billions) and finds every excuse to cut employee expenses any chance they can, canceling Christmas bonus 2 weeks before x-mas, rolling back benefits etc etc. They have zero interest in sharing the wealth with the worker, they only share what they need to in order to keep a workforce.......why should employees act any differently and not leverage union power to protect themselves/get as much benefit as possible?

We skoff at union workers getting paid when there isn't work to do, but would a company think twice about getting work done for free if it was legal? Companies try this all the time with interns, unpaid OT etc etc etc.

I mean, if employees acted like companies do, they would do exactly the minimum amounted needed not to get fired.

If the company is small enough where the owner actually knows most employees then it can be different, but that is getting rarer and rarer. If you work for a publically traded company, for gawds sake don't feel like you owe them an ounce of loyalty. I mean ,treat people with respect and do your job (within reason), but know they will cut you loose as soon as the numbers shows it might help them. It's foolish to expect otherwise.

As a teacher, no more than 10 minutes during a class.

I can waste my plan period and lunch but not grading and getting behind on planning lessons will always catch up to me.

track chick wrote:

I feel horrible about this now but in my old job maybe a month.

Which I did.

I used to leave my office door open and unlocked and go out with my friends. They assumed I was "working"

We were usually in a bar.

Oh well.

Sheryl Crow picking labels off Budweiser bottles on a Tuesday afternoon ?

No, but I do love that song!

If I could go back I'd do it differently.

Funnily enough, as someone else on the thread mentioned (working on Saturdays - the software engineer) - I used to make up for it at other times. I went in on bank holidays (public holidays). I felt guilty. It was a result of feeling the research we were doing was a complete waste of public funds and it was flawed/useless anyway, so it had no meaning. As others have pointed out, sitting doing nothing can be soul destroying.

At times I felt that working was more dishonest, because of the information we were putting out.

Nina slim perfect wrote:

jedi master yoda wrote:

About 5 minutes. Apparently nobody here actually works for a living.

Same or less--I am a healthcare provider. Actually seeing patients throughout the day, right up til quitting time.

Have always been jealous of corporate BS jobs where nothing gets done after 11am Friday because it's almost the weekend.

Also a healthcare provider and unless a patient doesn’t show up for an appt, the only down time I have is lunch! Not sure I could have a job where I sit around all day and do nothing but there are some days where I wish I had 30 min to just relax.

Let's be friends.

[quote]track chick wrote:

...I went in on bank holidays (public holidays). I felt guilty. ...

/quote]

Hmm, you must have worked in Canada. Most people work on these "bank holidays", public holidays in the US. In Canada, it's not the case and would be unusual, worth mentioning.

Hello. I completely agree with you. I have been working as a fitness trainer in a prestigious gym for more than 2 years. And I'm perfectly happy with my lifestyle because I'm always on the move. I have nothing against other professions, I do not support people who just do nothing. There is another type of people who want to get a job, but they are not taken. I'll give you one piece of advice, remember that the most important part of the job is the interview. When I passed the interview, I turned to these guys https://www.algrim.co/264-thank-you-email-after-interview to help me write a thank-you letter. This letter is a sign of respect for the people who agreed to hire you