I used to work at a company where the directors had an almost perverse affection for the "old-timers" - people who'd started there only about a year before me as it happens. These guys got away with murder.

One manager was the only person who was allowed to smoke in her office. She would turn up at nine with a hangover, drink coffee, smoke and be generally be so moody it was a waste of time talking to her. This would go on until 11 which was often a good time to catch her. She would then go to the pub at 12 and wouldn't re-emerge until about 3pm, louder and merrier than when she went in. At this point there wasn't much point trying to get her to do any work either. Two and half hours later she would go home. She was so dysfunctional that even the directors didn't trust her to do the job she was employed to do and would get in managers from other parts of the company to do anything that was more complicated than making a phone call. Thing is, I think she really believed she was the dogs bollocks at her job.

Another old timer was given an important task: he was to design and project manage the new stock entry system. This person sat in his little basement office for a year, largely left to his own devices such was the trust of the directors. Then a new IT Director was recruited and one of his first tasks was to see how things were going with the system design. He went to have a look at what this guy had designed and was pretty shocked - he'd created about three forms in Access with no underlying code, no table design, nothing. For those of you who don't know about application design this is the equivilent of drawing three pictures of what the application will look like and then sitting back proud of your hard work for a year.

Unsurprisingly the old-timer realised he'd been rumbled and decided to leave very quickly indeed. So quickly that he forgot to take the huge bag of weed he'd cellotaped to the underside of his desk.

Oh if you want to post a story anonymously then just e-mail to me and I'll post it.

Does it count if you had a job where they gave you absolutely nothing to do? 'Cuz I had a job like that for a while. I sat all alone in an office with absolutely nothing to do -- it was just before Internet access became common, so there wasn't even any websurfing to be done. I spent a good six months that way, just sitting all alone, unoccupied but afraid to do anything like bring in a book because it was the type of place where people played a lot of head games and spent time snitching on one another.

I used to call it (the job) "handling the Penske file".

I worked in a group where one guy just stopped showing up one day. No one got around to doing the necessary paperwork to fire him, so he drew a paycheck for 8+ months without showing up once.

Me.

Well, unless I enjoy the work, then I'm such an unstoppable careening fireball I'm a literal hazard to any cow-orkers in the general geographic region. I'd do your job twice just to get on with what I wanted/needed to do. I'm probably a terrible cow-orker.

But agropyron's story is just surreal, and probably deserves a special award or something.

I had a "Penske file" job once, but I knew that's what it was before I took it.

Me. I'm a complete slacker, it is true. Probably why I have adapted so easily and happily to unemployment, especially since the job I was just laid off from was mostly a "Penske file" job.

OTOH, I will do what needs to be done & I work best in mad bursts. Usually I figure out how to do a job well in a much shorter amount of time than anyone else can admits to, and then do it quickly, use my down time to my fullest possible advantage and claim to still be working. Note to ex-boss: it doesn't actually take 3 full days to write a press release.

*mandatory Office Space quote*

on the serious side, it isn't the professional slackers that get me -- they usually hide it well. it's the woman who was hired in a ridiculously busy office, and would take sporadic, lengthy breaks with her feet up, reading the newspaper. this is in an open office environement (ie: not even cubicles)

oh Briank I lived that for a few months. deadly.

Working in a restaurant usually means that anyone who's wasting time will get detected and shouted down pretty easily, so I've never really encountered anyone who managed to slack off very much. The laziest people at the restaurant are the ones who skimp on their clean-ups (in a sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of way) or the ones who convince the management that the rush is over and they can leave, when in fact what's occuring is a short lull in business.

I knew a lot of people who slacked off with an admirable determination in high school, something that became especially noticeable in senior year - I'm talking former honor students with an average of 42 for the quarter. My senior year academic malaise paled in comparison.

I pulled a 3.7 one semester in HS, did absolutely no homework, ditched more than 2/3rds of my classes, and slept in the rest of them. But then I'd read all my textbooks cover to cover in the first week. To say that my teachers were frustrated was an understatement. I used to get kicked out of class for getting answers right.

*zzzzzZZzzz* *literally drooling on desk* "Hey! You in the back! Snoozemeister!! WAKE UP! Care to join the rest of the class and answer question 3 at the bottom of the page?" *mmmmpf* *wipes drool from face* *opens textbook to the correct page, answers correctly, goes back to sleep* "AAARRGH!! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!!!"

I think I was using the same part of my brain that allows people to sleep on buses and trains and wake up before the stop they want off at.

I was once at a short term (freelance) job at a large famous [IT/Telephone name goes here], where everyone did anything possible to delay or make my work impossible. I had 6 weeks to design a website "hub" that tied together all the different departments websites. I soon figured out that I was the only one that was trying to work, the others called meetings past deadline to make decisions that I needed to know the answer to now, called meetings to introduce me to the rest of the team that I was to work with - two weeks into the future - then 'forgot' to call the IT department so that I had no computer to design the frickin' website on, and when I cracked my way into someone else machine in order to do a little photoshopping, they called a meeting about heightening IT security. Oh, and since I was designing the "hub"-site they called a meeting with all the other departments to explain what my gig was. Finally I called in sick with an ulcer for the rest of time (I did have an ulcer) because clearly, when they asked for this hubsite to be ready in six weeks, they didn't understand that I'd actually have to work during these weeks. Do'h.
Best part was that after all that, someone forgot to call the pay-people and I was paid for three or four months, rather than 6 weeks. Nice.

One of my pod-mates here at work has not job. That it, he has a job, he comes in every day and gets paid every fortnight, but he has no role and sits there playing solitaire all day or chatting on the phone. He will quite happily help with anything if anyone asks him to, but never offers to do anything. He is a few months off the minimum retirement age, so the process of getting rid of him would take longer than just leaving him alone and pretending that he doesn't exist.

He has already given notice that the day he turns 55 he is out of here and is selling his house and everything else he owns to become one of the "Grey Nomads". If you are wondering whether I am jealous, the answer is yes. The day I turn 55, we will be out there with the rest spending our kids' inheritance as well.

really, dg? RVing? that's so old-person.

Actually, it looks pretty attractive and doesn't have to be old-person at all - we come across some of these people on our camping trips and can really see the attraction - constant summer, no lawn, garden or big house to maintain, a constantly-changing landscape, about the smallest level of responsibility a modern human can manage and still stay alive, lots of new sights to see and people to meet. The people that are doing this here are getting younger and younger, too - 55 (the minimum age I can retire and access my super fund money) doesn't seem that old, seeing as I turned 44 yesterday and I can see that we could have an absolute ball fishing, swimming, relaxing and also be able to party on as much as we like. I don't know that it is something I would want to do forever, but a couple of years wouldn't hurt too much.

If you manage it right, you can sell up, equip yourself for very comfortable travel, live off the interest from the balance of your money and then, when you have had enough, you should still have enough to buy a home in whatever ended up being your favourite spot and live in comfort. That's our plan, anyway. There is no way under the sun that we are getting sucked into what we see so many parents doing these days, whith kids up to 30 (some even older) still living at home, sucking money off their parents. The day our kids turn 18, the present they get is to be shown the door so they can learn to be adults. The day the last one turns 18, we will be walking out the door behind him and you won't see us for dust. That's our plan, anyway.

happy birthday!!!!

ok, dg, but keep your house and rent it out to pay for the travels, just in case you don't love it.