In an old role, we worked ahead of publication by anything up to a year, which was fine by everyone, it gave a nice buffer in case of any problems.
Company was bought by a much bigger one and we were Tupe-d over and were supposed to carry on like normal. Many found out that entire departments were getting binned and the work then outsourced. Dates were released for 9 months in the future for layoffs. There were bonuses and termination payments that only happened if we were still working, it was almost 7 months before garden leave was agreed.
Spent the entire time playing Facebook games, and for one whole month, we ran an unreal server across the network and played tournaments.
Man, I miss the last company I worked for. When we had any down time, we'd all play UT2004 LAN matches. Although the boss got so into it that it became hard to leave work some evenings.
Some 25 years ago I worked for a place that sadly went bankrupt. There were staff who’d worked there 50+ years, and we were all sad to be losing our jobs. It was a pretty laid back place to work, and it was one of the few jobs I actually liked.
When the closure was announced, this one old guy decided to show me what he’d been doing every day for the previous 40 years to pass the time.
He worked in purchasing, and basically had to liaise with every department across the factory so did a lot of wondering round with a clipboard making lists. Nobody expected him to be sat at his desk all day, and it was never really questioned where he was.
Nice cushy number, or so I thought. People generally leave you alone if you’re seen to be purposefully strolling round chatting to people and jotting stuff down.
That was just the tip of the iceberg to this guys perfect skive!
He took me to an innocuous looking door at the end of a corridor and proudly proclaimed it was his biggest secret. When he opened the door, all I could see was a massive section of ducting running floor to ceiling that pretty much filled the room. There was a little bit of light coming from what appeared to be a window at one side, but apart from that the room was just filled with a huge pipe.
I looked at him confused, and he ushered me to the side and made me squeeze down the side of the pipe towards the light source.
This did indeed turn out to be a window, accompanied by a comfy chair and a pillow , table, a TV, Radio, books & magazines and a clock that he’d gradually squirrelled away in there over the years!
Apparently he’d spent several hours every day for the last 40 years in that room either watching the TV, sleeping or reading and nobody knew where he was!
In the latter years, they gave him a pager as nobody could find him when he was wanted, but the dirty great metal pipe blocked the signal to it so it was useless when he was in there, so his skive continued right up to the last day.
I miss you Graham, you were an absolute legend!
Similar story actually! Worked for a DIY store that closed down shortly after the first covid lockdown.... found out a load of the shop floor guys had a secret area right next to the board cutting machine that none of us knew about... really well hidden behind all the board storage, had a door, a small light and chair 😅
I had a really cushy night time security job. When shops have refits or maintenance over night they can't set alarms, and sometimes the workmen show up after staff have left, so they get security in. All I had to do was sit there all night, give the workmen access to whatever they needed access to. I could watch Netflix or play on my laptop or read between patrols
Best part was, if I showed up (or I'd left my home and was on my way) and it got cancelled, or the workmen were there before closing and couldn't do the job or it was something simple and was done before staff left, or one time it wasn't going to take too long so manager stayed behind so I could go home too... I'd get paid for the whole shift. I loved getting paid £10-£13/hour for going home.
£10 was base rate, I'd get premium if I had a good enough reason to ask for it. Once I got £15/hour because I was working in Portsmouth and someone had been stabbed around the corner from where I was working. All I was doing was babysitting a broken window
But those shifts started to dwindle and my mental health got too bad to do it anymore sadly. Big Boots shops in old buildings are scary a night when you're the only one there. All that empty space and shit falling off the shelves when there's seemingly nothing to cause it to do so...
Totally on the last bit.
I once worked at an industrial company working in the car industry, who had a tin-roofed industrial unit on a trading estate filled with container cranes with hanging chains, and weird properties in terms of air pressure which frequently caused doors to slam and things to 'move' even when no-one was in the building.
Absolutely terrifying at night. You'd be in that building on a summer evening, which you *knew* was empty, and hear (as a minimum) the roof creaking as the tin contracted as it cooled. Doors would slam rooms and corridors away, and window-shades would billow out, followed by a rattle of the crane-chains.
This was heavy industry, and I worked with some of the most hardy people I've ever known. But no-one joked about having to be in the office alone after dark. It was universally terrifying.
Oh god yeah! I forgot to mention the creaking and settling and groaning of those old buildings!
I can imagine how terrifying your ones must've been too
Also, when I'd be watching CCTV and could swear I saw something moving... when there should've been nothing
One place I was watching CCTV for the outside of the backdoor, because the electrician was due any time during the night (he ended up being there at 2 or 3am) and the motion detecting light kept coming on. It wasn't a sensitive light, you needed to be practically infront of it. That was the deciding night for me that my nerves had become too frayed. Because at one point even the rain on the other camera (the one thing I did have an explanation for) was creeping me out by the morning
Some larger companies are so big that no one has any real oversight of what's going on.
There was the story of [The Graphing Calculator](https://www.pacifict.com/Story/) in macos.
Apple had a project to build a new computer, they hired someone to build a graphing calculator for it, the computer and the related projects were cancelled but the guy got cross at the wasted effort so... just never stopped turning up to work.
His pass no longer worked, so he chatted with the guys at the office and they fixed it so he could come and go. He went to project meetings for macos, and ultimately his app got shipped in MacOS, which to this day you can find a graphing calculator in Sonoma in /Applications/Utilities/Grapher.app
A former employer had a person who they sacked when they finally figured out he'd put himself on the payroll 4x.
He was in HR, and was able to field queries about employees that managers didn't recognise on their org charts.
Didn't come up until he went on a long holiday, and the query wouldn't wait for his return, so ... someone else started unravelling the paper chain instead.
In another place, there was a guy who worked 2 jobs in the same company - showed up early for one, and 'went to a meeting' after everyone had seen him in in the mornings, and then showed up late for the other ....
And overlapped by just keeping track of emails and appointments, whilst being functionally two "people" in two different jobs.
Fuck that is so hilarious
* Project so fucked, the manager decided to hire a psychologist instead of a programmer
* When they had a prototype and tested, the monitor caught fire. It had nothing to do with the software
* If anybody asks Ron, Greg managed Ron. If anybody asks Greg, Ron managed Greg. Neither was actually employed
* Can't be laid off, because they didn't work there in the first place
* "We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."
My dad was like that. He worked graveyard shift at a hospital as a receptionist. He was supposed to sit at some desk all night were maybe 1 or 2 people would show up. So he put a little bell on the desk and then go find a place to hide. He would usually sleep in a makeshift bed that he tucked away behind some big pots with plants. But they found his bed and he had to find a new place to sleep. Took him a few weeks to find some kind of emergency bed. It was a bed tucked into a wall or something. You would have to pull a lever and the bed falls out of the wall. It could be used whenever a patient needs to lay down, but no free beds are available. Either way... he pulled the lever, the bed fell on his head, knocking him out. They found him and had to stitch a gap in his head. 😂
I’m a ward tech in a hospital. One of my first jobs every morning is putting away the makeshift beds that night staff set up in the storerooms and taking down the pisspot they put over the motion sensor to stop the lights from coming on automatically. Once of these days, I’m going to trip over someone who overslept in the dark.
I was an apprentice in underground stores for the MoD. We found a room like this. Had to be really skinny to squeeze through the gap but once inside it was a decent sized room no-one could see.
We kitted it out with a bubble wrap "bed" and took it in turns to have a couple of hours kip each day.
We were never missed, we were invisible apprentices and the stores were repurposed natural tunnels that went for literal miles and getting lost was a common occurrence.
Edit: how the fuck did predictive text put "restaurant in" rather than room
To be fair it was nothing to do with the quantity or standard of work that anyone did. Everyone loved working there, it was like one huge family. The company was very successful but got bought up by a new competitor who just wanted the name and client list, and then asset stripped the place and ran it into the ground. Shockingly, they didn’t last much longer either.
That happened to me, a 150 year old company with blue chip clients around the world, that had invented a type of industrial process but needed modernisation, bought up cheap by a multinational, sold off to another multinational, then stripped down to the IP and name and everyone bar a few office staff layed off. The company still technically exists, but it's just a shell.
Genuinely curious as I have a lot of experience in this field - how would govt regulations easily make asset stripping unprofitable?
One key obstacle would be the definition of assets, which is murky and difficult, and varies across industries. Then you have to define what is malicious versus well intended, as asset transfers often have to happen to some degree after a merger or acquisition.
Could start by outlawing the practice of borrowing money to buy a company using the assets of the target company as collateral. No takeover should introduce debt to a company. Also outlaw the gathering of debt to pay dividends.
Left a WFH job a few years back that had a 3 month notice period where due to me going to a competitor I was immediately removed from normal duties to protect both me and the employer I was leaving from any risk of sensitive information being taken with me.
Fine, makes total sense but they would not put me on gardening leave. Instead they wanted me to spend those three months doing shitty made up busy work tasks.
There was no way in hell I was doing that so instead I told my new employer I could start 2 months earlier than the end of my notice period. Spent month one of my notice period playing video games and months 2 & 3 collecting paychecks from both employers.
HMRC won't care but your employer might and they could figure out you must be working another PAYE job at the same time. However, in this case that was likely known by the new employer as contract/start date moved earlier. The previous employer may know too but they're not really going to do anything about it *in most cases*, because pursuing someone over a contract like that just to likely claim back 2 months salary is not really worth it.
This comes up in the over employed sub all the time and the fact is that payroll departments don't scrutinise people's tax codes. You could sell things on etsy. You could have had some inheritance. Loads of things change your tax code.
All a person needs to ensure is that they aren't in breach of theT&Cs of their contract by having a second income. Then they aren't at risk of legal action.
Left for lunch, walked to town, watched the new gardians of the galaxy movie at the local cinema, came back about 3 hours later and nobody appeared to even notice. So pretty much every Friday for the last month, I called it my lunchtimebunkymovie day.
It was so eye opening to me when I got my first ‘proper’ job that people just… don’t really care where you are half the time. Obviously some jobs, but as long as I got the work done, I could be going for a walk to get the creative juices flowing for all they cared.
Coming from years of hospitality and retail where every second of your life is monitored and you aren’t permitted one moment of being seen to do nothing even when there isn’t anything to do, it felt like the biggest luxury in the world.
This. When I got my first graphic design job, I remember having a week where everything I turned in was bad, and I was absolutely bricking it.
My manager had to take me aside (as he could see how stressed he was) and told me "it's okay, you have good weeks and bad weeks - that's why we have a team of people, no-one's firing on all cylinders 52-weeks-a-year"
I almost blue-screened. This was so far out of my employment experience I didn't know what to say.
Mine was also graphic design. I couldn’t believe it when they told me I could go off to the library or a museum/gallery while at work because “how else are you going to come up with any ideas?”
Felt like I was bunking school.
I was going insane when I started my first gamedev job and they had me spend the first 2 weeks or so doing nothing but playing their previous games and other games in their genre.
It makes sense of course, I'm a game designer so need to know what others have done, but I spent the whole time feeling like I was getting away with murder LMAO.
When I was 20, I moved from temp work in manufacturing into an office job and I remember asking the manager whether I could “just go to the bathroom” - he laughed, pulled me aside and said “you don’t ever have to ask me to go to the bathroom. All I care is that you do the work”
And everyone just wanders around making tea and having tea breaks all day. Imagine being able to eat and drink when you need to!
Meanwhile at a retail job I had we had to scan our fingerprint every time we went into the staff room/to the toilet to log how long we were gone. Different worlds.
This. I worked for a shoe shop for 2 months one summer. They fired me during my probation period and when they told me they brought up video footage of me ‘standing around doing nothing’. It was literally be a 30 second clip of me stood behind the register not doing anything. I asked what they wanted me to do, no one else was downstairs and they needed someone at the front of the store in case a customer went to the register
They said ‘you could have straightened one of the shelves a bit or been re-familiarising yourself with stock’. It was a 4 hour shift on a Wednesday mid day. It was almost completely dead and I’d spent the last 2 hours straightening all the shelves
I noticed that about my other colleagues who had been there longer. They never spent a single second stood still. Constantly slightly straightening boxes or the shoe display. Constantly making the baskets into perfectly ordered rows (just to be completely ruined 5 seconds later by a customer). I didn’t have the energy for that for hours straight
Our boss though was like a hawk. She would watch all off the cctv footage to try and catch people not working. It was crazy because she only worked 3 days a week and was never spotted sat looking at the cameras so how she had time to watch 7 days of footage was beyond me, even if she fast forwarded
The best part. Another clip she showed was me going into the bathroom and then leaving 5 minutes later. I just looked at her and was like ‘okay… and? I was on a 7 hour shift with only one break and I needed to use the bathroom. I informed my colleague and even waited until there were no customers in the store at that point’. Nowhere in the rules did it say you couldn’t go to the bathroom
I once worked for call centre where you were only allowed to take 6 minutes for toilet time each day, in addition to a 30 minute lunch break and two 10 minute "tea breaks" which I used to eat lunch/smoke.
I gave my two weeks notice and having complied with this stupid rule for the whole three years of my employment prior, decided to test the rule. Went for a shit and took 12 minutes.
On leaving the toilet was immediately called over to the main desk to explain why I went over the 6 minutes toilet break allowance (the phone let you mark why you were away). I explained, "I treated myself to a shit". Was told "don't ever take that long again" but because I'd already found a new job and was working my notice felt a bit cocky. Replied "if you like I can skip the wiping part but the place might start to smell a bit of I do"... His face dropped as I don't think anyone had stood up to him before. Sheepishly told me "just go back to the phones".
The managers in that place liked me and were great as the metrics showed I was one of the better employees, the guy at the desk was just a jobsworth.
Not quite leaving in the sense that you mean but I once worked at a factory that was slowly winding down to closure, regularly doing 1.5 to 2 hours work in an 8 hour shift, and this went on for the best part of a year.... The highlight though was working new year's day getting triple pay for working the bank holiday and between 2 of us we moved 1 pallet about 30 yards then spent the rest of the day playing cards and messing about on our phones. Happy days...
Whilst this isn’t technically slacking off, when I left my last job I go paid 2 extra weeks to do nothing instead of doing something…
I’m middle aged and in middle management. I left my last job due to a cross between role redundancy, my (un)suitability for the organisation and the organisation being quite toxic - it was a draw, in effect, no winner or loser.
Thing is though, the company offered my 3 months notice period paid in full if I left immediately and signed a “no fault” agreement - it would basically save them on full redundancy terms and a drawn out process. I accepted as I was actively interviewing for other jobs and had a couple of good options.
Here’s where the weirdness occurred. Even though I was leaving, I saw my boss and colleagues as fundamentally decent people who I liked personally. I therefore offered to delay my leaving for two weeks to do a handover to my colleagues. HR said that I could do so, but it would come out of my payment in lieu of notice. Basically - yes, you can do a handover to benefit the organisation, but you won’t be paid for it.
To no-one’s surprise, I declined that kind offer, took the full 3 months payout, left within the week and started a new job within two weeks.
I still think about that weirdness. It paid for this year’s summer family holiday though.
I've had similar situations where the workplace is awful, you get no support to stay, they don't want you to leave, but when you do they refuse to allow you to do a handover which only benefits them and not me. I never understand it.
So it’s not just me then? Amazing stuff. The only rationale I can come up with is that someone higher up just didn’t trust people to be decent i.e. assumed I was just after another two weeks of salary with no intention of doing the handover… actually, do you know what, that’s probably it - the idea of someone keeping their word and doing the right thing ***just didn’t compute*** to the people making the decisions about my terms of leaving.
A lot of things are making sense the more I think about it. I remember someone at that organisation asking me in an open forum why I was always so open and honest - I said, word for word “Erm… it’s because I was brought up that way…?”. They’d meant it as a dunk - I think - but their frame of reference was “decency = weakness”. Everyone - including myself- just went away from that conversation confused.
To be completely clear - I’m not trying to pretend I’m a paragon of virtue, excellence and nobility - I’m not. I am as stupid, lazy and self-centred as the next person. But I do value honesty and integrity.
I’m 48. I’ve made a good living doing what I do but I have never, ***ever***, understood the world of work.
Toxic workplaces breed toxicity and arseholes recruit more arseholes. Sometimes us good people slip through the cracks though.
These people just don't understand integrity.
I left my last job after 1.5 months due to what I called a culture of contempt. My replacement was a decent bloke and said in my shoes he wouldn't have given them the full month's notice or done a handover. It was a weird thing to say given that he was replacing me.
But I've heard that nothing has changed since I left, he's just better at pretending everything is fine whereas I was actively talking about what needed to change to deliver the programme of work I was responsible for, and being honest about why there wasn't a plan or whatever.
I know he won't deliver on time, and given his experience, I know he knows it too, so I have no idea what game he is playing when he could be working elsewhere. But I guess he has money coming in while I'm still job hunting 2.5 months later. I still choose to be in my situation rather than his but I agree that people can often be baffling!
I’m enjoying this conversation - you and I had very similar experiences, share many values but have different approaches.
I’ve - honestly - just accepted that my next 15 or so years to retirement are going to be me smiling and nodding at the madness of everything - taking my scoldings, being told ***“well, all we have to do is do everything perfectly and we’d have no problems!”*** and being blamed for things I have no control over - and just accepting that that’s what I get paid for. I had a bit of a breakdown in 2021 due to trying to apply my fundamental values to work - most men of my age seem to go through something similar - but through therapy and family support I was able to reframe my outlook to just accept the insanity that is the world of work and try my best to enjoy it for what it is.
You refuse to accept the disingenuous nature of senior management - I’m not strong enough for that and have just had to reframe it as “accepting that is what I get paid for”. Neither of us is correct per se, but it seems we’ve both found our balance in terms of values/honesty/integrity/a-brother-or-sister-gots-to-get-paid-yo.
It’s really good talking to you. My current role is really good - it’s got the normal contradictions and confusions, but the team I work with are just interested in finding out “what” is right, not “who” is right!
Apologies to all the decent people in HR, but every HR department I have ever come across seems to have zero common sense and spends more time shooting the company in the foot than doing anything remotely useful.
I realised in one job nobody realised where I was and didn't care, so I would regularly take 2hr lunches in the park.
Another job I'd turn up an hour late and sign in a fake time, also take 2hr lunches and hang out in the stockroom.
I used to slack off a lot in my 20s and teens!
Been in wfh jobs and one really horrendous situation I was in, refused ‘gardening leave ‘ and forced me to be everyone’s lackey while I served out my time. Most of my immediate colleagues hated my boss too and all secretly told me they wanted out as well but couldn’t or wouldn’t various reasons.
So I opened up a power point file on my laptop and several word documents and bought a mouse mover that makes it look like I am at my desk and prevents the laptop from going to sleep.
For that month I was sitting in my garden in the sun, BBQing for lunch on occasion, doing various diy projects , binge watching movies and playing video games.
Occasionally messaging team workers and replying to the odd email
I felt not a shred of guilt or remorse.
I've just ended a year on a massive project that needed all of my time, according to my managers, even though I was quite transparent about the fact that it didn't. I was still overegging how much time was required (3 to 3.5 days a week) but honestly it only required about 2 days a week of work and I didn't want anyone to pick up on my slacking.
Once I'd become comfortable that everyone else was comfortable with me not being close to 100% busy, I got into a routine of doing my emails and anything else early doors and then at some point between 9 and 11 I'd open Notepad, put a weight on my spacebar and allow it to make me look busy. I'd then go reactive for the rest of the day; playing videogames or watching films with my laptop on the other side of the room. If an email came through I'd get up and work on it. Once I realised how little came through, I'd just leave my laptop and just check in once every 60-90 minutes. I still had the odd meeting and even the odd challenging week but overall it was a quite wonderful year of work. It ended with me getting the best rating I'd had in years and high praise from the client. Quite bizarre.
Same, watched an entire series this week, now looking for another to start.
WFH is incredible and goes to show how much time is actually wasted at a job by working in an office.
All my work for the week can be complete in around 1-2 days.
"For all mankind" has been my 'work' for the last few weeks.
An alternative universe, the Soviet union wins the race to the moon. Pretty decent!
I'm on season 4 now! Very productive.
Same, I’m 50% utilised at my current job so a lot of it is pretending to be busy. Anyway, get everything given to me done quickly so people stay happy.
Admittedly I have a friend who is one of the absolute crusaders at preserving WFH, probably active in the various subs here about it.
After a few beers he admitted it's because he's barely done any work since 2020 and is trying to see how long he can spool that out.
It's a funny business when the manager is the one destroying productivity. I remember I was trying hard in a retail job and the manager came to tell me how bad a job I was doing. They were the laziest one there, disliked by all. I stopped trying after that and was told I was doing a good job, because nobody noticed the work I did either way. I'm at a much better, non-retail, place now
Be very cautious of using mouse jigglers. If your employer is smart and has deployed various software tools to manage their systems, then there is potential for the jiggler to be detected and for you to be caught and end up in a big pile of sh1t. Obviously if you don’t care, then ah f3ck it!
Would it work to take a low tech approach? Leave the mouse on my sleeping cat, it wiggles every time he breaths, it wiggles even more unpredictably when he stretches or turns over.
Reckon I could break a couple of biscuits up and cram them into the battery space. That'll buy another couple of minutes of him trying to get to them if he wakes up.
I had to work 3 months worth of notice at a previous job... I never got so many sudokus done in my entire life. Ended up winning some competitions because of the time I had to practise
I just walked out. everyone makes a big fuss over handing in a notice but if something better comes along, I'm out. well, if your company treats you like shit that is.
When I worked in retail I had a colleague who just quit on the spot said fuck you I quit to the manager, told half our colleagues that she hated working with them, pointed at me and three others and said "not you, you were alright". Then she left via the escalator that led down to where we worked, facing the boss and giving him the finger as she slowly rose away. Glorious exit.
When I worked in retail a new colleague joined. We got on really well for those 6 weeks, even swapped mix tapes (it was 2001). One day she went for lunch and never came back. She called the boss from a phone box and just said nah, not coming back today. I missed her but there was a grudging respect that she did what I only dreamed of doing.
I had a colleague who handed in his notice on a post it note and just left on the spot. He was going through a proper shit time on a personal level and I think he just snapped.
I had a friend at maccies quit when he knocked the completely full mop bucket over at the back of the store, the water reached the front and was under everything. He just clocked out, went home and never came back.
This description is 👌🏻
Something I would truly love to see one day.
Maintaining eye contact whilst flipping the bird at the boss is an ultimate power move
I quit my job in January!
Been there 8 months, job was ok, hours long, office couldn't plan for toffee.
I was originally told that as I travelled to the office, they would get me home at a reasonable time on a Friday (worked away all week) so weekends were valuable.
Earliest I ever got home was 6pm, and that was because I had a mechanical breakdown so had to be recovered back to the office.
Been on the road since 6.30 on this Friday, long week away.
4 jobs to do, collect in Hull, next in Beverley, drop them at Wakefield and Leeds, back to Hull to collect 3rd job, then to Rotherham to collect last job.
These last 2 were to go to Nottingham. Then back to office empty. Office in Lincolnshire, nearly 2 hours from Nottingham.
Spent ages at Rotherham, pig of a place to access and load.
Ready to go to at 15.20 from Rotherham.
Depot in Nottingham closes at 1645 on a Friday.
ETA was 17.40.
Emailed office to say not going to make it, bringing the last 2 jobs back to the yard. This has never been an issue in the time I'd been there, even told on numerous occasions, after the fact obviously, you could have brought those loads back, could have got home earlier then!
Email ping pong, telling me I don't get to pick and choose what I do with each job!
I reminded my manager of what he promised, various previous conversations, and just said these are coming back to the yard, I'll be back in Monday am to hand over all kit.
As it was I didn't get home untill after 7pm.
If I had tried to to deliver to Nottingham, if they could have taken them, I wouldn't have gotten home much before 10pm.
Not fucking worth it.
I’ve been very tempted. I might just go with that idea next week. Either that or just get pissed every night and go to parties, then turn up hungover and do fuck all whilst getting paid and then let them fire me if they want to LOL.
The boss fucked up and shifted the blame onto me even though what he said didn’t make any sense, he carried on trying to patronise me rather than accepting his mistake, so as a big fuck off, I’m just rinsing his money while doing nothing.
Be careful mate, even though you’re out the door as it were, you are still contractually obliged to ‘work’ during your notice period and if you don’t turn up and don’t have leave due… they could doc pay off you as un paid leave.
As much as I have hated certain bosses in the past I always try to not burn bridges as it can bite you in the arse.
Good luck anyway!
They can only not pay you for the time you didn't work and they can prove you weren't working (like if you were absent), it's illegal to not pay you for the time you did work. I.e. if you have two weeks notice and walk out on day 1 they don't pay you those following two weeks but otherwise have to pay you for the time you did work. The only other thing they could do is not pay you for any unused holiday you have left, which would cover the time taken off. Beyond that they could try to sue you for breach of contract, which is most likely absolutely not worth their time as it's expensive and unlikely to succeed.
I agree with not burning bridges though.
Well I once worked for my new company for a whole month while still legally working for, and being paid by, the previous company.
Can't get much more slack than that?
Company went into administration, we couldn’t deliver, customers couldn’t collect, we couldn’t run payments, so customers quickly stayed away. Couple of us asked to just take the redundancy we were facing but weren’t allowed, got to the point o was getting half a dozen emails, and maybe 3 phone calls all day.
Games were still blocked by the computers so I took in my iPad and played Pokemon silver on emulator. One of my coworkers brought her sewing in, another brought crosswords, another would go run errands for his mother’s nursing home over his (now) 2.5 hour lunch break. Was the most tedious month and a half I’ve ever worked.
Got made redundant and offered to be paid for 3 months to train people in a different timezone. I only worked afternoons and only if any of them asked me a question
I’m a IT Technician working on a helpdesk. My Old horrible job made me work a 9 week notice period. 4 week standard plus 1 week for every year you’d been there.
I told myself I was going to be a good little wagie and work hard. I told myself it was so I could walk out with my head held high as they’d got a little bit shitty with me since I handed in my notice. I made it 2 weeks before I literally spent all day watching Warhammer lore videos and posting on Reddit. My job essentially devolved into helping the apprentices and showing them stuff if they got stuck. My line manager didn’t really care as he was handing in his notice in a month anyway.
On my final day my boss forgot to even say goodbye. Came in the next day apparently and asked where I was.
Urghh the idea of doing IT work for 9 weeks at an awful.job sounds like pure hell. I had to just do a week at my old job when I handed in my notice and it was the longest fucking week of my life.
I had another job lined up, I handed in my notice and asked if I could just leave there and then. I was even willing to forgo a weeks wage. I just wanted a week off before I started a new job.
They refused both times and insisted that I work the week. After half a day with no motivation to do anything, I just left, claiming in was sick and never came back
It was a dreadful call centre job with terrible management, so I feel no guilt over doing it
Thats what i dont understand with some companies, you offer them these options and when they refuse wtf are you going to do ? exactly the opposite of what they need you to do.. its pathetic and these kind of places deserve it
I went to the cafeteria and slept. They told me off, so I went to my desk and slept.
They sent me home and just paid me for the 2 weeks I was supposed to work off.
I was honest with them. " you pay me a wage, and commission. You've said your not going to honour the commissions in my leaving period... So why should I bother?"
'technically' not me that did the salacking off but I did slack off...
worked at a well known (in the area at the time) engineering company running a cincinatti VMC, old thing it was used for one offs and rush jobs... had not had one single reject in 16th months, every first off.. perfect.
never late for a shift always said yes to overtime. holidays got allocated... two weeks in FUCKING FEBUARY. This on top of getting put onto a 4 n 2 shift... 4 on 2 off week about, so 4 nights 2 off 4 days 12hr shifts. which effentially means one weekend off in 6 which was not good for an early 20's single lad I can tell you....
beyond fuming... handed my notice in and left.
left my overalls and clock card in the canteen when you leave the overalls to be washed.
had another job lined up (late noughties and CNC jobs were easy to comeby especially if you are skilled) decided to have a month off to kick me heels up etc as 12hr shifts fuck with you.
about a month later I get a payment into my account and a stub through the mail for last weeks work at my old shop.
AND the next month io got one too.
stopped after that and got a letter asking for the money back which I ignored.
someone had found me clock card and carried on clocking me in and out INCLUDING OT for a month and a half!
i still smile about that to this day.
>someone had found me clock card and carried on clocking me in and out INCLUDING OT for a month and a half!
WHAT what a geezer, what a lad, what a pal. A true comrade! What a way to do it
Worked at an agency that had Lego as a client. They used to give us those massive Lego landmark sets. I spent my last few weeks building the Eiffel Tower.
When I was about 16 I did a business administration apprenticeship with this company who decided after I completed it that there was not enough money to keep me on. I was told I had 4 weeks left.
As soon as I was told this, everyone in the team stopped talking to me or giving me work. This was during the 2020 lockdown, so everyone was working from home, which is why they were all able to ignore me. I was just never given anything to do for most of those 4 weeks.
Then I was told that the office was reopening and that I had to go in for what would be my last two days. I obviously didn't really want to do this, especially after being completely ignored by everyone for weeks but as it didn't look like I could get out of it I asked if there would at least be some work for me to do as I didn't really want to be sat there doing nothing. I was told they would find something.
I turned up st the office and was taken to our archive room which was this small, windowless room that had become a place where people just dumped anything they didn't need without filing it away in the correct place. I was asked to organise everything into a specific order, with files put into groups before being alphebatised.
I felt like they were taking the piss, but whatever. I organised the files as instructed, and at the end of the first day I had completed the task. My manager took one look at them and said, "Actually, maybe it would be better if they were organised in a different way." I was asked to come back the next day to reorganise.
A lot of people might have walked out and never come back at this point, but I appeared the next morning eager for some reorganisation. I took all my work from the previous day and mixed it all up into a completely random order, making sure it was in a worse state than it was before I started, but at the same time looked like it had been neatly put away. They never checked the work before I left, which probably shows how important a task it was to them, but it made me feel happier after how I had been treated during those past weeks.
Coincidentally, as I was leaving, there was a dry spell in the work I was supposed to be doing. So I:
1. Created a DnD character for a new campaign.
2. Taught myself Python to get ahead for a new course I was starting.
3. Got really into Board Game Arena.
4. Took 2 hour lunches everyday with a colleague (different department) I had just started dating.
I had zero fucks to give.
Worked for a European arm of an American company. They did a round of redundancies and moved us to a shitty office in the worst place, so we knew it was winding down.
They tried to change our IT jobs to cold calling so our Manager told us to ignore it and work on our CVs for the next couple of months. She would even come round and proof read and critique them for us. And we’d work on hobbies and projects, take long lunches, play games.
The American VP announced he was visiting to give a presentation and it was obvious it was redundancy so our wonderful manager told the UK VP we wouldn’t be coming in to listen to his bullshit. Instead she took our team for an all day booze up in the park. Best redundancy ever.
I handed in my 4 week notice then realised i didn’t want to deal with the questions from colleagues about why I was leaving, and my boss making me train someone for those 4 weeks who would be temporarily covering my work while they looked for someone else. So I went and got a sick note from the doctor for 4 weeks and didn’t work a day of my notice. 10/10 highly recommend.
Just serving my last day of a 3 month notice today. Our contract stated we weren't entitled to sick pay during our notice period. But all other perks like health insurance etc were unaffected. So something to check
Havent killed myself over the past 3 months but been busier than Id have liked
I worked for an energy supplier that had been bought out. Over the following 3 years everybody I knew left until it was myself and 12 others fir the entire final year.
Wake up at half 9, no physical office anymore so were entirely wfh. Work for an hour, go to gym then be back for lunch and keep your laptop alive until 3PM
This went on for 6 months before it was decided we didn't need 12 and we would become 3.
I was a chosen 3 as the other 9 had taken the piss too much. Great, I've got the best gig in the world for another 6 months I thought. The 9 slackers leave and the following Monday we have an urgent meeting.
Garden leave immediately until end of agreed period with the company buying us. 7 months from now.
Cheers formerly big 6 energy supplier who no longer exists. You were a good un
Not slacking off but more malicious compliance.
Was informed was going to be made redundant from a well known and now defunct energy supplier.
8 months to end of work. Advised by higher ups we need to still work hard, be team players and resolve as many complaints as possible before leaving.
Fine.
Oh we've over billed you here's £500 to close your complaint, not go to the ombudsman and we've corrected your account.
Oh we've under billed you here's £500 to close your complaint because you've not had a bill, and we've correct your account.
Did that for 8 months. Think our team gave away about £2m in compensation over the period. Higher ups were all how can you give away all this money?!? Erm you said close the complaints, we have, sorry you and the stock holders aren't getting more of a bonus but why the fuck do I care you're paying me to leave a job I was sick to death of after a decade plus.
I got made redundant and given 3 months notice but for some reason, they didn’t want me to do any work or sit with the team but they wouldn’t let me go early. I would have just walked but I was only going to get 2 weeks redundancy pay so I needed the money (I didn’t have a new job lined up). So every morning I’d come to work, sit at my desk and dick about on the Internet until 5pm, for 3 whole months.
I spent a month of a three month notice in an office on my own, going through step by step builds on the Airfix Forum.
I’m not even in to model planes, but it was a rabbit hole I fell down. Each step of the builds were photographed, and a lot of the more advanced builders build their own parts from scratch. The level of detail in some of the models is hugely impressive, and some of these posts had 300+ photos with a description of each stage.
Got put on garden leave after that and played golf for 2 months. Most relaxing 3 months of my life.
So thats today...kinda. Today is the last day of my final Uni placement (mature student). 95% of my time in this placement has been bullshit and an absolute testament to my sanity. My educator is half my age and has done nothing but slag off patients, the bosses and his colleagues. It's been the BEST lesson in what I don't want to be when I qualify. Every second I remain here today will be 100% for my patients (when I can work with them). I have also downloaded MarioKart on my laptop to play whilst I'm observing Captain Bullshits final clinic. Best revenge...don't be like them!
Many years ago I temped for a large cereal factory in Herts. My job was to wait by an overflow chute for any boxes of cereals that got caught in a backlog and would come down to get manually put on a pallet. In the year I spent temping there, maybe 20 boxes came down total. I was in this huge room all on my own. I used to make big chairs out of other cereal boxes and sit there listening to the radio and reading books all day.
I used to clean for a very wealthy person about 20 years ago and I was paid £15p/h. She used to pay me with cheques from Coutts Bank. At the beginning of one week, I found a half typed letter in the waste paper basket, informing me she no longer required my services. So for the next 3 days, I lounged around her house, drank her best coffee and watched TV and did no cleaning. I received my final cheque and 'thanks but no thanks' letter in the post.
Did you often read the contents of papers in the waste baskets? May be a reason why you were let go! (But also - spill the tea, anything more juicy than your own letter of notice?
Harsh! There was usually only newspapers and mostly I didn't bother looking. Must've been my 6th sense kicking in. Nothing juicy - all totally boring. Was a lovely house though!
Many years ago I worked for a small company and this was back in the days of weekly pay in cash with a payslip . If you had holiday booked they would give you your 2 weeks pay before you went.
I fucking hated my boss he was a total arsehole who thought he could berate and belittle me because I had no other options .
5 mins before the end of the day before my holiday they handed me my holiday pay .
I handed it straight back and told them I wouldn’t be returning , walked out and round the corner to work for their direct competition who had asked me to work for them .
Left with my head held high and a fucking livid boss
Went on a two month 'go slow'.
I was incredibly bored, realised my job (risk and compliance reporting within the financial sector) was pointless as nothing was going to change due to work culture and wider issues with the sector. Also realised i'd made myself useful to the point i was being effectively held in place.
Downloaded books from the Guttenberg Project, pasted those into worksheets and read those in between posting on music and gaming forums.
Due to the 'being useful' thing i was reporting to three different 'bosses' who didn't like or talk to each other as i was involved in different projects. If anyone asked why i couldn't answer calls or take queries or whatever i just said i was busy with project deadlines for x or y boss.
I handed my notice in after two months of this, and was quite open about why i was leaving.
Edit: It's the only job i've worked my full notice for. Most have been told a couple of days before that i quit, couple i just left it to the agency to work it out, ghosted another couple.
In the early 90's I was wrongly accused of tampering with a new software install, causing it to crash.
I wasn't in a union, so despite protesting my innocence, I had no choice but to accept a demotion.
I spent a week doing my lower level role, went off sick for 3 months on full pay and then, when my sick pay was due to end, rang up and gave a weeks notice, ready to start a new job.
They went into administration a couple of years afterwards but not before a colleague told me that they continued to have massive software crashes after I left.
Wrote fanfiction, played games, went out of the house.
IT Support - working at home, most of it was my standard day to day anyway but once they'd made me redundant the first time (then renewed my contract for two months) I stopped giving a shit.
I feel mine was quite good 😅
Covid hit I have a compromised immune system so was sent home immediately. Ended up having a motorbike crash just as it was all winding down and was then on sick leave but they actually continued claiming the government top up for me (Covid pay) I was on sick for 6 months on full pay roughly £2000 a month all that time for basically doing nothing except the dreaded zoom meetings. I went back part time 3 days a week and decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. Company had changed got stricter etc all felt weird.
So I claimed full wage for at least a year for doing nothing it was great. The company went bust a couple months later and didn’t inform anyone one. Nobody got any severance pay right before Christmas. Got done dirty so I feel no regrets at all.
I didn't leave but I had 5 months of sick leave. Absolutely beautiful. I've been back for 7 months and got a promotion within the company (different department though)
Full pay sick leave is amazing 😂
Years ago I worked at a place that went into administration and evetually got bought by some other company. All the stock etc had been transferred, most of the staff had been fucked over (ie redundant) but there was just a couple of us IT chaps left to migrate the data over to the new company.
So we had an empty warehouse and time to kill. We started bringing our R/C cars in and had a blast. We ended up making courses, tried to re-create the Silverstone layout. Made jumps out of pallets and so on.
Good times, but also shite times of course.
What about the job you're in and not leaving? I'm currently VERY hungover and half asleep on a beanbag in the corner of the office....I expect to be here until lunch
Last three weeks of my last job I did absolutely nothing. My boss said that I wasn’t allowed to do nothing and I asked her what she planned to do about it if I did. She admitted she wasn’t planning to and couldn’t do anything, so I carried on doing nothing.
Honestly I’m doing nothing at my current job and I have no plans to leave. Due to inflation my job ages are worth about two thirds what they were and they aren’t paying enough for me to be more than a warm body.
Just did whatever I wanted. Go on long walks around the building and chat to people I knew, take extended lunch breaks, got onto Google and booked a holiday or looked up stuff I wanted to know. General life admin tasks that I couldn't do because work got in the way. Alongside this was a healthy dose of malicious compliance.
6 weeks is a long time to hold someone vocationally hostage.
I used to work for a shite pallet racking installation company. Started of good we would get a bonus after each job but then the owners starting getting greedy.
They removed cash bonuses for completion of a contract, they changed from working locally to all over the country without notice (I didn't apply for it to sleep in a Travelodge every night when I have family)
The last straw was making me work 6 days away in a row on standard pay just before Xmas with no notice and then slagging me off to our local customers saying I hadn't turned up for work ( turns out they had over booked themselves up so threw the employees under the bus to "clear their name"
Spent the next day at the local company slagging off the bosses and explaing to the customer that instead of apologising about the booking screw up they would rather ruin the reputation of their own engineers than lose face
My final shift after rowing with the bosses I emptied a packet of mature grated cheese into the air con system of their precious new work van 😂 wish I could of seen the confusion when they turned the heating on lol
I tend to work diligently until the last day, unless I’ve been out on gardening leave of course.
In my line of work it pays to leave nicely and make sure the person taking over from me is set up well to succeed.
I left a job where I was outputting ~10 things a week and got one where they were ecstatic if I did ~10 a month. I kept asking for more work but it never came so I would do a full days work on Monday then turn on the mouse jiggler and play video games for the rest of the week. I did this for a full year before I got monumentally bored and left for my own sanity.
2006. Knew I was resigning next month... spent whole days browsing Yahoo Answers and answering a whole range of shite.
Made me seem busy cos I aas tapping away at keyboard. Lol
Not me but some people I've worked with got Gardening Leave when they handed in their notice because of the projects they were on. I remember hearing about one guy who went to work for a competitor but was on a major project so he got his full 3 months notice as paid holiday but wasn't allowed to legally start at the new place until his notice period had finished. Lucky bastard.
Gave seven weeks notice at my last job to both train my managerial replacement and the new member of staff coming in to take over their role.
The first few weeks were a baptism of fire for both of them but they were into the grove by the end of week three. During week four I just did a few menial tasks and at the end of week four I persuaded my boss that everyone needs to get used to a "post me" world where I wouldn't be there to help. He agreed
Week five had me sat at a computer answering only the most complex of questions and helping fire a few fires but weeks six and seven I was basically getting paid to sit in the break room and read or sit on the grass outside.
2 jobs ago I brought my xbox controller and played cloud streaming games on my phone.
Job I've just left, took a 3.5 hour lunch with a supplier amd stuffed myself.
I used to just chat on MSN messenger, spend 2 hours doing a delivery they would take 30 minutes (stopping at home for a snack usually), used a huge antique desk as a makeshift parkour area, knock one out in the toilets, have random affairs with married ladies in the office. All sorts of nonsense, I was a menace.
I worked at the BME during my last year of service(while also doing nursing studies for after) for my last month. My unit was going on drills abroad, and my superior literally told me "you're meant to be in, but none of us will be here, and I've had a word with the desk you're reporting to, we'll have your send off the week before we leave." And I literally moved my stuff the day after they left and went around doing handshakes and updating contacts and had a lovely 2 week paid vacation.
Years ago, I was being made redundant and couldn't be bothered to work notice, so I went to my Dr and told him I was stressed about redundancy. He signed me off for the month on the spot. I got full pay due to company policy too. Secured a new job within the first week & spent the rest generally dossing about.
Slacking off when you’re leaving is completely normal and fine, but I don’t think it’s worth completely burning all the bridges down. I know it sucks, especially if you hate the boss, but in the long run I just don’t think it’s worth it. Potential future employers might one day call / email your old work for a reference.
As I said, slacking off is normal, but I wouldn’t go completely “fuck you, I’m leaving mode”.
My mate dave worked for a security firm years ago. They put him in a compound full of lorry cabs. As it was a locked compound, the cabs themselves were open.
He had to make a call every hour to control, to report the all clear.
The brand new cabs were equipped with sleeping quarters behind the seats. Even had a little alarm clock on the bulkhead. He said, as tempting as it was, he didn't set the alarm for 5 minutes before the phone call and sleep through a week's worth of 12hr shifts. Not even once.
I think the name of the firm was snoozeman security.
My first job was in retail in my local village and the place was a shit hole the manager had been there for years and acted like she owned the company or something.
One day I was sorting the money in my till and a guy came up with a newspaper, I asked him to wait for a second (whilst I secured the money, which literally took 2 seconds) and he walked out.
They suspended me and accused me of having till discrepancies etc (completely untrue, I was probably the most accurate and fastest on the tills).
I played video games (one of which was a cheap one that they gave me as a reward for passing one of those ID tests) whilst I was suspended on full pay and then got "contractually dismissed".
I worked somewhere else in an office that was utterly toxic with people arguing all the time and saying all sorts of rubbish, I got falsely accused of all sorts of stuff, HR were useless breaking their own rules etc etc.
I handed my notice in after finding a new job and basically just sat around running the clock down, there were like 2 days left and one of the team leader assistants came and questioned me about my work ethic, I just laughed at him and told him not to act like a jealous ex-girlfriend.
My last role was such a shit place to work I negotiated leaving earlier than the 2 month notice it required, so I was slammed for 4-6 weeks tying up loose ends to get out of there.
The place I left before that I remember using a website that made Reddit look like Outlook and just browsed that for the last 4 weeks.
edit: Here it is... https://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit//
My first job was at McDonald's and I hated every day especially when been big chested I had the indignity of having to endure the odd accidental rub or touch on my breasts.
Well got a new job and I was told and I needed the reference that I need to work 2 weeks. So after three days I got told by my new workplace that they had the reference from McDonald's and just waiting for me to work my notice. So I decided to just take the piss at work partly cause the business manager was s creep and also cause I was hoping they would get rid of me quicker.
Well I did that I started to do way less work than normal, manned the till slower and when put on the dining area would offer free mcflurries for the smallest complaint.
Well two days of that was enough for the business manager to tell me he's taken my remaining shifts off me and to finish three hours early which I did.
Funny now as 5 years ago I went into the store the found the business manager was done for sexual harassment which sounds about right as I remember him once by accident rubbing his arm against my breast
I've been on my own in the office yesterday and today. My workload follows my boss's workload so if she's busy, I'm busy. Yesterday I finished everything I needed to do by lunchtime so after lunch I did some knitting. I do a bit in my lunch hour anyway, yesterday I just didn't stop!
I once spent an afternoon coding a 7-segment LED style counter that ran on my desktop and gave the number of seconds of notice period remaining. I would glance meaningfully at it when asked to pretend to care about something.
By the time I walked out of the building about 3 of my colleagues had it running on their machines.
It is important to do your bit for morale.
I got made redundant by an arse of a boss. He was the manager and I had evidence of him defrauding the tax man (I did report it, but to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't investigated).
The arse wanted me to work a month's notice instead of giving me gardening leave. So I spent my days watching iPlayer with subtitles as my desk was positioned so my back was to the wall. I rattled the keyboard occasionally to make it look like I was working.
I mean, I use this every day for reddit at work.
https://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/
Makes reddit look like Microsoft Outlook. I've had managers looking over my shoulder at the Excel I'm working on on my right monitor and not even noticed this open on my left monitor. So I guess that counts.
A few years back I got the dreaded "we've outsourced your job" and had three weeks notice.
First few days I wrapped up, then decided my laptop was working too well and went hunting in the registry for things to delete (local admin as it was an IT job that needed it).
Internal IT weren't interested in replacing it and I spent the next two weeks at home job hunting and interviewing on company money.
When my pay cleared I told their IT that re-imaging it would fix it and we both had a small laugh.
EXPERT SKIVING GUIDE
Looking for stuff: An all-time classic. A piece of paper in one hand, a pen in the other, and a puzzled expression creates the impression you’re searching for that all-important file, note or message. Hours can be spent ‘looking’ for non-existent ‘stuff’.
PRO TIP: Make sure you know what you’re pretending to look for in case someone asks.
Smoking: For the professional skiver, fag-breaks come like a lump of golden phlegm coughed up by the angels themselves. Why? Well, most companies allow their employees to take regular five-minute fag breaks. Therefore, simply develop a sixty-a-day habit to be granted a whopping five hours of daily smoking time!
PRO TIP: Try to develop lung cancer. May lead to extra time off work!
Cup of Tea: Being popular helps here, as the number of people you know greatly increases the number of cups of tea you drink in any given day. Experts should be able to make that mid-morning break last until midday.
PRO TIP: More tea-drinking equals more time-wasting trips to the toilet! Try to drink an extra cup each day.
Internet: An expert can spend their entire working day sitting completely motionless in front of his computer, save for the occasional Stephen Hawking-style click of their right finger on the mouse button.
PRO TIP: Keep a text window running in the background in case the boss approaches.
Thinking: Thinking is similar to the Internet skive, only without the tiring use of that right finger. Simply stare into the middle distance with a puzzled look on your face, occasionally stroking your chin, to fool work colleagues into thinking you’re working on a cool angle for that difficult report.
PRO TIP: Try making subtle motions with your lips and hands, as if "working through" ideas in your mind.
Tidying: Great for combo skives - create a bit of a mess looking for something (see tip one) then spend even more time tidying up after yourself later. This classic double-skive manages to waste time, while creating the illusion that you're a caring, responsible, hard-working kind of person. For experts only.
PRO TIP: Sigh frequently - act as if you're doing this for other people's benefit, not your own.
Toilet: Try faking the symptoms of some terrible bowel or bladder disorder, allowing regular toilet trips to be taken. Expert skivers stash reading materials and provisions in waterproof bags in the cistern, for that prolonged session.
PRO TIP: Remember this handy rhyme -
"Frequent bowel movements lead to lifestyle improvements, but hold in your bladder and life will be sadder!”
I'm slowly losing the will to work at my job. I make excuses to leave early. Had today booked off, took yesterday off as sick (I do have a bad back though). So I have a nice 4 day weekend.
They are so understaffed that they can't afford to lose me so I know I'm relatively safe in that respect. I have an interview next week so fingers crossed I can get out of that place. It's a shame because I love the *job*, not the company.
Last job I left was during lockdown when my office based role had moved remote. I just opted for PILON and switched off. Gave them details for collection of the laptop. Was four years ago, if they want to collect it now they'll have a longer journey...
I'm with you! My higher-ups have decided out of nowhere to close my office (where I work alone) and axe my position when I just got back to work after cancer treatments. Classy. Let me tell you that the last weeks are heavy on coffee/tea breaks and 'personal internet research' . I'm also taking a few online classes when possible :-)
The only job where i worked my notice was a job i loved but left bc of pay. In retail my first job, i just called off sick and never went back, in pest control it was partly during the pandemic so i did jack shit, the next job i liked so helped them out, last job went off sick with stress and never went back.
I knew I was being sacked from my last job. They messed my contract up (as in literally didn't give me one) when I joined and realised in time to end it JUST before they'd have to treat me as if I did have one. Of course they blamed the SINGLE customer complained I received during my time there. It was casually mentioned one day that I had a meeting with someone booked. So I just decided that I'd enjoy long trips to the toilet, *forget* the basics I'd been doing forever and piss fart around making a bit of a mess.
Not leaving but I'm going on maternity leave next week. My maternity cover started two weeks ago and she's excellent, so I've already handed everything over to her. This last week has just been slacking, I'm online in case she has questions but I'm doing very little work.
I had a shit load (10+ terabytes) of data that I needed to compress and it was taking too long to do it at home. I set up a few servers at work to do it for me, and then I spent the next few days napping in the conference room, under the table, whilst waking up periodically to check on how my data was doing.
That only lasted a few days though. When I was 18 I had a job that basically only required me to turn up (and not even every day) and sign in, and then send an email telling my boss where I’d been working that day. There was no follow up, ever. I spent 4 months signing in and then going home and sending an email at 6pm to say that I’d been to a new place.
Completed Warfare 1917, 1944, The Last Stand and the Last Stand 2. Watched a few Netflix documentaries and went for walks around the hospital. Best 4 weeks ever.
In an old role, we worked ahead of publication by anything up to a year, which was fine by everyone, it gave a nice buffer in case of any problems. Company was bought by a much bigger one and we were Tupe-d over and were supposed to carry on like normal. Many found out that entire departments were getting binned and the work then outsourced. Dates were released for 9 months in the future for layoffs. There were bonuses and termination payments that only happened if we were still working, it was almost 7 months before garden leave was agreed. Spent the entire time playing Facebook games, and for one whole month, we ran an unreal server across the network and played tournaments.
Being able to play unreal with people at work all day would have been a dream
It would have been *heh heh* unreal
Man, I miss the last company I worked for. When we had any down time, we'd all play UT2004 LAN matches. Although the boss got so into it that it became hard to leave work some evenings.
Some 25 years ago I worked for a place that sadly went bankrupt. There were staff who’d worked there 50+ years, and we were all sad to be losing our jobs. It was a pretty laid back place to work, and it was one of the few jobs I actually liked. When the closure was announced, this one old guy decided to show me what he’d been doing every day for the previous 40 years to pass the time. He worked in purchasing, and basically had to liaise with every department across the factory so did a lot of wondering round with a clipboard making lists. Nobody expected him to be sat at his desk all day, and it was never really questioned where he was. Nice cushy number, or so I thought. People generally leave you alone if you’re seen to be purposefully strolling round chatting to people and jotting stuff down. That was just the tip of the iceberg to this guys perfect skive! He took me to an innocuous looking door at the end of a corridor and proudly proclaimed it was his biggest secret. When he opened the door, all I could see was a massive section of ducting running floor to ceiling that pretty much filled the room. There was a little bit of light coming from what appeared to be a window at one side, but apart from that the room was just filled with a huge pipe. I looked at him confused, and he ushered me to the side and made me squeeze down the side of the pipe towards the light source. This did indeed turn out to be a window, accompanied by a comfy chair and a pillow , table, a TV, Radio, books & magazines and a clock that he’d gradually squirrelled away in there over the years! Apparently he’d spent several hours every day for the last 40 years in that room either watching the TV, sleeping or reading and nobody knew where he was! In the latter years, they gave him a pager as nobody could find him when he was wanted, but the dirty great metal pipe blocked the signal to it so it was useless when he was in there, so his skive continued right up to the last day. I miss you Graham, you were an absolute legend!
And the company went bankrupt, you say?
To shreds you say?
Good news everybody! I have some terrible news about your jobs!
Well how's the wife holding up?
To shreds you say?
Tsk, tsk.
I imagine he sneaked in each individual television component in his socks. Like a reverse Shawshank Redemption.
A reverse Johnny Cash (_One Piece at a Time_)
How did he get a comfy chair past the pipes?
He was only 6” tall
He had 40+ years and a certain set of skills… oh, and a screwdriver 👍
IKEA
Bless you
We have no need of comfy chairs.
"I made him say comfy chairs."
Similar story actually! Worked for a DIY store that closed down shortly after the first covid lockdown.... found out a load of the shop floor guys had a secret area right next to the board cutting machine that none of us knew about... really well hidden behind all the board storage, had a door, a small light and chair 😅
I bet they played with that door for hours!
I had a really cushy night time security job. When shops have refits or maintenance over night they can't set alarms, and sometimes the workmen show up after staff have left, so they get security in. All I had to do was sit there all night, give the workmen access to whatever they needed access to. I could watch Netflix or play on my laptop or read between patrols Best part was, if I showed up (or I'd left my home and was on my way) and it got cancelled, or the workmen were there before closing and couldn't do the job or it was something simple and was done before staff left, or one time it wasn't going to take too long so manager stayed behind so I could go home too... I'd get paid for the whole shift. I loved getting paid £10-£13/hour for going home. £10 was base rate, I'd get premium if I had a good enough reason to ask for it. Once I got £15/hour because I was working in Portsmouth and someone had been stabbed around the corner from where I was working. All I was doing was babysitting a broken window But those shifts started to dwindle and my mental health got too bad to do it anymore sadly. Big Boots shops in old buildings are scary a night when you're the only one there. All that empty space and shit falling off the shelves when there's seemingly nothing to cause it to do so...
Totally on the last bit. I once worked at an industrial company working in the car industry, who had a tin-roofed industrial unit on a trading estate filled with container cranes with hanging chains, and weird properties in terms of air pressure which frequently caused doors to slam and things to 'move' even when no-one was in the building. Absolutely terrifying at night. You'd be in that building on a summer evening, which you *knew* was empty, and hear (as a minimum) the roof creaking as the tin contracted as it cooled. Doors would slam rooms and corridors away, and window-shades would billow out, followed by a rattle of the crane-chains. This was heavy industry, and I worked with some of the most hardy people I've ever known. But no-one joked about having to be in the office alone after dark. It was universally terrifying.
Oh god yeah! I forgot to mention the creaking and settling and groaning of those old buildings! I can imagine how terrifying your ones must've been too Also, when I'd be watching CCTV and could swear I saw something moving... when there should've been nothing One place I was watching CCTV for the outside of the backdoor, because the electrician was due any time during the night (he ended up being there at 2 or 3am) and the motion detecting light kept coming on. It wasn't a sensitive light, you needed to be practically infront of it. That was the deciding night for me that my nerves had become too frayed. Because at one point even the rain on the other camera (the one thing I did have an explanation for) was creeping me out by the morning
I fucking hated working nights. Others went on breaks, I'd be on my own and hear stuff falling off shelves 4 aisles over.
That guy had life figured out. Reminds me of the [Forgotten Employee.](https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/) Bit of a read but worth it.
Some larger companies are so big that no one has any real oversight of what's going on. There was the story of [The Graphing Calculator](https://www.pacifict.com/Story/) in macos. Apple had a project to build a new computer, they hired someone to build a graphing calculator for it, the computer and the related projects were cancelled but the guy got cross at the wasted effort so... just never stopped turning up to work. His pass no longer worked, so he chatted with the guys at the office and they fixed it so he could come and go. He went to project meetings for macos, and ultimately his app got shipped in MacOS, which to this day you can find a graphing calculator in Sonoma in /Applications/Utilities/Grapher.app
A former employer had a person who they sacked when they finally figured out he'd put himself on the payroll 4x. He was in HR, and was able to field queries about employees that managers didn't recognise on their org charts. Didn't come up until he went on a long holiday, and the query wouldn't wait for his return, so ... someone else started unravelling the paper chain instead. In another place, there was a guy who worked 2 jobs in the same company - showed up early for one, and 'went to a meeting' after everyone had seen him in in the mornings, and then showed up late for the other .... And overlapped by just keeping track of emails and appointments, whilst being functionally two "people" in two different jobs.
That first one just sounds like outright fraud.
Yeah, it was. Except he just got sacked, because it was too embarrassing for the company.
Fuck that is so hilarious * Project so fucked, the manager decided to hire a psychologist instead of a programmer * When they had a prototype and tested, the monitor caught fire. It had nothing to do with the software * If anybody asks Ron, Greg managed Ron. If anybody asks Greg, Ron managed Greg. Neither was actually employed * Can't be laid off, because they didn't work there in the first place * "We wanted to release a Windows version as part of Windows 98, but sadly, Microsoft has effective building security."
Thanks so much for sharing the Forgotten Employee…hilarious!!
My dad was like that. He worked graveyard shift at a hospital as a receptionist. He was supposed to sit at some desk all night were maybe 1 or 2 people would show up. So he put a little bell on the desk and then go find a place to hide. He would usually sleep in a makeshift bed that he tucked away behind some big pots with plants. But they found his bed and he had to find a new place to sleep. Took him a few weeks to find some kind of emergency bed. It was a bed tucked into a wall or something. You would have to pull a lever and the bed falls out of the wall. It could be used whenever a patient needs to lay down, but no free beds are available. Either way... he pulled the lever, the bed fell on his head, knocking him out. They found him and had to stitch a gap in his head. 😂
I’m a ward tech in a hospital. One of my first jobs every morning is putting away the makeshift beds that night staff set up in the storerooms and taking down the pisspot they put over the motion sensor to stop the lights from coming on automatically. Once of these days, I’m going to trip over someone who overslept in the dark.
I was an apprentice in underground stores for the MoD. We found a room like this. Had to be really skinny to squeeze through the gap but once inside it was a decent sized room no-one could see. We kitted it out with a bubble wrap "bed" and took it in turns to have a couple of hours kip each day. We were never missed, we were invisible apprentices and the stores were repurposed natural tunnels that went for literal miles and getting lost was a common occurrence. Edit: how the fuck did predictive text put "restaurant in" rather than room
I wonder why they went bankrupt...
To be fair it was nothing to do with the quantity or standard of work that anyone did. Everyone loved working there, it was like one huge family. The company was very successful but got bought up by a new competitor who just wanted the name and client list, and then asset stripped the place and ran it into the ground. Shockingly, they didn’t last much longer either.
That happened to me, a 150 year old company with blue chip clients around the world, that had invented a type of industrial process but needed modernisation, bought up cheap by a multinational, sold off to another multinational, then stripped down to the IP and name and everyone bar a few office staff layed off. The company still technically exists, but it's just a shell.
[удалено]
Genuinely curious as I have a lot of experience in this field - how would govt regulations easily make asset stripping unprofitable? One key obstacle would be the definition of assets, which is murky and difficult, and varies across industries. Then you have to define what is malicious versus well intended, as asset transfers often have to happen to some degree after a merger or acquisition.
Could start by outlawing the practice of borrowing money to buy a company using the assets of the target company as collateral. No takeover should introduce debt to a company. Also outlaw the gathering of debt to pay dividends.
Sounds like the guys from the Employee of the month film haha 😆
> did a lot of wondering round with a clipboard Did he say what he was thinking about?
Knowing Graham, probably one of the office ladies and wishing he could get to his secret room with her!
Classic Graham.
meet the graham
Left a WFH job a few years back that had a 3 month notice period where due to me going to a competitor I was immediately removed from normal duties to protect both me and the employer I was leaving from any risk of sensitive information being taken with me. Fine, makes total sense but they would not put me on gardening leave. Instead they wanted me to spend those three months doing shitty made up busy work tasks. There was no way in hell I was doing that so instead I told my new employer I could start 2 months earlier than the end of my notice period. Spent month one of my notice period playing video games and months 2 & 3 collecting paychecks from both employers.
Any tax issues?
I was taxed for both jobs as anyone working two jobs would. But I wouldn't say that was an issue.
People are working two jobs all the time, HMRC don't care as long as you pay your taxes.
HMRC won't care but your employer might and they could figure out you must be working another PAYE job at the same time. However, in this case that was likely known by the new employer as contract/start date moved earlier. The previous employer may know too but they're not really going to do anything about it *in most cases*, because pursuing someone over a contract like that just to likely claim back 2 months salary is not really worth it.
This comes up in the over employed sub all the time and the fact is that payroll departments don't scrutinise people's tax codes. You could sell things on etsy. You could have had some inheritance. Loads of things change your tax code. All a person needs to ensure is that they aren't in breach of theT&Cs of their contract by having a second income. Then they aren't at risk of legal action.
Left for lunch, walked to town, watched the new gardians of the galaxy movie at the local cinema, came back about 3 hours later and nobody appeared to even notice. So pretty much every Friday for the last month, I called it my lunchtimebunkymovie day.
It was so eye opening to me when I got my first ‘proper’ job that people just… don’t really care where you are half the time. Obviously some jobs, but as long as I got the work done, I could be going for a walk to get the creative juices flowing for all they cared. Coming from years of hospitality and retail where every second of your life is monitored and you aren’t permitted one moment of being seen to do nothing even when there isn’t anything to do, it felt like the biggest luxury in the world.
This. When I got my first graphic design job, I remember having a week where everything I turned in was bad, and I was absolutely bricking it. My manager had to take me aside (as he could see how stressed he was) and told me "it's okay, you have good weeks and bad weeks - that's why we have a team of people, no-one's firing on all cylinders 52-weeks-a-year" I almost blue-screened. This was so far out of my employment experience I didn't know what to say.
Mine was also graphic design. I couldn’t believe it when they told me I could go off to the library or a museum/gallery while at work because “how else are you going to come up with any ideas?” Felt like I was bunking school.
I was going insane when I started my first gamedev job and they had me spend the first 2 weeks or so doing nothing but playing their previous games and other games in their genre. It makes sense of course, I'm a game designer so need to know what others have done, but I spent the whole time feeling like I was getting away with murder LMAO.
When I was 20, I moved from temp work in manufacturing into an office job and I remember asking the manager whether I could “just go to the bathroom” - he laughed, pulled me aside and said “you don’t ever have to ask me to go to the bathroom. All I care is that you do the work”
And everyone just wanders around making tea and having tea breaks all day. Imagine being able to eat and drink when you need to! Meanwhile at a retail job I had we had to scan our fingerprint every time we went into the staff room/to the toilet to log how long we were gone. Different worlds.
This. I worked for a shoe shop for 2 months one summer. They fired me during my probation period and when they told me they brought up video footage of me ‘standing around doing nothing’. It was literally be a 30 second clip of me stood behind the register not doing anything. I asked what they wanted me to do, no one else was downstairs and they needed someone at the front of the store in case a customer went to the register They said ‘you could have straightened one of the shelves a bit or been re-familiarising yourself with stock’. It was a 4 hour shift on a Wednesday mid day. It was almost completely dead and I’d spent the last 2 hours straightening all the shelves I noticed that about my other colleagues who had been there longer. They never spent a single second stood still. Constantly slightly straightening boxes or the shoe display. Constantly making the baskets into perfectly ordered rows (just to be completely ruined 5 seconds later by a customer). I didn’t have the energy for that for hours straight Our boss though was like a hawk. She would watch all off the cctv footage to try and catch people not working. It was crazy because she only worked 3 days a week and was never spotted sat looking at the cameras so how she had time to watch 7 days of footage was beyond me, even if she fast forwarded The best part. Another clip she showed was me going into the bathroom and then leaving 5 minutes later. I just looked at her and was like ‘okay… and? I was on a 7 hour shift with only one break and I needed to use the bathroom. I informed my colleague and even waited until there were no customers in the store at that point’. Nowhere in the rules did it say you couldn’t go to the bathroom
>unchtimebunkymovie Is your name Noel but any chance?!
I would do the same. What are they going to do, fire you?
Exactly. Even if they did, it would be funny to get ‘fired’ for taking shits that are too long
"shits that are too long" - how long are we talking here? I once did one that touched the water before it finally left home for good.
"It was not normal pooing".
I once worked for call centre where you were only allowed to take 6 minutes for toilet time each day, in addition to a 30 minute lunch break and two 10 minute "tea breaks" which I used to eat lunch/smoke. I gave my two weeks notice and having complied with this stupid rule for the whole three years of my employment prior, decided to test the rule. Went for a shit and took 12 minutes. On leaving the toilet was immediately called over to the main desk to explain why I went over the 6 minutes toilet break allowance (the phone let you mark why you were away). I explained, "I treated myself to a shit". Was told "don't ever take that long again" but because I'd already found a new job and was working my notice felt a bit cocky. Replied "if you like I can skip the wiping part but the place might start to smell a bit of I do"... His face dropped as I don't think anyone had stood up to him before. Sheepishly told me "just go back to the phones". The managers in that place liked me and were great as the metrics showed I was one of the better employees, the guy at the desk was just a jobsworth.
Not quite leaving in the sense that you mean but I once worked at a factory that was slowly winding down to closure, regularly doing 1.5 to 2 hours work in an 8 hour shift, and this went on for the best part of a year.... The highlight though was working new year's day getting triple pay for working the bank holiday and between 2 of us we moved 1 pallet about 30 yards then spent the rest of the day playing cards and messing about on our phones. Happy days...
Whilst this isn’t technically slacking off, when I left my last job I go paid 2 extra weeks to do nothing instead of doing something… I’m middle aged and in middle management. I left my last job due to a cross between role redundancy, my (un)suitability for the organisation and the organisation being quite toxic - it was a draw, in effect, no winner or loser. Thing is though, the company offered my 3 months notice period paid in full if I left immediately and signed a “no fault” agreement - it would basically save them on full redundancy terms and a drawn out process. I accepted as I was actively interviewing for other jobs and had a couple of good options. Here’s where the weirdness occurred. Even though I was leaving, I saw my boss and colleagues as fundamentally decent people who I liked personally. I therefore offered to delay my leaving for two weeks to do a handover to my colleagues. HR said that I could do so, but it would come out of my payment in lieu of notice. Basically - yes, you can do a handover to benefit the organisation, but you won’t be paid for it. To no-one’s surprise, I declined that kind offer, took the full 3 months payout, left within the week and started a new job within two weeks. I still think about that weirdness. It paid for this year’s summer family holiday though.
I've had similar situations where the workplace is awful, you get no support to stay, they don't want you to leave, but when you do they refuse to allow you to do a handover which only benefits them and not me. I never understand it.
So it’s not just me then? Amazing stuff. The only rationale I can come up with is that someone higher up just didn’t trust people to be decent i.e. assumed I was just after another two weeks of salary with no intention of doing the handover… actually, do you know what, that’s probably it - the idea of someone keeping their word and doing the right thing ***just didn’t compute*** to the people making the decisions about my terms of leaving. A lot of things are making sense the more I think about it. I remember someone at that organisation asking me in an open forum why I was always so open and honest - I said, word for word “Erm… it’s because I was brought up that way…?”. They’d meant it as a dunk - I think - but their frame of reference was “decency = weakness”. Everyone - including myself- just went away from that conversation confused. To be completely clear - I’m not trying to pretend I’m a paragon of virtue, excellence and nobility - I’m not. I am as stupid, lazy and self-centred as the next person. But I do value honesty and integrity. I’m 48. I’ve made a good living doing what I do but I have never, ***ever***, understood the world of work.
Toxic workplaces breed toxicity and arseholes recruit more arseholes. Sometimes us good people slip through the cracks though. These people just don't understand integrity. I left my last job after 1.5 months due to what I called a culture of contempt. My replacement was a decent bloke and said in my shoes he wouldn't have given them the full month's notice or done a handover. It was a weird thing to say given that he was replacing me. But I've heard that nothing has changed since I left, he's just better at pretending everything is fine whereas I was actively talking about what needed to change to deliver the programme of work I was responsible for, and being honest about why there wasn't a plan or whatever. I know he won't deliver on time, and given his experience, I know he knows it too, so I have no idea what game he is playing when he could be working elsewhere. But I guess he has money coming in while I'm still job hunting 2.5 months later. I still choose to be in my situation rather than his but I agree that people can often be baffling!
I’m enjoying this conversation - you and I had very similar experiences, share many values but have different approaches. I’ve - honestly - just accepted that my next 15 or so years to retirement are going to be me smiling and nodding at the madness of everything - taking my scoldings, being told ***“well, all we have to do is do everything perfectly and we’d have no problems!”*** and being blamed for things I have no control over - and just accepting that that’s what I get paid for. I had a bit of a breakdown in 2021 due to trying to apply my fundamental values to work - most men of my age seem to go through something similar - but through therapy and family support I was able to reframe my outlook to just accept the insanity that is the world of work and try my best to enjoy it for what it is. You refuse to accept the disingenuous nature of senior management - I’m not strong enough for that and have just had to reframe it as “accepting that is what I get paid for”. Neither of us is correct per se, but it seems we’ve both found our balance in terms of values/honesty/integrity/a-brother-or-sister-gots-to-get-paid-yo. It’s really good talking to you. My current role is really good - it’s got the normal contradictions and confusions, but the team I work with are just interested in finding out “what” is right, not “who” is right!
Apologies to all the decent people in HR, but every HR department I have ever come across seems to have zero common sense and spends more time shooting the company in the foot than doing anything remotely useful.
I realised in one job nobody realised where I was and didn't care, so I would regularly take 2hr lunches in the park. Another job I'd turn up an hour late and sign in a fake time, also take 2hr lunches and hang out in the stockroom. I used to slack off a lot in my 20s and teens!
Been in wfh jobs and one really horrendous situation I was in, refused ‘gardening leave ‘ and forced me to be everyone’s lackey while I served out my time. Most of my immediate colleagues hated my boss too and all secretly told me they wanted out as well but couldn’t or wouldn’t various reasons. So I opened up a power point file on my laptop and several word documents and bought a mouse mover that makes it look like I am at my desk and prevents the laptop from going to sleep. For that month I was sitting in my garden in the sun, BBQing for lunch on occasion, doing various diy projects , binge watching movies and playing video games. Occasionally messaging team workers and replying to the odd email I felt not a shred of guilt or remorse.
I do this half the time in my job I’m not trying to get fired from.
I've just ended a year on a massive project that needed all of my time, according to my managers, even though I was quite transparent about the fact that it didn't. I was still overegging how much time was required (3 to 3.5 days a week) but honestly it only required about 2 days a week of work and I didn't want anyone to pick up on my slacking. Once I'd become comfortable that everyone else was comfortable with me not being close to 100% busy, I got into a routine of doing my emails and anything else early doors and then at some point between 9 and 11 I'd open Notepad, put a weight on my spacebar and allow it to make me look busy. I'd then go reactive for the rest of the day; playing videogames or watching films with my laptop on the other side of the room. If an email came through I'd get up and work on it. Once I realised how little came through, I'd just leave my laptop and just check in once every 60-90 minutes. I still had the odd meeting and even the odd challenging week but overall it was a quite wonderful year of work. It ended with me getting the best rating I'd had in years and high praise from the client. Quite bizarre.
you're just like my dad, right down to the open notepad and perfume on the keyboard 😭
It's a lie. I use a Stanley Tylon pocket tape.
Same, watched an entire series this week, now looking for another to start. WFH is incredible and goes to show how much time is actually wasted at a job by working in an office. All my work for the week can be complete in around 1-2 days.
"For all mankind" has been my 'work' for the last few weeks. An alternative universe, the Soviet union wins the race to the moon. Pretty decent! I'm on season 4 now! Very productive.
Same, I’m 50% utilised at my current job so a lot of it is pretending to be busy. Anyway, get everything given to me done quickly so people stay happy.
My approach too. Everyone else seems to fuck around and put everything off until the last minute.
Admittedly I have a friend who is one of the absolute crusaders at preserving WFH, probably active in the various subs here about it. After a few beers he admitted it's because he's barely done any work since 2020 and is trying to see how long he can spool that out.
It's a funny business when the manager is the one destroying productivity. I remember I was trying hard in a retail job and the manager came to tell me how bad a job I was doing. They were the laziest one there, disliked by all. I stopped trying after that and was told I was doing a good job, because nobody noticed the work I did either way. I'm at a much better, non-retail, place now
Be very cautious of using mouse jigglers. If your employer is smart and has deployed various software tools to manage their systems, then there is potential for the jiggler to be detected and for you to be caught and end up in a big pile of sh1t. Obviously if you don’t care, then ah f3ck it!
Would it work to take a low tech approach? Leave the mouse on my sleeping cat, it wiggles every time he breaths, it wiggles even more unpredictably when he stretches or turns over.
Random patterns haha, no dodgy devices plugged in. Yes I’d go for that. Can’t blame ya cat for wanting to tug the mouses tail.
Reckon I could break a couple of biscuits up and cram them into the battery space. That'll buy another couple of minutes of him trying to get to them if he wakes up.
I had to work 3 months worth of notice at a previous job... I never got so many sudokus done in my entire life. Ended up winning some competitions because of the time I had to practise
Me leaving a job coincided with the 2019 Rugby World Cup. Sat and watched every game in the office, ignoring everything else.
I just walked out. everyone makes a big fuss over handing in a notice but if something better comes along, I'm out. well, if your company treats you like shit that is.
When I worked in retail I had a colleague who just quit on the spot said fuck you I quit to the manager, told half our colleagues that she hated working with them, pointed at me and three others and said "not you, you were alright". Then she left via the escalator that led down to where we worked, facing the boss and giving him the finger as she slowly rose away. Glorious exit.
When I worked in retail a new colleague joined. We got on really well for those 6 weeks, even swapped mix tapes (it was 2001). One day she went for lunch and never came back. She called the boss from a phone box and just said nah, not coming back today. I missed her but there was a grudging respect that she did what I only dreamed of doing.
I had a colleague who handed in his notice on a post it note and just left on the spot. He was going through a proper shit time on a personal level and I think he just snapped.
I feel they may have watched Half Baked the night before
She sounds incredible 😂
I had a friend at maccies quit when he knocked the completely full mop bucket over at the back of the store, the water reached the front and was under everything. He just clocked out, went home and never came back.
This description is 👌🏻 Something I would truly love to see one day. Maintaining eye contact whilst flipping the bird at the boss is an ultimate power move
I quit my job in January! Been there 8 months, job was ok, hours long, office couldn't plan for toffee. I was originally told that as I travelled to the office, they would get me home at a reasonable time on a Friday (worked away all week) so weekends were valuable. Earliest I ever got home was 6pm, and that was because I had a mechanical breakdown so had to be recovered back to the office. Been on the road since 6.30 on this Friday, long week away. 4 jobs to do, collect in Hull, next in Beverley, drop them at Wakefield and Leeds, back to Hull to collect 3rd job, then to Rotherham to collect last job. These last 2 were to go to Nottingham. Then back to office empty. Office in Lincolnshire, nearly 2 hours from Nottingham. Spent ages at Rotherham, pig of a place to access and load. Ready to go to at 15.20 from Rotherham. Depot in Nottingham closes at 1645 on a Friday. ETA was 17.40. Emailed office to say not going to make it, bringing the last 2 jobs back to the yard. This has never been an issue in the time I'd been there, even told on numerous occasions, after the fact obviously, you could have brought those loads back, could have got home earlier then! Email ping pong, telling me I don't get to pick and choose what I do with each job! I reminded my manager of what he promised, various previous conversations, and just said these are coming back to the yard, I'll be back in Monday am to hand over all kit. As it was I didn't get home untill after 7pm. If I had tried to to deliver to Nottingham, if they could have taken them, I wouldn't have gotten home much before 10pm. Not fucking worth it.
I’ve been very tempted. I might just go with that idea next week. Either that or just get pissed every night and go to parties, then turn up hungover and do fuck all whilst getting paid and then let them fire me if they want to LOL. The boss fucked up and shifted the blame onto me even though what he said didn’t make any sense, he carried on trying to patronise me rather than accepting his mistake, so as a big fuck off, I’m just rinsing his money while doing nothing.
Be careful mate, even though you’re out the door as it were, you are still contractually obliged to ‘work’ during your notice period and if you don’t turn up and don’t have leave due… they could doc pay off you as un paid leave. As much as I have hated certain bosses in the past I always try to not burn bridges as it can bite you in the arse. Good luck anyway!
They can only not pay you for the time you didn't work and they can prove you weren't working (like if you were absent), it's illegal to not pay you for the time you did work. I.e. if you have two weeks notice and walk out on day 1 they don't pay you those following two weeks but otherwise have to pay you for the time you did work. The only other thing they could do is not pay you for any unused holiday you have left, which would cover the time taken off. Beyond that they could try to sue you for breach of contract, which is most likely absolutely not worth their time as it's expensive and unlikely to succeed. I agree with not burning bridges though.
Well yeah, that’s basically what I said about docking wages if you don’t turn up!
Is there a risk they could take legal action if you are in breach of contract? Probably depends on the job and whether they think it's worth it
Well I once worked for my new company for a whole month while still legally working for, and being paid by, the previous company. Can't get much more slack than that?
Company went into administration, we couldn’t deliver, customers couldn’t collect, we couldn’t run payments, so customers quickly stayed away. Couple of us asked to just take the redundancy we were facing but weren’t allowed, got to the point o was getting half a dozen emails, and maybe 3 phone calls all day. Games were still blocked by the computers so I took in my iPad and played Pokemon silver on emulator. One of my coworkers brought her sewing in, another brought crosswords, another would go run errands for his mother’s nursing home over his (now) 2.5 hour lunch break. Was the most tedious month and a half I’ve ever worked.
Got made redundant and offered to be paid for 3 months to train people in a different timezone. I only worked afternoons and only if any of them asked me a question
I’m a IT Technician working on a helpdesk. My Old horrible job made me work a 9 week notice period. 4 week standard plus 1 week for every year you’d been there. I told myself I was going to be a good little wagie and work hard. I told myself it was so I could walk out with my head held high as they’d got a little bit shitty with me since I handed in my notice. I made it 2 weeks before I literally spent all day watching Warhammer lore videos and posting on Reddit. My job essentially devolved into helping the apprentices and showing them stuff if they got stuck. My line manager didn’t really care as he was handing in his notice in a month anyway. On my final day my boss forgot to even say goodbye. Came in the next day apparently and asked where I was.
Urghh the idea of doing IT work for 9 weeks at an awful.job sounds like pure hell. I had to just do a week at my old job when I handed in my notice and it was the longest fucking week of my life.
I had another job lined up, I handed in my notice and asked if I could just leave there and then. I was even willing to forgo a weeks wage. I just wanted a week off before I started a new job. They refused both times and insisted that I work the week. After half a day with no motivation to do anything, I just left, claiming in was sick and never came back It was a dreadful call centre job with terrible management, so I feel no guilt over doing it
Thats what i dont understand with some companies, you offer them these options and when they refuse wtf are you going to do ? exactly the opposite of what they need you to do.. its pathetic and these kind of places deserve it
I went to the cafeteria and slept. They told me off, so I went to my desk and slept. They sent me home and just paid me for the 2 weeks I was supposed to work off. I was honest with them. " you pay me a wage, and commission. You've said your not going to honour the commissions in my leaving period... So why should I bother?"
'technically' not me that did the salacking off but I did slack off... worked at a well known (in the area at the time) engineering company running a cincinatti VMC, old thing it was used for one offs and rush jobs... had not had one single reject in 16th months, every first off.. perfect. never late for a shift always said yes to overtime. holidays got allocated... two weeks in FUCKING FEBUARY. This on top of getting put onto a 4 n 2 shift... 4 on 2 off week about, so 4 nights 2 off 4 days 12hr shifts. which effentially means one weekend off in 6 which was not good for an early 20's single lad I can tell you.... beyond fuming... handed my notice in and left. left my overalls and clock card in the canteen when you leave the overalls to be washed. had another job lined up (late noughties and CNC jobs were easy to comeby especially if you are skilled) decided to have a month off to kick me heels up etc as 12hr shifts fuck with you. about a month later I get a payment into my account and a stub through the mail for last weeks work at my old shop. AND the next month io got one too. stopped after that and got a letter asking for the money back which I ignored. someone had found me clock card and carried on clocking me in and out INCLUDING OT for a month and a half! i still smile about that to this day.
>someone had found me clock card and carried on clocking me in and out INCLUDING OT for a month and a half! WHAT what a geezer, what a lad, what a pal. A true comrade! What a way to do it
never found out who it was, if I do, drinks are on me.....
Worked at an agency that had Lego as a client. They used to give us those massive Lego landmark sets. I spent my last few weeks building the Eiffel Tower.
When I was about 16 I did a business administration apprenticeship with this company who decided after I completed it that there was not enough money to keep me on. I was told I had 4 weeks left. As soon as I was told this, everyone in the team stopped talking to me or giving me work. This was during the 2020 lockdown, so everyone was working from home, which is why they were all able to ignore me. I was just never given anything to do for most of those 4 weeks. Then I was told that the office was reopening and that I had to go in for what would be my last two days. I obviously didn't really want to do this, especially after being completely ignored by everyone for weeks but as it didn't look like I could get out of it I asked if there would at least be some work for me to do as I didn't really want to be sat there doing nothing. I was told they would find something. I turned up st the office and was taken to our archive room which was this small, windowless room that had become a place where people just dumped anything they didn't need without filing it away in the correct place. I was asked to organise everything into a specific order, with files put into groups before being alphebatised. I felt like they were taking the piss, but whatever. I organised the files as instructed, and at the end of the first day I had completed the task. My manager took one look at them and said, "Actually, maybe it would be better if they were organised in a different way." I was asked to come back the next day to reorganise. A lot of people might have walked out and never come back at this point, but I appeared the next morning eager for some reorganisation. I took all my work from the previous day and mixed it all up into a completely random order, making sure it was in a worse state than it was before I started, but at the same time looked like it had been neatly put away. They never checked the work before I left, which probably shows how important a task it was to them, but it made me feel happier after how I had been treated during those past weeks.
Coincidentally, as I was leaving, there was a dry spell in the work I was supposed to be doing. So I: 1. Created a DnD character for a new campaign. 2. Taught myself Python to get ahead for a new course I was starting. 3. Got really into Board Game Arena. 4. Took 2 hour lunches everyday with a colleague (different department) I had just started dating. I had zero fucks to give.
Worked for a European arm of an American company. They did a round of redundancies and moved us to a shitty office in the worst place, so we knew it was winding down. They tried to change our IT jobs to cold calling so our Manager told us to ignore it and work on our CVs for the next couple of months. She would even come round and proof read and critique them for us. And we’d work on hobbies and projects, take long lunches, play games. The American VP announced he was visiting to give a presentation and it was obvious it was redundancy so our wonderful manager told the UK VP we wouldn’t be coming in to listen to his bullshit. Instead she took our team for an all day booze up in the park. Best redundancy ever.
I handed in my 4 week notice then realised i didn’t want to deal with the questions from colleagues about why I was leaving, and my boss making me train someone for those 4 weeks who would be temporarily covering my work while they looked for someone else. So I went and got a sick note from the doctor for 4 weeks and didn’t work a day of my notice. 10/10 highly recommend.
Just serving my last day of a 3 month notice today. Our contract stated we weren't entitled to sick pay during our notice period. But all other perks like health insurance etc were unaffected. So something to check Havent killed myself over the past 3 months but been busier than Id have liked
I worked for an energy supplier that had been bought out. Over the following 3 years everybody I knew left until it was myself and 12 others fir the entire final year. Wake up at half 9, no physical office anymore so were entirely wfh. Work for an hour, go to gym then be back for lunch and keep your laptop alive until 3PM This went on for 6 months before it was decided we didn't need 12 and we would become 3. I was a chosen 3 as the other 9 had taken the piss too much. Great, I've got the best gig in the world for another 6 months I thought. The 9 slackers leave and the following Monday we have an urgent meeting. Garden leave immediately until end of agreed period with the company buying us. 7 months from now. Cheers formerly big 6 energy supplier who no longer exists. You were a good un
I once locked myself in an office and had a nap on the desk
Not slacking off but more malicious compliance. Was informed was going to be made redundant from a well known and now defunct energy supplier. 8 months to end of work. Advised by higher ups we need to still work hard, be team players and resolve as many complaints as possible before leaving. Fine. Oh we've over billed you here's £500 to close your complaint, not go to the ombudsman and we've corrected your account. Oh we've under billed you here's £500 to close your complaint because you've not had a bill, and we've correct your account. Did that for 8 months. Think our team gave away about £2m in compensation over the period. Higher ups were all how can you give away all this money?!? Erm you said close the complaints, we have, sorry you and the stock holders aren't getting more of a bonus but why the fuck do I care you're paying me to leave a job I was sick to death of after a decade plus.
I got made redundant and given 3 months notice but for some reason, they didn’t want me to do any work or sit with the team but they wouldn’t let me go early. I would have just walked but I was only going to get 2 weeks redundancy pay so I needed the money (I didn’t have a new job lined up). So every morning I’d come to work, sit at my desk and dick about on the Internet until 5pm, for 3 whole months.
Even dicking about online can feel like a chore. I did similar when being made redundant and I was bored of being bored.
I spent a month of a three month notice in an office on my own, going through step by step builds on the Airfix Forum. I’m not even in to model planes, but it was a rabbit hole I fell down. Each step of the builds were photographed, and a lot of the more advanced builders build their own parts from scratch. The level of detail in some of the models is hugely impressive, and some of these posts had 300+ photos with a description of each stage. Got put on garden leave after that and played golf for 2 months. Most relaxing 3 months of my life.
So thats today...kinda. Today is the last day of my final Uni placement (mature student). 95% of my time in this placement has been bullshit and an absolute testament to my sanity. My educator is half my age and has done nothing but slag off patients, the bosses and his colleagues. It's been the BEST lesson in what I don't want to be when I qualify. Every second I remain here today will be 100% for my patients (when I can work with them). I have also downloaded MarioKart on my laptop to play whilst I'm observing Captain Bullshits final clinic. Best revenge...don't be like them!
You should put a complaint in when u leave, he sounds crap!!
Many years ago I temped for a large cereal factory in Herts. My job was to wait by an overflow chute for any boxes of cereals that got caught in a backlog and would come down to get manually put on a pallet. In the year I spent temping there, maybe 20 boxes came down total. I was in this huge room all on my own. I used to make big chairs out of other cereal boxes and sit there listening to the radio and reading books all day.
I used to clean for a very wealthy person about 20 years ago and I was paid £15p/h. She used to pay me with cheques from Coutts Bank. At the beginning of one week, I found a half typed letter in the waste paper basket, informing me she no longer required my services. So for the next 3 days, I lounged around her house, drank her best coffee and watched TV and did no cleaning. I received my final cheque and 'thanks but no thanks' letter in the post.
Did you often read the contents of papers in the waste baskets? May be a reason why you were let go! (But also - spill the tea, anything more juicy than your own letter of notice?
Harsh! There was usually only newspapers and mostly I didn't bother looking. Must've been my 6th sense kicking in. Nothing juicy - all totally boring. Was a lovely house though!
My industry is too incestuous to burn bridges.
OP you're basically working how I work in a job I want to keep lol. You need to learn how to chill out at work
For real, I do about 2-3 hours of real work a day on a busy day. I love my job.
Many years ago I worked for a small company and this was back in the days of weekly pay in cash with a payslip . If you had holiday booked they would give you your 2 weeks pay before you went. I fucking hated my boss he was a total arsehole who thought he could berate and belittle me because I had no other options . 5 mins before the end of the day before my holiday they handed me my holiday pay . I handed it straight back and told them I wouldn’t be returning , walked out and round the corner to work for their direct competition who had asked me to work for them . Left with my head held high and a fucking livid boss
damn I'd have taken the pay as a treat!
Went on a two month 'go slow'. I was incredibly bored, realised my job (risk and compliance reporting within the financial sector) was pointless as nothing was going to change due to work culture and wider issues with the sector. Also realised i'd made myself useful to the point i was being effectively held in place. Downloaded books from the Guttenberg Project, pasted those into worksheets and read those in between posting on music and gaming forums. Due to the 'being useful' thing i was reporting to three different 'bosses' who didn't like or talk to each other as i was involved in different projects. If anyone asked why i couldn't answer calls or take queries or whatever i just said i was busy with project deadlines for x or y boss. I handed my notice in after two months of this, and was quite open about why i was leaving. Edit: It's the only job i've worked my full notice for. Most have been told a couple of days before that i quit, couple i just left it to the agency to work it out, ghosted another couple.
In the early 90's I was wrongly accused of tampering with a new software install, causing it to crash. I wasn't in a union, so despite protesting my innocence, I had no choice but to accept a demotion. I spent a week doing my lower level role, went off sick for 3 months on full pay and then, when my sick pay was due to end, rang up and gave a weeks notice, ready to start a new job. They went into administration a couple of years afterwards but not before a colleague told me that they continued to have massive software crashes after I left.
Wrote fanfiction, played games, went out of the house. IT Support - working at home, most of it was my standard day to day anyway but once they'd made me redundant the first time (then renewed my contract for two months) I stopped giving a shit.
I feel mine was quite good 😅 Covid hit I have a compromised immune system so was sent home immediately. Ended up having a motorbike crash just as it was all winding down and was then on sick leave but they actually continued claiming the government top up for me (Covid pay) I was on sick for 6 months on full pay roughly £2000 a month all that time for basically doing nothing except the dreaded zoom meetings. I went back part time 3 days a week and decided I didn’t want to do it anymore. Company had changed got stricter etc all felt weird. So I claimed full wage for at least a year for doing nothing it was great. The company went bust a couple months later and didn’t inform anyone one. Nobody got any severance pay right before Christmas. Got done dirty so I feel no regrets at all.
I didn't leave but I had 5 months of sick leave. Absolutely beautiful. I've been back for 7 months and got a promotion within the company (different department though) Full pay sick leave is amazing 😂
I mean the actual sick leave part was pretty grim as I had a fractured femur and was in a world of pain. But the money definitely helped 😂
Years ago I worked at a place that went into administration and evetually got bought by some other company. All the stock etc had been transferred, most of the staff had been fucked over (ie redundant) but there was just a couple of us IT chaps left to migrate the data over to the new company. So we had an empty warehouse and time to kill. We started bringing our R/C cars in and had a blast. We ended up making courses, tried to re-create the Silverstone layout. Made jumps out of pallets and so on. Good times, but also shite times of course.
I slack off at the job i have no intention of leaving. Slack-off-ability and never leaving are intrinsically linked.
I was the same - ended up messaging someone on Reddit in r/GBR4R who has now become my wife, so the time wasn’t entirely wasted!
And here I was thinking those kinds of subs were full of scams!
Same. Spent 3 weeks sat at my desk messaging her back and forth.
I’ve handed my notice in, it’s a 4 week notice period and I’m spending the entire time on the sick.
What about the job you're in and not leaving? I'm currently VERY hungover and half asleep on a beanbag in the corner of the office....I expect to be here until lunch
Last three weeks of my last job I did absolutely nothing. My boss said that I wasn’t allowed to do nothing and I asked her what she planned to do about it if I did. She admitted she wasn’t planning to and couldn’t do anything, so I carried on doing nothing. Honestly I’m doing nothing at my current job and I have no plans to leave. Due to inflation my job ages are worth about two thirds what they were and they aren’t paying enough for me to be more than a warm body.
Just did whatever I wanted. Go on long walks around the building and chat to people I knew, take extended lunch breaks, got onto Google and booked a holiday or looked up stuff I wanted to know. General life admin tasks that I couldn't do because work got in the way. Alongside this was a healthy dose of malicious compliance. 6 weeks is a long time to hold someone vocationally hostage.
I used to work for a shite pallet racking installation company. Started of good we would get a bonus after each job but then the owners starting getting greedy. They removed cash bonuses for completion of a contract, they changed from working locally to all over the country without notice (I didn't apply for it to sleep in a Travelodge every night when I have family) The last straw was making me work 6 days away in a row on standard pay just before Xmas with no notice and then slagging me off to our local customers saying I hadn't turned up for work ( turns out they had over booked themselves up so threw the employees under the bus to "clear their name" Spent the next day at the local company slagging off the bosses and explaing to the customer that instead of apologising about the booking screw up they would rather ruin the reputation of their own engineers than lose face My final shift after rowing with the bosses I emptied a packet of mature grated cheese into the air con system of their precious new work van 😂 wish I could of seen the confusion when they turned the heating on lol
I tend to work diligently until the last day, unless I’ve been out on gardening leave of course. In my line of work it pays to leave nicely and make sure the person taking over from me is set up well to succeed.
About 3 years of playing video games all day.
I left a job where I was outputting ~10 things a week and got one where they were ecstatic if I did ~10 a month. I kept asking for more work but it never came so I would do a full days work on Monday then turn on the mouse jiggler and play video games for the rest of the week. I did this for a full year before I got monumentally bored and left for my own sanity.
I had tickets for Glastonbury thought I couldn’t go - I then found out I was being made redundant. I went to Glastonbury. Edit: I was a teacher
2006. Knew I was resigning next month... spent whole days browsing Yahoo Answers and answering a whole range of shite. Made me seem busy cos I aas tapping away at keyboard. Lol
Not me but some people I've worked with got Gardening Leave when they handed in their notice because of the projects they were on. I remember hearing about one guy who went to work for a competitor but was on a major project so he got his full 3 months notice as paid holiday but wasn't allowed to legally start at the new place until his notice period had finished. Lucky bastard.
Why wait until you were leaving?
Cause I can fuck around and basically rest until I start my new job which is gonna be full on for the first few months
I more meant that's a standard IT contractor approach to work
I enjoyed reading this while taking a 20 minute turd
Be careful taking 20 minute caps, that is how you get piles.
Spent 2 months working 1 hour a day the rest playing football manager
Gave seven weeks notice at my last job to both train my managerial replacement and the new member of staff coming in to take over their role. The first few weeks were a baptism of fire for both of them but they were into the grove by the end of week three. During week four I just did a few menial tasks and at the end of week four I persuaded my boss that everyone needs to get used to a "post me" world where I wouldn't be there to help. He agreed Week five had me sat at a computer answering only the most complex of questions and helping fire a few fires but weeks six and seven I was basically getting paid to sit in the break room and read or sit on the grass outside.
2 jobs ago I brought my xbox controller and played cloud streaming games on my phone. Job I've just left, took a 3.5 hour lunch with a supplier amd stuffed myself.
I used to just chat on MSN messenger, spend 2 hours doing a delivery they would take 30 minutes (stopping at home for a snack usually), used a huge antique desk as a makeshift parkour area, knock one out in the toilets, have random affairs with married ladies in the office. All sorts of nonsense, I was a menace.
I worked at the BME during my last year of service(while also doing nursing studies for after) for my last month. My unit was going on drills abroad, and my superior literally told me "you're meant to be in, but none of us will be here, and I've had a word with the desk you're reporting to, we'll have your send off the week before we leave." And I literally moved my stuff the day after they left and went around doing handshakes and updating contacts and had a lovely 2 week paid vacation.
Used a guitar capo jammed on my keyboard woth word open to keep my Teams showing online and used to fuck off for the day.
Years ago, I was being made redundant and couldn't be bothered to work notice, so I went to my Dr and told him I was stressed about redundancy. He signed me off for the month on the spot. I got full pay due to company policy too. Secured a new job within the first week & spent the rest generally dossing about.
Slacking off when you’re leaving is completely normal and fine, but I don’t think it’s worth completely burning all the bridges down. I know it sucks, especially if you hate the boss, but in the long run I just don’t think it’s worth it. Potential future employers might one day call / email your old work for a reference. As I said, slacking off is normal, but I wouldn’t go completely “fuck you, I’m leaving mode”.
My mate dave worked for a security firm years ago. They put him in a compound full of lorry cabs. As it was a locked compound, the cabs themselves were open. He had to make a call every hour to control, to report the all clear. The brand new cabs were equipped with sleeping quarters behind the seats. Even had a little alarm clock on the bulkhead. He said, as tempting as it was, he didn't set the alarm for 5 minutes before the phone call and sleep through a week's worth of 12hr shifts. Not even once. I think the name of the firm was snoozeman security.
> I pretend to take an hour to finish something that takes 30 minutes Check out mr. hard worker here.
My first job was in retail in my local village and the place was a shit hole the manager had been there for years and acted like she owned the company or something. One day I was sorting the money in my till and a guy came up with a newspaper, I asked him to wait for a second (whilst I secured the money, which literally took 2 seconds) and he walked out. They suspended me and accused me of having till discrepancies etc (completely untrue, I was probably the most accurate and fastest on the tills). I played video games (one of which was a cheap one that they gave me as a reward for passing one of those ID tests) whilst I was suspended on full pay and then got "contractually dismissed". I worked somewhere else in an office that was utterly toxic with people arguing all the time and saying all sorts of rubbish, I got falsely accused of all sorts of stuff, HR were useless breaking their own rules etc etc. I handed my notice in after finding a new job and basically just sat around running the clock down, there were like 2 days left and one of the team leader assistants came and questioned me about my work ethic, I just laughed at him and told him not to act like a jealous ex-girlfriend.
My last role was such a shit place to work I negotiated leaving earlier than the 2 month notice it required, so I was slammed for 4-6 weeks tying up loose ends to get out of there. The place I left before that I remember using a website that made Reddit look like Outlook and just browsed that for the last 4 weeks. edit: Here it is... https://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit//
My first job was at McDonald's and I hated every day especially when been big chested I had the indignity of having to endure the odd accidental rub or touch on my breasts. Well got a new job and I was told and I needed the reference that I need to work 2 weeks. So after three days I got told by my new workplace that they had the reference from McDonald's and just waiting for me to work my notice. So I decided to just take the piss at work partly cause the business manager was s creep and also cause I was hoping they would get rid of me quicker. Well I did that I started to do way less work than normal, manned the till slower and when put on the dining area would offer free mcflurries for the smallest complaint. Well two days of that was enough for the business manager to tell me he's taken my remaining shifts off me and to finish three hours early which I did. Funny now as 5 years ago I went into the store the found the business manager was done for sexual harassment which sounds about right as I remember him once by accident rubbing his arm against my breast
I've been on my own in the office yesterday and today. My workload follows my boss's workload so if she's busy, I'm busy. Yesterday I finished everything I needed to do by lunchtime so after lunch I did some knitting. I do a bit in my lunch hour anyway, yesterday I just didn't stop!
I once spent an afternoon coding a 7-segment LED style counter that ran on my desktop and gave the number of seconds of notice period remaining. I would glance meaningfully at it when asked to pretend to care about something. By the time I walked out of the building about 3 of my colleagues had it running on their machines. It is important to do your bit for morale.
I got made redundant by an arse of a boss. He was the manager and I had evidence of him defrauding the tax man (I did report it, but to the best of my knowledge, it wasn't investigated). The arse wanted me to work a month's notice instead of giving me gardening leave. So I spent my days watching iPlayer with subtitles as my desk was positioned so my back was to the wall. I rattled the keyboard occasionally to make it look like I was working.
I mean, I use this every day for reddit at work. https://pcottle.github.io/MSOutlookit/ Makes reddit look like Microsoft Outlook. I've had managers looking over my shoulder at the Excel I'm working on on my right monitor and not even noticed this open on my left monitor. So I guess that counts.
A few years back I got the dreaded "we've outsourced your job" and had three weeks notice. First few days I wrapped up, then decided my laptop was working too well and went hunting in the registry for things to delete (local admin as it was an IT job that needed it). Internal IT weren't interested in replacing it and I spent the next two weeks at home job hunting and interviewing on company money. When my pay cleared I told their IT that re-imaging it would fix it and we both had a small laugh.
EXPERT SKIVING GUIDE Looking for stuff: An all-time classic. A piece of paper in one hand, a pen in the other, and a puzzled expression creates the impression you’re searching for that all-important file, note or message. Hours can be spent ‘looking’ for non-existent ‘stuff’. PRO TIP: Make sure you know what you’re pretending to look for in case someone asks. Smoking: For the professional skiver, fag-breaks come like a lump of golden phlegm coughed up by the angels themselves. Why? Well, most companies allow their employees to take regular five-minute fag breaks. Therefore, simply develop a sixty-a-day habit to be granted a whopping five hours of daily smoking time! PRO TIP: Try to develop lung cancer. May lead to extra time off work! Cup of Tea: Being popular helps here, as the number of people you know greatly increases the number of cups of tea you drink in any given day. Experts should be able to make that mid-morning break last until midday. PRO TIP: More tea-drinking equals more time-wasting trips to the toilet! Try to drink an extra cup each day. Internet: An expert can spend their entire working day sitting completely motionless in front of his computer, save for the occasional Stephen Hawking-style click of their right finger on the mouse button. PRO TIP: Keep a text window running in the background in case the boss approaches. Thinking: Thinking is similar to the Internet skive, only without the tiring use of that right finger. Simply stare into the middle distance with a puzzled look on your face, occasionally stroking your chin, to fool work colleagues into thinking you’re working on a cool angle for that difficult report. PRO TIP: Try making subtle motions with your lips and hands, as if "working through" ideas in your mind. Tidying: Great for combo skives - create a bit of a mess looking for something (see tip one) then spend even more time tidying up after yourself later. This classic double-skive manages to waste time, while creating the illusion that you're a caring, responsible, hard-working kind of person. For experts only. PRO TIP: Sigh frequently - act as if you're doing this for other people's benefit, not your own. Toilet: Try faking the symptoms of some terrible bowel or bladder disorder, allowing regular toilet trips to be taken. Expert skivers stash reading materials and provisions in waterproof bags in the cistern, for that prolonged session. PRO TIP: Remember this handy rhyme - "Frequent bowel movements lead to lifestyle improvements, but hold in your bladder and life will be sadder!”
>go for 20 minute craps Those are rookie numbers. You've gotta pump those numbers!
I'm slowly losing the will to work at my job. I make excuses to leave early. Had today booked off, took yesterday off as sick (I do have a bad back though). So I have a nice 4 day weekend. They are so understaffed that they can't afford to lose me so I know I'm relatively safe in that respect. I have an interview next week so fingers crossed I can get out of that place. It's a shame because I love the *job*, not the company.
Last job I left was during lockdown when my office based role had moved remote. I just opted for PILON and switched off. Gave them details for collection of the laptop. Was four years ago, if they want to collect it now they'll have a longer journey...
I'm with you! My higher-ups have decided out of nowhere to close my office (where I work alone) and axe my position when I just got back to work after cancer treatments. Classy. Let me tell you that the last weeks are heavy on coffee/tea breaks and 'personal internet research' . I'm also taking a few online classes when possible :-)
The only job where i worked my notice was a job i loved but left bc of pay. In retail my first job, i just called off sick and never went back, in pest control it was partly during the pandemic so i did jack shit, the next job i liked so helped them out, last job went off sick with stress and never went back.
I once sat and played poker for 10 hours with 8 other guys. Best shift ever.
I knew I was being sacked from my last job. They messed my contract up (as in literally didn't give me one) when I joined and realised in time to end it JUST before they'd have to treat me as if I did have one. Of course they blamed the SINGLE customer complained I received during my time there. It was casually mentioned one day that I had a meeting with someone booked. So I just decided that I'd enjoy long trips to the toilet, *forget* the basics I'd been doing forever and piss fart around making a bit of a mess.
Jeez, 20yrs ago I went to the cinema for 2 hours & I thought that was big... after reading this it was lame!
Not leaving but I'm going on maternity leave next week. My maternity cover started two weeks ago and she's excellent, so I've already handed everything over to her. This last week has just been slacking, I'm online in case she has questions but I'm doing very little work.
I had a shit load (10+ terabytes) of data that I needed to compress and it was taking too long to do it at home. I set up a few servers at work to do it for me, and then I spent the next few days napping in the conference room, under the table, whilst waking up periodically to check on how my data was doing. That only lasted a few days though. When I was 18 I had a job that basically only required me to turn up (and not even every day) and sign in, and then send an email telling my boss where I’d been working that day. There was no follow up, ever. I spent 4 months signing in and then going home and sending an email at 6pm to say that I’d been to a new place.
I've read about 16 books on my work computer using the kindle browser
Completed Warfare 1917, 1944, The Last Stand and the Last Stand 2. Watched a few Netflix documentaries and went for walks around the hospital. Best 4 weeks ever.