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Look: A lot of us have probably napped at work. Or at least daydreamed about it!
In this story, one woman made the fantasy come true… for almost two years!
Let’s not sleep on this one.
I have a very good friend who maliciously complied her way into getting paid for essentially doing absolutely nothing for 19 months.
It was a government job, no surprise there.
She and her colleague worked in a state office that kept track of plague cases among prairie dog towns.
They were super busy trapping and testing all summer but once winter comes, prairie dogs hibernate so they ran out of work.
Talk about seasonal work. How will they fill the time now?
They told their boss via email there was no more to do for the season that first autumn and their boss responded by telling them to stand by for reassignment.
So… they did.
For months.
They didn’t want to be accused of theft by just clocking in and out and leaving so in the very beginning, they organized some storage spaces (very slowly), cleaned their office several times, organized paperwork and that sort of thing.
Sounds useful enough. But how long can they draw that out?
When they ran out of shit to do, they started sleeping, doing school work, sudoku, what have you.
Initially, they slept in turns so someone was always available if anyone came to check in on them, but when it became obvious no one was coming, they stopped bothering.
By summer the following year when the prairie dogs came out of hibernation and she thought her work might resume, the whole office (all the employees, in every department) received an email from someone high up informing everyone that particular department had been cut.
Aw, but what about the sudoku?
Don’t know if it was unfunded, or they got all the data necessary the previous summer, or that particular pet project of some politician was forgotten about, but somewhere along the line, the state fish and game axed the project for whatever reason.
Nothing was mentioned in the email about her job status, so her and her coworker continued to go in and do nothing.
If you’re not fired, are you technically still employed?
She’d tell me about making a giant binder rubber band chain and roping two office chairs together facing each other to sleep in the seats (she’s only 5ft tall so she fit relatively well), making a “nest” under her desk, and moving the large-ish copy machine out of its cabinet and sleeping inside.
Prairie dogs got nothing on this girl’s hibernation style.
They made sure the security people saw them periodically throughout the day and they were on camera, anyone above them paying attention would have noticed but no one ever took the time.
They dodged folks in the other departments for fear they’d get told on and just minded their own business (they rarely had much interaction with other employees anyway).
Eventually, she ran into her “boss” at a show and she asked my friend where she had found new work.
My friend didn’t lie and said she still worked there.
Where?
Where you left them.
Haven’t moved. Almost literally.
She said you should have seen her face when the lady put the pieces together and realized what was going on.
The jig was up and she and her colleague were let go that following morning via email before they went in.
Because they had technically worked there for so long (I think two years was the threshold), they both got a little severance package.
In case you’re wondering, they got to keep their pay since:
1. They had proof they informed their boss they had no work and she clearly saw the email and responded.
2. They still showed up.
3. They did exactly what they were told, and…
4. It wasn’t their job to make sure they actually had work to do. They both qualified for unemployment to boot.
If your employees do their jobs, you have to pay them. Even if their jobs are doing nothing
Neither of them used the unemployment since they had both been feeling like the gravy train was sure to derail any day, so they had new jobs lined up.
I mean, I say take free money when you can.
What do the comments say?
One person says, happens more than you’d think.
This person says milk it!
Another person LOLed at a small detail…
And this user wants some office space…
Finally this person says, yep, checks out!
Let sleeping employees lie.
Or you know what? You probably shouldn’t.
If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.
Categories: STORIES
Tags: · employment, hibernation, jobs, malicious compliance, money, photo, picture, reddit, sleeping at work, top, work, working