“I Work One Week A Month And No One Has Noticed”: Guy Shares The Dark Side Of His ‘Cheat Code’

Depending on where you work, it might be an open secret that sometimes you can afford to sit around and appear busy some days. Well, through the magic of internet anonymity, it’s possible to learn that there are people out there who take this idea to the extreme.

A man shared how he figured out a method to basically get a month's worth of work done in a week. The remainder of the time he spent watching TV, relaxing and just going whatever he felt like. We got in touch with the man who posted the story and he was kind enough to share some more details.

Image source: Agreeable_Bat9722

Bored Panda got in touch with the man who shared this story and he was willing to give his thoughts. I didn’t expect the post to blow up the way it did, so I limited my responses in case it might affect my job. The response definitely shifted my perspective and made me more appreciative."

"There were a wide range of viewpoints in the comments. Many people messaged me privately for career advice, and I chose to respond via DM rather than share too much publicly for professional reasons. I think the post resonated with people for different reasons, but the general feeling was that it served as a kind of middle finger to corporate culture. A lot of people shared that they’ve had a rough time and felt supported or inspired by what I wrote. Others who were in a similar situation simply said, “I feel the same,”' he shared.

"For me, the experience has encouraged a shift in priorities. I’m going to use this time more intentionally and work toward a concrete goal. One key takeaway was how many people told me that my salary wasn’t actually high, while others couldn’t believe I made that much, but after hearing from dozens of people who said they earn more for doing the same or even less, it became clear that effort and salary don’t always go hand in hand."

To briefly refresh everyone on what might be uncomfortable history, for the vast majority of people, remote work began sometime around March of 2020, when Covid19 lockdowns forced everyone to self-isolate. Surveys at the time found that around 93% of workers had jobs in countries that mandated some form of closure. However, at least in the US, it was not to last and by 2022, around 72% of employees report being “forced” to return to the office.

However, we’ll get back to Covid19, since, as it turns out, remote work has a much older history. For example, the 1911 England and Wales census had a section for respondents to mark if they worked at home, indicating that at least some people have been doing this for over a century. In the 1980s, IBM experimented with allowing people to work from home, although this was only made possible by the use of personal computers and network bridges.

By 2006, around 4 million workers in the US were what we would now call remote workers, not counting the sort of self-employed people who used their homes as offices and workshops. Of course, Covid19 was the first time so many people, all at once, were exposed to remote work and remote studying.

The results varied, as many people, perhaps to their own surprise, found themselves working for roughly two hours more each day. At the same time, they would still report high efficiency and job satisfaction. It is important to note that this is all primarily self-reported data, so it’s worth taking it with a grain of salt.

Results are not uniform, as some folks, like the one in this story, are still able to sort of do what they want, as long as tasks are completed on time. Theories would suggest that this kind of freedom should increase happiness and job satisfaction. Job characteristic theory, a work design theory from the 1980s, suggests that autonomy, job satisfaction and productivity all go hand in hand.

Yet this man indicates that he is, by and large, semi-burnt out. He brings up quiet quitting, although this would suggest that he’s looking for a way out of this job, which doesn’t seem to be the case. It raises a bigger question of productivity and work-life balance. After all, his bosses are happy, so are his clients, why would he put in more effort? This is one of those cases where it’s perhaps not even worth drawing attention to it.

One could argue for working more to make more money and perhaps climb the career ladder, but that also raises the question of “why?” After all, for most people, particularly in a corporate setting, it is to work hard to make more money in the future. This money is to enable a lifestyle, but he already seems quite content and has lots of spare time to do what he wants. Free time is a luxury all in of itself. So why do more when it doesn’t give you what you actually want.

He’s already stated that he doesn’t find this work fulfilling, which is quite often the case when you work in the private sector. After all, deep down, a business exists to make people at the top money. If you aren’t at the top, you have to be very motivated to actually care about someone else’s profits.