Have you heard that old joke?
“How many people work in your office?” “About half of them.”
Slacking, shirking, skiving – it’s all unethical, bad behaviour in the workplace, isn’t it? We should all be doing our proper hours, and delivering on the objectives we’ve been set, with total enthusiasm. Only a sluggard doesn’t pull their weight – and they should feel ashamed. Right? Well, maybe. Except that we all know someone – or maybe it’s you! – who does staggeringly little work.
I’ve been lucky enough to have jobs that kept me challenged and busy, so I’ve actually wanted to do the work. But at one place, where I experienced intense boredom and a lack of opportunity, for six months I spent every day at my desk googling skincare and house plants. And nobody noticed. Yes, I ended up with glowing skin and some stunning philodendrons, but also, an existential crisis, and desperation for a role where the boss would notice if I’d spend seven hours reading about brightening serums. This was less than a year of inertia – but what’s it like to be a hardcore, professional slacker?
Jack, 45, from London, has long done as little as possible for his employers in the string of office jobs he’s had since he graduated from university. His name has been changed, so that he doesn’t get sacked (from doing very little). “When I was in my twenties, I was having such a great time outside of work doing creative things,” he says, “and I had no interest in a job. I was living for the evenings and weekends. I found going into offices incredibly alienating, and I’d quit jobs really quickly because I’d get so bored, and then get a new one, hoping it was slightly better, or it at least had a better view from the window. I just couldn’t bring myself to care, and I’ve never been able to care since then. I’ve always been very cynical about work.
“Even when I have stuff to do, I cannot be f**ked until the very, very last minute. The key is to have a computer where your screen isn’t on show. In one of my first jobs, we moved offices, and I think everybody knew I didn’t do any work, so in the new office, they were keen for me to have a desk that wasn’t right in the corner. I knew this, and went in early and positioned my desktop where it couldn’t be seen.”
When I asked for slackers to tell me some more of their tips, Clara, 37, from Nottingham said; “Sometimes – but not too often – I book myself into a Teams meeting, so that I can avoid going to other meetings. Nobody has ever queried it, and I sit quietly in a room for 45 minutes and relax.”
Rebecca, 33, works for an educational resources company. “How much time do I spend slacking a day? About three hours, I’d say. If I work from home, I spend that time playing with my dog, reading, watching TV, and sometimes popping out for a coffee with a friend on maternity leave or someone else who isn’t doing much work!”
Rebecca did used to care. “I used to work very hard and I went above and beyond – probably too much – but I’ve been doing two people’s jobs for no extra money or acknowledgement for eight months now due to a colleague’s sickness. I’m resentful towards my bosses about that, and feel I deserve to coast.”
For Kat, 41, from London, who worked in a call centre in her twenties, slacking was an art form. She’d put the calls on hold for as long as she could, until she felt it seemed suspicious. “Then I’d keep my headphones on, and listen to music for 45 minutes to an hour, until I connected back to the caller.” One of my friends says that for the last year of her last (mostly remote) office job, where morale was plummeting, she decided to use the workday wisely and schedule her hook-ups during the working week. “I started having sex on company time,” she says.
And that’s the thing. Some people are inherently lazy, yes. But there are also all sorts of reasons that people become slackers. Dr Alan Redman, a work and organisational psychologist, says that people might mentally check out of a job due to feeling undervalued. “They may have low motivation, boredom, lack of clear expectations and goals, and also extreme stress and burnout, often due to poor management, feeling like they don’t matter, or simply having too little work to do during the day. Mistrust in the senior leaders is also a big one.”
A 2025 Gallup State of the global workforce report indicates that 90 per cent of UK employees are taking their foot off the gas because they feel dissatisfied with their work.
“In the workplaces I’ve been in,” says Jack, “I think people know I’m not very engaged, but people seem to think I’m good at what I do. Half the time in a job, though, I don’t even really know what’s going on.” The problem with doing little-to-no work, though, says Jack, is that it can be surprisingly stressful. “Sometimes I’ll be heading home on a Friday and I’ll think, ‘Oh god, I’ve gone too far, and they know…. maybe someone walked in while I was on Reddit again, or googling how to do my creative side project, or how to put up a coat rack.
“Or I worry that I forgot to do something they’d asked me to do, because I just don’t care. I just don’t care about any of the work – but I do care about the people. This is a unique position for me, because in other jobs I wasn’t bothered about the people, I only worried about getting caught. In this job, the people are treating me right, and so I do enough to get by. But some days it’s still, pretty much, absolutely nothing.”
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