How Burying the Shame of Not Doing Any Work Creates More Work

Sometimes, in our effort to avoid the pain of working, we end up digging our heels in so deeply that it turns out to be even more labor than just doing what we’re “supposed to.” And then all the effort that goes into the cover up becomes more of a burden than any spreadsheet creation. The masking of how little you’ve actually done in all your time spent there in the confines of the cube ends up becoming more involved than having just originally fallen in line.

So you start to engage in the form of high-risk behavior that often turns into fraud, embezzlement and theft. Wite-Out tends to be involved. And when the darkness falls more palpably into the office and you find that you’re the very last one there, except for your boss. And then your panic mode starts to take you into even more macabre places–like should I kill my employer, cut off Hydra at the source? Except the thing about Hydra is she can always grow another, even more sadistic head. But you’ve got no time to play into the logic and consequence of Greek myth right now, so you take the scissors out of their container on your desk, run into the corner office he or she doesn’t deserve and gouge away. Problem solved. Your replacement boss will never be able to know all the things you were assigned that you never did. Now there’s the arduous task of body disposal, trading one for of work for another. But at least there’s honesty to the manual labor that involves the riddance of a corpse.