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I knew a guy whose daily routine was something like:

9:25 - Arrival (cafeteria stopped serving breakfast at 9:30.

9:30-10:15 - Breakfast

10:15-11:30 - A lot of walking around the office, having business-sounding conversations with others but really getting nothing done.

11:30-1:00 - Out for lunch.

1:00-3:00 - Sneak out to car in the parking lot for a nap.

3:00-3:30 - Daily standup. Vaguely talk about how he’s “merging code” or “updating library dependencies” this week.

3:30-4:00 - At desk working.

4:00-5:30 - Doing his walk-around-talk-arounds through the office hallways again.

5:30-6:00 - At his desk again!

6:00 - Cafeteria starts serving dinner. Grabs a bunch of food, throws it in his backpack, and heads to the parking lot.

This went on for years. The other teammates joked that he must have blackmail dirt on the boss because it was obvious to everyone that he wasn’t doing anything and nobody seemed to care. He was there when I joined the company and was there when I left, years later. He may very well be still there today, merging code.




There are less serious versions of the same thing that people might unintentionally do.

09:25 - arrive.

09:30 - 10:00; breakfast

10:00 - 10:30; standup

10:30 - 11:00; Coffee after standup

11:00 - 11:30; checking emails before lunch

11:30 - 13:00; lunch

13:00 - 13:30; food coma, better just check some emails

13:30 - 14:00; coffee and a chat

14:00 - 15:00; maybe some actual work

15:00 - 15:45; someone needs help, they come over and have a chat

15:45 - 16:30; maybe some more work

16:30 - 17:00 wrap up, go home, urgently write some emails and expect a response before you arrive 09:25 tomorrow.

I've seen this, a lot of this.




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