Once there was a loafer. He did his share of work, but he did more than his share of loafing, if that's possible.
The loafer's work was desk-based, and not just desk-based, but desktop computer-based. As such, his preferred method of loafing was grazing on a varied diet of websites, including but not limited to media outlets, blogs, discussion fora and twitter accounts.
Now, the loafer lived, err sorry, worked in an open plan office. Open plan offices had desks but no walls (and by extension, no doors, for you cannot have a door without a wall). However, para-walls were built from desk partitions, extensions of the desk that rose upwards two or three feet and gave the appearance of a wall while the occupant was seated.
Within open plan offices there were two kinds of desk (and computer screens) - those in sight of the eyes of passers by and those not thus exposed. The loafer sat at a desk and computer screen that were indeed in sight of passers by. However, the loafer was at the more favourable of two other types of desk - those that give warning of the imminent arrival of passers by and those that do not.
If it so happened that the loafer noticed an incoming passer by, which happened a dozen or more times a day, and the loafer happened to be loafing, which also happened a dozen or more times a day, he was able to quickly close, minimise, or switch from the internet browser tab to which he'd been attending (depending on a complex constellation of factors such as unread length of article, ease of relocating the tab, the presence of other work-related tabs, the presence of other active programs and the existence of other activities on a second screen or separate laptop) before the passer by was able to see that the loafer was indeed loafing.
The passer by had not a clue that the loafer had been loafing, and the loafer needed only wait a moment for the passer by to pass by, whereupon he could resume loafing.
Seated on the other side of the loafer's partition was a fellow worker who also did his share of working, but struggled to fill his share of loafing. While seated at his desk, he had no view of the loafer, the loafer's desk or the loafer's computer screen. However, he did have a view of oncoming passers by. He also had an observant nature.
Over time, the loafer's neighbour began to notice that sometimes when a passer by approached, a single mouse click could be heard from the loafer's side of the partition. Further, most of the time this mouse click was accompanied by a second mouse click some 5 to 10 seconds after the passer by had disappeared.
The neighbour approached the loafer with his theory, which I'm sure you can guess, and which the loafer confirmed with a mixture of surprise and shame.
For some time afterwards, the loafer's telltale mouseclick was nowhere to be heard when people passed by.
The neighbour at first assumed that the loafer had ceased loafing. But as time passed, and with the neighbour himself unable to resist loafing from time to time, he decided this was not possible.
The neighbour at first suspected that the loafer was somehow obscuring the noise of the mouse click, but ruled that out as being technically implausible. He then realised that there were other means of obscuring non-work related websites, such as by keyboard shortcuts or (much less likely) switching the monitor off or (very much less likely) throwing some kind of garment over the screen.
Even more diabolically, the neighbour wondered, could the loafer be employing a random mixture of mouseclicks, keyboard shortcuts and screen switch offs, so as to evade detection by the neighbour?
At last, the neighbour could take it no longer, and confronted the loafer. How had he been obscuring his loafing?
They both glanced at the loafer's screen, upon which a sports website was loaded, and the loafer said that he hadn't been obscuring anything.
All of which goes to show, somehow, that
it is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all
No comments:
Post a Comment