#ghostworking #BullshitJobs
"A new survey suggests over half of Americans are regularly ‘ghostworking,’ or pretending to be busy. Here’s what’s driving the trend.
There’s nothing spooky about ghostworking, apart from how popular it may be right now. The newly coined term describes a set of behaviors meant to create a facade of productivity at the office, like walking around carrying a notebook as a prop or typing random words just to generate the sound of a clacking keyboard. (Some might call this Costanza-ing, after Jason Alexander’s example on a memorable episode of Seinfeld.)
Pretending to be busy at the office is not something workers recently invented, of course, but it appears to be reaching critical mass. According to a new survey, more than half of all U.S. employees now admit to regularly ghostworking. That statistic doesn’t necessarily mean, however, that the American workforce is mired in permanent purgatory.
Conducted by top resume-building service Resume Now, the report is based on a survey of 1,127 U.S. workers this past February. The results show that 58% of employees admit to regularly pretending to work, while another 34% claim they merely do so from time to time. What might be most striking about the report’s findings, though, are some of the elaborate methods workers use to perform productivity. Apparently, 15% of U.S. employees have faked a phone call for a supervisor’s benefit, while 12% have scheduled fake meetings to pad out their calendars, and 22% have used their computer keyboards as pianos to make the music of office ambiance.
As for what these employees are actually doing while pretending to crush deliverables, in many cases it’s hunting for other jobs. The survey shows that 92% of employees have job searched in some way while on the clock, with 55% admitting they do so regularly. In fact, some of those fake calls employees have made while walking around the office may have been on the way to making real calls to recruiters, since 20% of those surveyed have taken such calls at work."
https://www.fastcompany.com/91341121/what-is-ghostworking-most-employees-say-they-regularly-pretend-to-work