Well, I am sure I am not revealing one of those secrets that only a clever few have figured out. I have done this on several occasions over the years in different jobs and I have seen other people doing it. I usually approach them on the sly and ask if they are really working or just trying to look busy. Every time, they are trying to look busy.
In fact, I know it is not a big secret. I was recently talking with one of my friends and I began to bring up this very subject and, lo and behold, he expounded on this technique without any prompting.
What am I talking about?
Walking around with a clipboard and acting like you are involved in some activity. Most people I have seen performing this deceit are rank amateurs. They have their clipboard in hand with one crisp piece of paper, sometimes blank, clipped in and no writing utensil and do not even glance at it from time to time.
Silly rabbits, clipboards are for pros.
You need a bunch of paper, at least a dozen sheets, but not usually more than twenty. These papers need to be battered, folded and unfolded, some dog-eared. Maybe a couple stapled together. Some documentation external to your company, like invoices or order sheets, is sometimes helpful as well. Your top sheet needs to either be something indecipherable to the casual observer, or something people know you are working on and is perhaps an ongoing project with a long deadline (this really helps, even if you are in no hurry to finish it or have no desire to work on it).
You definitely need something to write with. Markers are a no-no as anything you markdown is usually easy to see and is tougher to eliminate or to continue making marks on the sheet as it will fill up quickly with dark visible writing. Pens work, but a pencil with an eraser is the best. You can write whatever you want and erase it. It looks like you are making changes on what you are taking note of. You can even write down the same thing, over and over, as long as your audience changes, just in case someone saw what you did write down.
Another key thing. Do not go where your work would not take you. If you have no reason to be in, say accounting, then do not go there. Tech support positions are the best. You can usually make some excuse to be in any department and you can hang around empty cubicles, strange little utility rooms, and the like.
I had a support job where I was supposed to manually track down and log every piece of computer equipment in our facility. It took me less than a week. I was already tracking most of the equipment anyway to make my job more efficient. I spent months on the project. I think five in total. The funny thing about it, I actually got a lot of other work related tasks done because my boss could not find me a lot of the time and was unable to give me stupid wasteful assignments that truly accomplished nothing.
If someone approaches you for any reason, make it difficult for them to look at the clipboard. You can let it drop to your side with the pages turned in towards your leg. You can also do the book-hug thing, where you just bring it in towards your chest like the kids do in the high school movies. Just remember, if your boss catches you out, you may want some kind of real work handy.
This is not a foolproof bit of trickery, especially these days, but there are some jobs where it is just easier to pull off. I will not list any as I am sure some people are still practising this craft of guile and their bosses have not been able to figure it out yet. But maybe, just maybe, your boss does know, but as long as you are getting your work done and always look busy, who are they to mess with the system.
Always keep in mind, something that Mr. T may have said, probably not, but it sounds like he could have: "It takes a fool to fool a fool, fool!"
"i pity the fool who doesn't look busy!"
(cadged together from pictures I liberated from the interweb)
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