'My nephew outsourced his chores': 20 Lazy people who are also really clever problem-solvers

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Remy Millisky • Writer and Editor
May 14, 2023 5:00 PM EDT

Lazy people know how to get things done fast so that they have more time for chillin' out. Whether in the workplace or in real life, people often assume that laziness is a bad thing. But in reality, it's good to take lots of breaks and take life slow sometimes. And we all should know by now that worrying about work too much can take a toll on your health. If you can do your work quickly and efficiently, why should it matter how long it actually takes to complete your tasks? 

The stories below are so satisfying. It turns out that a lot of "lazy" people become engineers or working in STEM fields, because they're really good at finding the fastest way to do something. I'm incredibly jealous of the people who managed to automate the heck out of their jobs, working just a few hours per week! 

Next, this friend group is fighting over a round of golf. 

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    Cheezburger Image 9762899968
    via Jon Tyson on Unsplash
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    Font - r/AskReddit Posted by u/lauvnoodles #1 Top Post 29 316 13 VOTE 29 18 2 Bill Gates said, "I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." What's a real-life example of this?
    via u/lauvnoodles
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    Font - necropants 3 S2 & 2 More I was working as a stockboy in a supermarket and when we had to fill the milk cooler people would bust open a 12 pack of milk cartons and put them in one by one.
    via u/necropants
  • 04
    Font - On my first day I just placed the 12 pack in the cooler and cut the plastic off on one side with my box cutter and yanked it from under it and the look of the store manager and the other employee who was training me was pure bewilderment. From that day everyone did it my way.
    via u/necropants
  • 05
    Font - SparkieMark1977 Start of lockdown, my 9 year old son was having worksheets emailed to complete at home. One day, left him at the laptop doing his maths while I made some dinner with my 3 year old daughter. Walked into the living room with his dinner to find him asking the Alexa all of his maths questions.
    via u/SparkieMark1977
  • 06
    Font - Inquiringkata Worked as a laborer at a nursery one summer. Daily tasks included manually watering 15,000 plants each day. Put together a back of the napkin plan to build an irrigation system and spent the next few weeks building it with some money from the boss. That system is still running 15 years later and does all the work now. I did automate myself out of the job and had to find another eventually.
    via u/Inquiringkata
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    Font - Couple years later got my engineering degree. I'm convinced Engineers are inherently lazy people that will spend a disproportionate effort to make things easier.
    via u/Inquiringkata
  • 08
    Font - cojallison 99 We had to hold a thermometer in water in chemistry class. It probably was only 20 minute experiment but your arms get tired after a couple minutes and you can't let the thermometer touch the bottom of the pan or it won't get an accurate reading. So instead of sucking it up and just holding the thermometer, my lab partner built a contraption out of lab books and paperclips to somehow hold the thermometer in the water without it touching bottom.
    via u/cojallison
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    Font - It was the stupidest looking thing you would ever see in a lab class and our professor even walked over and said "if it looks stupid, sounds stupid, but it works, then it isn't stupid." My lab partner and I joke that he wasn't talking about the contraption but the intellect of my lab partner
    via u/cojallison
  • 10
    Font - adhiyodadhi I was a (paid) intern at a large company during one summer back home from college. My work 95% consisted of using SAP, import to Excel, clean data and generate reports (occasionally create some tool someone needed). In the 1st 2 weeks after getting a hang of my responsibilities, writing all the Excel formulas needed, and basically automating 99% of my work, I was chilling.
    via u/adhiyodadhi
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    Font - I went from actually working from 9-5 to maybe 1 hour tops a day. Finding, importing, cleaning, and reporting usually took hours but with all the formulas it took 2 minutes of clicking. I then helped the other cool intern get his s set up so we could both just chill. We could take 2-hour lunches (paid for by the company) and nobody said anything cause we were just getting so much more done than the other interns. Ofc I helped for special tasks when asked but those were simple 20min tasks
    via u/adhiyodadhi
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    Font - Rino_samuel The clerk was asked to bring 145 white papers into the office. He doesn't want to count the papers manually so he printed 145 blank sheets and took them in.
    via u/Rino_samuel
  • 13
    Font - KioJonny When I was in college I had a job at an Italian fast food place with a reputation for it's breadsticks. They came in frozen and needed a bit to thaw, so we'd take a giant 3x4ft aluminum baking sheet, spread them out in a single layer with no spaces and cover it with a plastic bag, then leave it sit in the walk-in overnight.
    via u/KioJonny
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    Font - The next day you'd have to get a pair of tongs and move each stick to a new tray, turning them over, then cover the new tray with the bag and let them sit on racks for a couple of hours before brushing on the garlic butter sauce. This was tedious enough that you'd usually be ready to brush the butter on the first tray as soon as you turned the last tray. I was given this task for the first time one morning and just did not want to deal with it. I realized if I put the second tray upside d
    via u/KioJonny
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    Cheezburger Image 9762894592
    via u/january21st
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    Cheezburger Image 9762894848
    via u/DLS3141
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    Font - The first week at home was spent automating the entire job. The remainder of their multi- year tenure with the company was spent doing whatever they wanted save the 10-15 minutes weekly to run their program and to answer the odd email here and there. All while getting paid full salary and benefits. They actually had to add in a few errors now and then to make it seem realistic.
    via u/DLS3141
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    Font - Yoinkie2013 Back in highschool a lot of kids used to walk thru his park to get home/to school. A portion of the path went into the woods because it was just quicker than walking the actual trail. At one point in the walk through the woods, you had to go up this small but tedious hill; nothing major but it took like 10 seconds of hard work to go up it. You couldn't go around because one side was a small cliff to the creek below and other side had dense trees. One summer, a bunch of us got
    via u/Yoinkie2013
  • 19
    Font - It was a hard 3 days but it was definitely worth it. Saved 10 second of hill climbing every morning and afternoon, 150+ days of the year. And it wasn't just us, but hundreds of other kids who took the same party every day. Sometimes you need to put in a lot of work so your future selves can enjoy the easy way out.
    via u/Yoinkie2013
  • 20
    Font - IGHOTI907 I was invited to my friend's yearly apple picking: it was a full day of apples and kids and filling a truck for cider. I'm lazy and suggested we make the process more efficient with tarps on the ground. We managed in 2 hours what historically took all day. We didn't even get to the picnic lunch. Essentially, I ruined apple picking
    via u/IGHOTI907
  • 21
    Rectangle - Juic Junce JuiceBox1 Walkie Talkie's. In every job I've ever had these things make your day far less labor intensive if used correctly.
    via u/JuiceBox1
  • 22
    Font - SirSassyCat In Australia explorers discovered a mountain that was taller than Mt Kosciuszko, which was though to be the tallest mountain in Australia. Rather then cause confusion by telling everyone a new tallest mountain had been found, they simply named the new mountain Mt Kosciuszko and renamed the original to something else.
    via u/SirSassyCat
  • 23
    Font - s tablair Reminds me of the mysterious firewall issue that Verizon discovered. They noticed that there was a strange VPN connection from China every day from around 9-5. This triggered an internal security audit which was unable to determine how the hacker was getting in. They eventually decided to roll out physical security keys to make the VPN more secure. This had the desired effect and the illicit connections stopped...for around one week.
    via u/tablair
  • 24
    Font - Then they mysteriously started again. Their network team was baffled as to how this apparent hacker had penetrated their more secure setup. So they called in an external auditor to solve the mystery.
    via u/tablair
  • 25
    Font - It turned out that one employee had hired someone in China to do his work for him. He had several other jobs at other companies that were similarly outsourced to a much cheaper Chinese worker and was pocketing more than $1m per year in salary above what he paid his remote workers. He had always received exemplary reviews and had even turned down promotions. When they had instituted the physical VPN tokens, the remote employee had been unable to connect while his token was being sent by Fe
    via u/tablair
  • 26
    Font - sonia72quebec Years ago as a student I got a job stocking shelves. Guys were carrying the heavy boxes, put them on the floor and bend each time to pick up the items to put on the shelves. I was maybe a light 100 pounds (woman) and carrying the boxes was just killing me physically. So one day I had an idea. I put the box on a old desk chair and rolled it around. No more carrying and no more bending! Funny thing is that, instead of doing the same thing, most of the guys called me lazy and k
    via u/sonia72quebec
  • 27
    Font - Now they have special rolling carts to do the job.
    via u/sonia72quebec
  • 28
    Font - Downvotesdarksouls. My brother gave my oldest nephew 10 dollars a week if he did all his chores with out needing to be told or complaining. One day he gets home early from work and sees. The neighbor kid tossing a bag in the trash. He asks him what he is doing and the kid says he gets 5 bucks a week to take care of a few chores. My nephew outsourced his chores.
    via u/Downvotesdarksouls
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    Font - pizzaalapenguins. Lol my brother was smart like this. My mom worked for Cadbury, and we each received a large batch of candy, tons of chocolate. My brother not liking sweets, decided to sell them at school. Told his teachers it was a fundraiser, so he made easily over $75. Tons of other similar things like that
    via u/pizzaalapenguins
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    Font - blenderstyle I had to carry groceries into the house when I was a kid. I didn't want to make multiple trips, so I tied several bags to the belt loops on my pants to do it in one trip.
    via u/blenderstyle
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    Font - FutureRenaissanceMan. An engineer spent hours developing a program so they could start the coffee pot from their desk and not have to wait for coffee when arriving in the break room.
    via u/FutureRenaissanceMan
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    Font - mistr_k (5) That's pretty much how the first web cam was created too, lazy computer engineers wanted to see if there was coffee in the pot.
    via u/mistr_k

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work stories lazy engineering work smarter not harder data problems jobs
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