Government employees run out of work, spend 19 months getting paid for doing nothing: 'they slept in turns so someone was always available if anyone came to check'

Author image for Ally Perry
Ally Perry • Writer and Editor
Jun 11, 2024 4:00 PM EDT

With the meteoric rise in popularity of remote work, it's not unusual to see employees coming on the internet and boasting that they've secured a job that essentially enables them to do nothing all day. 

What's even crazier, though, are those workers who somehow manage to swing this while also being in the office five days a week. It might not be common, but it does happen, as proven by one entertaining story on r/MaliciousCompliance. A Redditor told the tale of a friend and her coworker who managed to spend nineteen months in a job doing nothing simply because of managerial incompetence.

The pair of employees were initially hired to help track the levels of disease in prairie dogs for a government department. Once this seasonal work dried up, their boss told them to stand by for reassignment. Over many months, it became increasingly clear they had been forgotten about—and they took full advantage. It sounds like they had a blast until they got found out.

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    Cheezburger Image 10359413760
    via Vitaly Gariev
  • 02
    How my friend got paid to find creative ways to sleep for 19 months.
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 03
    I have a very good friend who maliciously complied her way into getting paid for essentially doing absolutely nothing for 19 months. It was a government job, no surprise there. She and her colleague worked in a state office that kept track of plague cases among prairie dog towns. They were super busy trapping and testing all summer but once winter comes, prairie dogs hibernate so they ran out of work. They told their boss via email there was no more to do for the season that first autumn and the
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 04
    They didn't want to be accused of theft by just clocking in and out and leaving so in the very beginning, they organized some storage spaces (very slowly), cleaned their office several times, organized paperwork and that sort of thing. When they ran out of shit to do, they started sleeping, doing school work, sudoku, what have you. Initially, they slept in turns so someone was always available if anyone came to check in on them but when it became obvious no one was coming, they stopped bothering
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 05
    By summer the following year when the prairie dogs came out of hibernation and she thought her work might resume, the whole office (all the employees, in every department) received an email from someone high up informing everyone that particular department had been cut. Don't know if it was unfunded, or they got all the data necessary the previous summer, or that particular pet project of some politician was forgotten about, but somewhere along the line, the state fish and game axed the project
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 06
    Nothing was mentioned in the email about her job status so her and her coworker continued to go in and do nothing. She'd tell me about making a giant binder rubber band chain and roping two office chairs together facing eachother to sleep in the seats (she's only 5ft tall so she fit relatively well), making a "nest" under her desk, and moving the large-ish copy machine out of its cabinet and sleeping inside.
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 07
    They made sure the security people saw them periodically throughout the day and they were on camera, anyone above them paying attention would have noticed but no one ever took the time. They dodged folks in the other departments for fear they'd get told on and just minded their own business (they rarely had much interaction with other employees anyway). Eventually, she ran into her "boss" at a show and she asked my friend where she had found new work. My friend didn't lie and said she still work
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 08
    The jig was up and she and her colleague were let go that following morning via email before they went in. Because they had technically worked there for so long (I think two years was the threshold), they both got a little severance package.
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 09
    In case you're wondering, they got to keep their pay since: 1. they had proof they informed their boss they had no work and she clearly saw the email and responded, 2. they still showed up, 3. they did exactly what they were told, and 4. it wasn't their job to make sure they actually had work to do. They both qualified for unemployment to boot. Neither of them used the unemployment since they had both been feeling like the gravy train was sure to derail any day so they had new jobs lined up.
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 10
    ...TL;DR: My friend's job became obsolete. When she informed her boss she and her colleague had no more work to do, she was told to stand by for reassignment. My friend "stood by" for 19 months and got paid to do nothing until she ran into her boss at a show and her boss finally figured out what was happening. My friend and her coworker were quietly let go with a little severance package. •Edited to add: thank you all for your stories! I had no idea it was so common to "misplace" employees that
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 11
    •Edit strikes back: I got my friend's permission to tell her story of course, and she asked me to include some more things they did with their time while "standing by" (she doesn't Reddit): -One autumn, he and her colleague decorated the shared nap hiding spot (a walk-in storage closet) with miniature Halloween decorations and then re-enacted scenes from Hocus Pocus. -She spent a whole lot of time editing Wikipedia for grammar. -She learned to knit. Then she learned she doesn't like knitting.
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 12
    -Her colleague downloaded plans from the internet on how to make a personal flying device (think: jet pack) and tried to make it with office supplies at 1/16th scale. They knew it wouldn't fly, they just wanted to see if they could build what it would look like. -During Christmas, they wrote all new jingles about how bored they were. There were 14 completed songs in total and they recorded them on a little mini tape recorder she still has. -Her colleague went to night school (evening school, rea
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 13
    -"We invented Uber and Lyft." That is, they worked out a solid plan for a non-taxi ride service that would work based on ordering a car via the internet (this was before smartphones). -She wrote a bunch of serial killers in prison and told them how disappointed she was in them. She never received a reply. Thanks again for sharing your stories! Y'all are outstanding humans and you have a fantastic day. :) •Edit, the new black: A few people DM'd me and asked what she does now. She got a glowing re
    via WithoutDennisNedry
  • 14
    NightMgr A guy I worked for sold his company and joined "Big Blue" as a consultant in his company's field. He was assigned a "mentor" to help him "transition" from being an indivudal entrepreneur into a member of a large organization. He was to "journal his feelings" every day, and then join a weekly "group" session to discuss. After a couple of weeks, the mentor stopped attending. They continued to meet and a couple of weeks later they reached out to the person in HR who hired them all. The HR
    via NightMgr
  • 15
    He was making $250k a year keeping a journal about how fucked up his large organization was, and how an individual owner would never let this happen.
    via NightMgr
  • 16
    No_Group5174 My brother worked in a team for an IT department for an airport and his job was on-call firefighting IT issues 24/365. Get a call at 3am? Leap into action and solve the problem ASAP. Then they got a new manager. He decided that all calls HAD to go through him to "prioritise" and "manage". He worked from 9-5 So for months the team brought in sleeping bags and set up a gaming server for multiplayer matches during the night shift. Everyone was sad when he got sacked for poor performanc
    via No_Group5174
  • 17
    DawnShakhar I have a similar story... except there was no malice.' About 45 years ago I worked as a research assistant in one of the Social Sciences departments, at a high level university (think one or two levels below Ivy League). I was known in the department, and one of the lecturers approached me and asked me to do a content analysis on some open-ended questions in a questionnaire. I had never done content analysis before and told her so, but she insisted I do the job, and offered three mon
    via DawnShakhar
  • 18
    I ended up getting NINE month's salary for a month and a half's work. I don't even feel guilty about it, because during times when there was no research budget, I worked for free. So it more than evened out. But It still makes me smile.
    via DawnShakhar
  • 19
    Ancient-End7108 That's hilarious, and about exactly how I expect a government department to end up as financial bloat. I don't blame your friend at all. Somebody forgot to dot the i's and cross the t's, and it wasn't her.
    via Ancient-End7108
  • 20
    Geminii27 It's not just government that does this, it's any large bureaucratic organization.
    via Geminii27

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boss government slacking malicious compliance work working Office wildlife reddit thread Reddit funny
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