The cost of reading this is $759 billion
Each time I start to doubt our American cousins and masters, they suddenly serve up the blinis.
They have gone and figured that the time wasted at work costs America $759 billion a year. So if you are bunking off work, not finishing that tedious report and instead focusing on the serious business of getting acquainted with Count Kostov, you are costing the nation a cool $759 billion.
Normally, this sort of number would qualify for a gold star meadow mayonnaise moment. But in this case, the the Count relents. $759 billion is probably an underestimate. If nothing else, time wasting is a sport at which the Brits can whip those Yankee asses. Ever since they threw the tea in the water, they have forgotten the true tea sipping art of wasting time, as practiced by those world champions of time wasting: the British Civil Service. It is thus called because it is rarely civil, never gives a service and is decreasingly British.
The Americans http://www.salary.com/careers/layoutscripts/crel_display.asp?tab=cre&cat=nocat&ser=Ser374&part=Par555 figured that the average American wastes 2.09 hours a day at work doing important things like:
the internet (44% of time wasted)
socialising (23.8%)
conducting personal business (6.8%) - which shows true entrepreneurial spirit
and then a lot of other stuff like applying for other jobs (1.8%). Most reassuringly "spacing out" accounts for 3.9% of time wasted, which augurs well for the health of the drugs trade in America.
Reading the survey carefully it would appear that no American ever goes to the toilet or drinks tea. These strategies, carefully deployed, could double the amount of time wasted, especially as frequent tea drinking leads to frequent pee making.
They also figured out that the champion slackers are from laid back Missouri (a heroic 3.2 hours a day wasted) and in the public sector at a more modest 2.4 hours a day wasted.
Clearly, here is something the Brits can beat the Yanks at. If the good folk of Missouri (where the hell is Missouri?) can waste 3.2 hours a day without going for tea or a pee, then the average British civil servant should be able to waste at least 4 hours a day. On a 35 hour week, that reduces their working time to 15 hours a week, which is nearly as much as the Count works in a month. Put the other way round, the civil servants should be wetting their badly tailored pants at the prospect of the 35 hour working week being fully implemented. The legislation calls for a "working" week, not a "being present at the office and drinking tea" week. Given they waste four out of every seven hours in the office, to actually work 35 hours they would have to be present in the office for about 80 hours a week.
At this point I have to defer to the infinite knowldege and mathematical capability of Digdog, my butler. He assures me that with 28 million peopel claiming to work in the UK, if they were all wasting as much time as the average citizen of Missouri, then it follows that:
- the average Brit wastes 690 hours or £6,900 a year of their employers money
- in total we are wasting £193 billion a year.
Of course, all of this begs the question: is time spent reading Count Kostov really wasted time? In general, the answer has to be No. In the case of Civil Servants, time wasting should be positively promoted as a far better alternative to working. The last thing we all need is to have civil servants causing us more trouble with their policies, initiatives, regulations and taxes which are all designed to make themselves feel important and useful, when in truth they are far better when they admit they are irrelevant and useless.
They have gone and figured that the time wasted at work costs America $759 billion a year. So if you are bunking off work, not finishing that tedious report and instead focusing on the serious business of getting acquainted with Count Kostov, you are costing the nation a cool $759 billion.
Normally, this sort of number would qualify for a gold star meadow mayonnaise moment. But in this case, the the Count relents. $759 billion is probably an underestimate. If nothing else, time wasting is a sport at which the Brits can whip those Yankee asses. Ever since they threw the tea in the water, they have forgotten the true tea sipping art of wasting time, as practiced by those world champions of time wasting: the British Civil Service. It is thus called because it is rarely civil, never gives a service and is decreasingly British.
The Americans http://www.salary.com/careers/layoutscripts/crel_display.asp?tab=cre&cat=nocat&ser=Ser374&part=Par555 figured that the average American wastes 2.09 hours a day at work doing important things like:
the internet (44% of time wasted)
socialising (23.8%)
conducting personal business (6.8%) - which shows true entrepreneurial spirit
and then a lot of other stuff like applying for other jobs (1.8%). Most reassuringly "spacing out" accounts for 3.9% of time wasted, which augurs well for the health of the drugs trade in America.
Reading the survey carefully it would appear that no American ever goes to the toilet or drinks tea. These strategies, carefully deployed, could double the amount of time wasted, especially as frequent tea drinking leads to frequent pee making.
They also figured out that the champion slackers are from laid back Missouri (a heroic 3.2 hours a day wasted) and in the public sector at a more modest 2.4 hours a day wasted.
Clearly, here is something the Brits can beat the Yanks at. If the good folk of Missouri (where the hell is Missouri?) can waste 3.2 hours a day without going for tea or a pee, then the average British civil servant should be able to waste at least 4 hours a day. On a 35 hour week, that reduces their working time to 15 hours a week, which is nearly as much as the Count works in a month. Put the other way round, the civil servants should be wetting their badly tailored pants at the prospect of the 35 hour working week being fully implemented. The legislation calls for a "working" week, not a "being present at the office and drinking tea" week. Given they waste four out of every seven hours in the office, to actually work 35 hours they would have to be present in the office for about 80 hours a week.
At this point I have to defer to the infinite knowldege and mathematical capability of Digdog, my butler. He assures me that with 28 million peopel claiming to work in the UK, if they were all wasting as much time as the average citizen of Missouri, then it follows that:
- the average Brit wastes 690 hours or £6,900 a year of their employers money
- in total we are wasting £193 billion a year.
Of course, all of this begs the question: is time spent reading Count Kostov really wasted time? In general, the answer has to be No. In the case of Civil Servants, time wasting should be positively promoted as a far better alternative to working. The last thing we all need is to have civil servants causing us more trouble with their policies, initiatives, regulations and taxes which are all designed to make themselves feel important and useful, when in truth they are far better when they admit they are irrelevant and useless.
posted by Count Kostov at
9:41 pm
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