Oh, you mean you should actually work to collect a paycheck?

At some point in time we have all probably had a lazy-ass co-worker (or two) that somehow managed to collect a paycheck while at the same time doing virtually nothing to have earned it. This phenomenon is so prevalent that lazy co-workers often top the lists of pet peeves that employees have about the workplace.

For me, this particular pet peeve developed through countless years working in the corporate jungle with a bunch of useless good-for-nothing sloths. And I’m NOT just talking about the brown-noser guy who arrives at work early only to keep up appearances with the top brass but who then spends the first three hours of work drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, surfing the internet and wandering around the office as if he were doing something productive.

What I’m more specifically referring to are lame, non-contributory, utterly useless slackers like one of the annoying paycheck collectors that I had the great displeasure of working with earlier in my career. Let’s call this incompetent little blood sausage Gertrude. Some of my fonder and ever so endearing memories (not!) of skiving Gertrude include her:

• Spending half a day calling all the cosmetic counters in the surrounding metropolitan area to locate a special kind of sparkly, light diffusing face powder. Poor Gertrude was unable to get the top off her shimmery face spackle and she absolutely, positively without a doubt needed it for some alleged hot date she was having later that night -- therefore any and all work related tasks were forced to come to a screeching halt until said magical cosmetic was located.

• Throwing a huge pile of confidential employee records into a filing cabinet where they didn’t belong -- thus potentially subjecting the office to thousands of dollars in legal fines. She justified doing so by saying she was completely unaware of any wrongdoing.

• Skipping out of the office one hour after she returned from lunch so that she could spend the next three hours getting her hair highlighted. She told her colleagues to call her if they needed help with anything work related (meaning HER work).

• Hiding stacks of client work orders in the bottom of her desk drawer. She justified this by saying she didn’t have time to keep up with unimportant things like filing.

• Leaving work on her so-called ‘lunch hour’ for five hours so that she could go to the cosmetic surgeon and have a chemical facial peel. Upon returning to work 45 minutes before the office closed, she spent the remainder of her ‘work day’ eliciting sympathy from her co-workers regarding all the trauma she was forced to endure at the doctor.

• Packing up her desk no less than 15 minutes before the office closed -- every fricking day – so that she could get a head start on rush hour traffic and f*ck everyone else!

• Leaving a candle unattended at her home and carelessly setting her coffee table on fire. When she tried to put out the fire she allegedly burned her (good-for-nothing) ass thus earning herself a month and a half of paid medical leave – and sympathy from all. The timing of this particular incident turned out to be rather interesting considering the fact that some of her previous indiscretions had come to the attention of her superior but were quickly forgotten.

By the time I had finally had enough and left not only the company but the country itself, that lazy cow Gertrude was still managing to somehow get paid for using the workday to conduct all of her ever-so-important personal business. One can only imagine what other sort of clever work-evading tactics she has since developed!