[Malcolm Armsteen]

I've put it on here before, but my old Head used to get very cross when he was sitting thinking (and he had to do a bit of that) some (less reflective) people would ask him if he had nothing to do. Similarly people assuming that if you are sitting in the staff room using your laptop you are playing games. Says more about them than a four-foot placard.

[Andy McDandy]

See also "why is that MP playing on an iPad?". Try telling them that they're likely tweeting updates on PMQs or whatever, and you'll be sneered at. But yes, some people never got past sitting up straight and looking like they were paying attention.

[oboogie]

Similarly people assuming that if you are sitting in the staff room using your laptop you are playing games.

I worked for a while for a Head of Faculty who was the opposite, she assumed that everybody in the large open plan staff-room was working - they definitely weren't. Anybody who was neither in the staff-room, or teaching, was assumed to be skiving - rather awkward for those of us who needed peace and quiet to work.

[oboogie]

AIUI the "banjo" bit comes from a fried egg sandwich where the yolk is unbroken ("sunny side up" as the Colonials refer to it) and upon biting into it, the yolk drips down your shirt; the "banjo" bit is the motion of your hand in trying to wipe the yolk away on your shirt.

https://www.arrse.co.uk/wiki/Egg_Banjo

I just assumed it was because a banjo is a large disc and so is a bap.

Yeah I'm calling that out as bollocks too. It makes no sense, nobody ever got egg off a shirt by strumming it.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

But you might pick it. Or both.

[mr angry manchester]

Good way to look busy, in my experience, was to walk about fairly quickly, carrying a piece of paper

[The Red Arrow]

One of the first things I taught my underlings - get yourselves a cheapo pocket notebook and wander about making notes.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Clipboard.
And where appropriate a hard hat with a false name on it.

[MisterMuncher]

See also "why is that MP playing on an iPad?". Try telling them that they're likely tweeting updates on PMQs or whatever, and you'll be sneered at. But yes, some people never got past sitting up straight and looking like they were paying attention.

Annunziata Rees-Mogg and her "free gift" iPad on becoming an MEP springs to mind.

They never grasp that it marks them out as not to be taken seriously when they can't see a use for IT beyond frivolity.

[mr angry manchester]

Annunziata, what kind of name is that? Sounds like some kind of electrical circuit breaker, or maybe a bog cleaner. "Annunziata, kills 99% of all known germs!"

it's just as daft as Spudulika

[Kreuzberger]

But you might pick it. Or both.

Kreuzy's tales, Part 785. I rather like Cripple Creek, way up in the mid-Colorado silver hills.

• I shot a Magnum.

• I got in to a hot tub, bollock nekkit, with an ex's mother while she hissed that Dub-ya was a progressive.

• I kissed a Llama.

• I got to understand the US fetish for the armed forces, seeing the burned-out Black Hawk in the town square.

• I bought some fetching turquoise earstuds from an Ute native-American woman with the deepest, darkest eyes you will ever see.

[Abernathy]

Pleased to note that you avoided getting rogered by a crazed gap-toothed hillbilly.

Or maybe you didn't ?

[MisterMuncher]

Annunziata, what kind of name is that? Sounds like some kind of electrical circuit breaker, or maybe a bog cleaner. "Annunziata, kills 99% of all known germs!"

it's just as daft as Spudulika

She's one o' them Cafflicks. I'll lay good money she was born in or around the 25th March.

Edit: Just checked Wiki. Fucking hell I'm good. Also, she's only a year older than me? Must have been a rough paper round.

[davidjay]

And despite himself working from home (and boasting that his days physically on Fleet Street were mostly spent propping up bars), he equates WFH with slacking. Why? Well, as he regularly says, give anyone a modicum of power (or unaccountability), and they'll exploit it. He, and his audience, believe that anyone not visibly toiling is slacking, and that anyone doing anything that doesn't involve breaking a sweat is "pen pushing", or "women's work", or in some way a dodge. Why? Because that's what they would do if given that opportunity.

In the old, pre-internet, pre-mobile days, working from home very often was an excuse for a skive. He did it and therefore, half a century and a technological revolution or three later, everyone who does it must be the same. Because as in everything, he judges people by his standards. They're either just like him and call a spade a spade, or they're a hypocrite.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Quite apart from anything else the larger companies have HR departments that can monitor productivity. In two cases I know it has gone up.

I forgot to add childcare to the benefits of HW.