How to look busy at work, ranked by risk

Who pretends to work

Pretending to work has a name, “ghostworking”, and 58% of US workers do it regularly. Another 34% do it now and then. That leaves 8%, who are either swamped or still in a meeting. More of it happens at home than in the office, and 92% have job-hunted on company time.

The top moves are a notebook carried around the office (23%) and random typing (22%). Then come a faked phone call and a spreadsheet left open over everything else, at 15% each, and fake meetings at 12%.

Why the calendar lies

Most fake meetings aren’t hiding a nap. They’re hiding work. Block an afternoon as focus time and somebody books a sync on top of it by Tuesday, often the same leader who announced focus time. Rename the block “vendor sync” and nobody touches it, because nobody wants to join a vendor sync.

Productivity theater is the grown-up name: looking busy without getting more done. 32% of workers admit to a part in it. Gen Z calls it task masking and swaps tips on TikTok, like walking fast with a laptop under one arm. In summer 2024, 36% of workers admitted faking productivity, laptop or no laptop.

The Wells Fargo firings

More than a dozen people in Wells Fargo’s wealth and investment management unit lost their jobs in May 2024. Their FINRA records cite allegations of “simulation of keyboard activity” that made it look like they were working. One of them had been at the bank for more than seven years. A mouse jiggler costs $4 to $40 on Amazon.

The moves, ranked by risk

1. Carry a notebook. 23% walk around with one. It costs nothing until someone asks to see your notes.
2. Walk with a laptop or a stack of paper. Keep moving. Someone holding papers and standing still looks free, and gets handed something. It costs you when you pass the same desk twice.
3. Keep a spreadsheet open. 15% leave one over whatever they’re reading. It costs one keystroke, and you can practice that keystroke in the boss key game.
4. Type loudly. 22% type at random to sound busy. It costs you when someone reads the screen.
5. Schedule your emails. 30% of American workers have set a message to go out after hours so they look like they work late. It costs you when the reply lands at 7 am and you’re asleep.
6. Take a fake call. 15% have pretended to be on the phone. It costs you when the phone rings.
7. Book a fake meeting. 12% schedule meetings to dodge real work. Name it something no manager wants to attend. “Client review” is a mistake, because someone will ask to sit in. It costs you when someone accepts.
8. Find a corner. Every building has one: the archive room, the shelf of boxes nobody has moved since the last reorg. It costs you the day someone takes a roll call.
9. Use a mouse jiggler. It keeps your status green all day, and it’s the closest move to the one Wells Fargo fired people for. The low-tech versions are a wristwatch under the mouse and a ruler on the Shift key. Teams has its own setting to keep Teams active while you work in other apps.

How to look busy at work on the computer

From across a room, a screen full of cells reads as work. A fake work screen fills yours with a spreadsheet, a ticket board and a chat. Alt+Tab on Windows or Cmd+Tab on a Mac gets you back to your own work in one keystroke. The old-school version is a screenshot of real work set as your wallpaper, so Windows+D leaves a spreadsheet on screen.

Monitoring is the risk no screen hides. A third of UK firms use bossware to track what staff do, and one in seven employers record or review screen activity, fake spreadsheet and all. A work laptop can also log anything plugged into its USB ports, jigglers included.