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Most people have a colleague or two who don't seem to do much work at work. They're in the break room watching March Madness, or they disappear for a two-hour coffee break.
For Allison Lamb, that person is her cubicle mate. Lamb is a statistical clerk for a company in Fishers, Ind., who says she likes her job and has a good work ethic. So it irritates her to see her cubicle mate ignoring her duties, disappearing with her friends and keeping her nose in her cellphone all day talking, texting and gaming.
It seems to Lamb that her colleague flaunts her do-nothing attitude.
"Sometimes people walk by, and she's just sitting there laid back, looking at her phone," Lamb says. "So I don't think she's trying too hard to look like she's working."
She complained to her boss, and to her friends on Instagram and Twitter. But the behavior hasn't changed, and the neglected work often falls to Lamb.
"I've proven that I can do a lot. So I feel like if I slacked off, it would be noticed," she says.
These kinds of scenarios occur throughout the animal kingdom, says Eisuke Hasegawa, a professor of agriculture at Hokkaido University in Japan. His research looked at laziness in ant colonies. At any given moment, he says, half of ants are basically doing nothing. They're grooming, aimlessly walking around or just lying still.
Read more here. (NPR)
For Allison Lamb, that person is her cubicle mate. Lamb is a statistical clerk for a company in Fishers, Ind., who says she likes her job and has a good work ethic. So it irritates her to see her cubicle mate ignoring her duties, disappearing with her friends and keeping her nose in her cellphone all day talking, texting and gaming.
It seems to Lamb that her colleague flaunts her do-nothing attitude.
"Sometimes people walk by, and she's just sitting there laid back, looking at her phone," Lamb says. "So I don't think she's trying too hard to look like she's working."
She complained to her boss, and to her friends on Instagram and Twitter. But the behavior hasn't changed, and the neglected work often falls to Lamb.
"I've proven that I can do a lot. So I feel like if I slacked off, it would be noticed," she says.
These kinds of scenarios occur throughout the animal kingdom, says Eisuke Hasegawa, a professor of agriculture at Hokkaido University in Japan. His research looked at laziness in ant colonies. At any given moment, he says, half of ants are basically doing nothing. They're grooming, aimlessly walking around or just lying still.
Read more here. (NPR)