subscribe
/ Sign Out

Office workers would get just as much done in a zero-day week

THE productivity of office workers would be unaffected if they went down to a zero-day week, it has been confirmed.

A trial run of zero-day weeks has shown that the output of most office workers would not be diminished if they scaled back to not working at all.

Boss Donna Sheridan said: “I was sceptical at first. Wouldn’t it put everyone under a lot of pressure? But after studying the data there was no denying the facts: my employees are deadweights pretending to look busy.

“I should have noticed that they’d come back from holiday refreshed and eager while we’d managed just fine without them. Almost as if their only contribution was mindlessly clicking between tabs and bringing in cakes.

“The new approach has been incredibly popular. Everyone’s not turning up with extra zip and zing and a real zest for life. The entirely empty workplace has never been so happy.”

Employee Hannah Tomlinson said: “It turns out that office work is largely unnecessary and capitalism is nothing but a facade. For discovering this I expect we’ll all soon be killed.”

Six bands to never admit you were obsessed with as a teen

EVERY teenager goes through a period of being far too into entirely the wrong band. These are the musical dead-ends 14-year-old you believed you would follow forever:

Then Jericho

Slick 80s New Wave act who sat neatly in the gap between the second-hand overcoats of Echo and the Bunnymen and the jumpers-around-shoulders of Haircut 100, they gave an enigmatic teen an air of superiority that soon dissipated when nobody else was into them or had heard of them. Their posters were removed leaving only Blu Tack behind.

Kula Shaker

Your football mates were into Oasis. Your arty mates were into Blur. You took the Britpop high road of spirituality with the borrowed Hindu mysticism of Crispian Mills’s band. Your Rizla-paper-thin Eastern philosophising bored the shit out of everyone and was soon dropped, though friends still say ‘remember when you were a hippie dickhead?’

Wheatus

Teenage Dirtbag was a f**king great song and perfectly aligned with your fantasy of the hottest girl in school being secretly in love with you. It plunged you full into Americanisation, wearing a backwards baseball cap, saying ‘Sweet, dude’ and offering high-fives. Wheatus had one other hit and it was an Erasure cover. You became British again.

The Hoosiers

Pioneers of the landfill indie movement whose gigs were full of fans in fancy dress, meaning you got to go out without the crippling fear of not having the right clothes. It was such fun that you became an ardent Hoosiers fan, yet to realise that one great gig does not a great band make. When you hear Goodbye Mr A today you shudder.

ZZ Top

As hair sprouted proudly from all areas of your face, it seemed only natural to follow these bearded Texan blues rockers, trailblazers of the modern hipster. You put them on the jukebox, ordered a double underage Jack Daniels, and couldn’t drink it because the fumes alone made your eyes water.

Coldplay

Now, in your thirties, you look back at your teenage obsession with one of Britain’s most beloved bands as mere folly. You loved their green credentials, their open-hearted embrace of good, their singalong melodies. Today you see the BMW advert with Higher Power in and a little bit of sick comes up.

Next story ›