BUDLONG WOODS — For Chicagoans working from home this year, the distractions of the home work environment have instigated a troubling trend as more and more employees commit time theft while on the clock. Now, as lockdowns enter their ninth month, a disturbing new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows that simple time theft has lost its thrill for some of these individuals, leading them to greater and more disturbing time crimes.
This week in Chicago, no fewer than five separate incidents of time theft per hour were reported by businesses with remote workers in the city; The Chicago Genius Herald caught up with one such criminal in Budlong Woods this Friday, who asked to remain anonymous for our interview. “Charlie,” 33, is a technical support representative for a software company headquartered in Chicago, and they told us that the “raw excitement” they used to experience “taking a moment or two to stretch, or maybe check Twitter for a second between emails” has faded in the last few months.
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“I did it at first without even thinking about it,” Charlie said. “Then it became sort of a rush for me. How much money can I intentionally defraud my company for, knowing that all of the employees at my level are almost criminally underpaid for our expertise anyway?” Charlie explained that the habit became truly serious sometime over the summer, when they would sneak away from their desk for sometimes 30 minutes at a time to “just lie down and rest.” This allowed their “fatigued eyes” a break from the near-constant screen time of the last 9 months; More importantly, said Charlie, “it brought my productivity to an absolute zero — while I was still getting paid! Those chumps never knew what hit ‘em!”
As fall arrived for Chicago’s remote workers, this honeymoon period quickly faded. The BLS reports that employees like Charlie began experiencing diminishing satisfaction from their lawless commandeering of company profits, and the rate of sick days taken for “mental health reasons” began to skyrocket in September. Charlie’s partner “Laura,” 30, an underwriter for a local insurance company, told us that she now plans a premeditated sick day once a month to get her fix. “I have to know that I’ll have some control over my work-life balance at all,” she told us. “And I crave some way to hit insurance companies where they’re most vulnerable — their excess cash!"
Sprees like Laura’s are all too common as Chicago’s businesses hunker down for harsher lockdowns this winter; the NBLS’ report even indicates that this trend will worsen considerably into the next fiscal quarter. A spokesperson for the NBLS told the Genius Herald that they predict “time theft, larceny, and, hell, even time arson” to increase at a rate of 2-5% per week until “these sickos can be put back where they belong: constantly micromanaged in some kind of an open-plan panopticon.”
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Until such safeguards are possible again, Chicago will continue to rely on the more steady job performance of its essential workers who cannot work at home, although many employers are wisely ending so-called “hazard pay” for these workers, citing the obvious hazards this practice might cause. In the meantime, we can only hope that this preventative measure will serve as an effective warning to potential time thieves across industries, as both pandemics get worse.
