Last time, I mentioned that what I’m doing right now — jotting down a word or two between bits of work — could accurately be called “time theft” by the sort of people who throw that term around. (I also mentioned that I consider that a positive, but that’s beside the point for today.)

This is not some daring act of rebellion. I’m daring very little, because there’s very little chance of me getting any grief over it.

Some managers may want to enforce 100% efficient productivity, or as close to it as they can get, but they (in my experience) haven’t exactly put a lot of thought into it. They use superstitions and one-liners instead:

* “If you have time to lean, you have time to clean.”
* Phone use is anathema, the polar opposite of Work, and your phone will be confiscated and/or you’ll be fired if they see you using it. (One manager at a previous job combined this with a one-liner she was very proud of: “Cell phones need to be off your body,” emphasis in original.)

They don’t have a one-liner ready for an employee writing on the clock. I’m sure they wouldn’t like it if they noticed and thought about it for a minute, and they really desperately wouldn’t like it if they saw any of it on the internet… but they won’t see it unless I tell them it’s there or do something equally boneheaded.