They don’t seem to understand that it’s patently obvious they’re just making themselves look busy. Maybe it’s stretching a small task into a week’s work, or fussing over some pointless little thing incessantly, but it’s obvious, and it’s annoying. There’s some sort of combination of Eddie Haskell apple-polishing and drone bee brainless activity that just gets under my skin.

I think if someone is really doing their job well, there should be long periods in which they really don’t appear to be doing much at all, and those are typically punctuated by amazing flurries of activity where A LOT happens, very quickly, in a way the busy worker typically would never be prepared for.

I used to be a reporter, and much of the day was spent twiddling thumbs. Maybe I was waiting on phone calls, maybe I was thinking up a lead, who knows, but no visible work was getting done. Once I sat down to type, I could knock out 15 inches of pretty decent copy in less than half an hour.