Working hard or hardly working

The other day when I was at work I was at my computer cruising around facebook and reading news articles about football. Basically wasting time.
Moments earlier I had made the decision that I wouldn't be doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

As my luck would have it though my boss decided to walk past me literally two minutes after I made my decision to stop working.
He could see clear as day that I was on Facebook.

Instead of confronting the situation head on and confessing my plan to kill time for the rest of the afternoon regardless of what he thought, I quickly closed the window down and opened up some actual work to make myself appear busy.

This was a shameful attempt on my behalf. But it was easier to pretend as if I was actually working, rather than apologise for not.

I reminded myself of a fat kid on cross country day at school. One who would sprint away from the pack when the starters gun went off, then as soon as he turned the corner and was away from the eyes of the crowd would slow down to a walking pace.

He'd then continue at this speed for the remainder of the course until he came to the home stretch again where everyone would be able to see him. At this point the cunning fat boy would resume his sprint to the finish line and give off the illusion that he had just gone around a 3km cross country circuit at full speed, and hence, was trying really hard the whole time.

He doesn't fool anyone though. He's come dead last by some margin and it's obvious to everyone watching the race what the fat boy has done. He thinks he made it seem like he was putting in maximum effort the whole time when infact the little porker spent 95% of his time walking in a running race.

You see, it's easier for the fat boy to sprint away in front of people and then rest when they're not looking as opposed to starting and finishing the course at a steady pace.
He's going to come last regardless of the way he approaches the race, but sprinting in front of the crowd leaves him with some dignity still in tact.

Now the interesting bit in the story for me is that both myself and my boss are the metaphorical fat boys in a cross country race when we're at work.

He'd caught me not working, but instead of confessing to that I just opened up some work and unconvincingly gave off the impression that I was doing my job.
It was easier for me to pretend to work while he was watching, just as it's easier for the fat boy to run in the race while people are watching.

It's the explanation of our actions that people aren't bothered doing.

Now the bit that makes my boss the fat boy too is that he had without a doubt seen me screwing around on the internet and could have punished me or had words if he'd wanted.

But he's just as lazy as I am. So instead of saying "Back to work Brad", or "Don't let me catch you doing that again" he just stared at me.

Then what happened next was almost telepathic between the two of us. We stared at each other for a moment as if to mentally say "Let's both pretend this never happened."

I wasn't bothered apologising, or even appearing remorseful, and he wasn't bothered appearing to care that I don't do my job properly as he doesn't do his any better.

He then walked away and I carried on bludging for the remainder of the day as I imagine he did too.

We'd reached a mutual understanding without even having to exchange words and if I'm not mistaken this saga should make for a much happier working environment when I return from my holidays.