Hardly Working: The Overachieving Underperformer's Guide to Doing as Little as Possible in the Office [Paperback]

Chris Morran (Author), Mike Pisiak (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 9, 2004

Hardly Working is for anyone lucky enough to have a job, smart enough to want to keep it, and savvy enough to know there's a better way than giving in to the daily grind.

Author Chris Morran, soon to be hailed as an idol of idleness, has penned the definitive guide to doing as little as possible in the office. His do nothing know how has been honed by years of dodging supervisors, avoiding responsibility, and crafting elaborate schemes to squeeze some "me" time into a workday dominated by corporate concerns.

Everyone could use a little more time to browse the Web, play Solitaire, or sleep off a big lunch. Hardly Working teaches you how to do it consequence-free, with strategies for arriving late without being noticed; techniques for stretching your lunch break to three hours or more; advice on arranging office clutter to appear hopelessly busy; and much, much more!

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Chris Morran has hardly worked for numerous major publishing and advertising companies. He's also an award-winning playwright, actor, and comic. He lives in New York City.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Gallery; Original edition (November 9, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689874774
• ISBN-13: 978-0689874772
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 5.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,895,965 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Are You Searching Amazon in Your Own Time? You are! Then You Desperately Need This Manual to Teach You a Thing or Two!, November 4, 2007

By 

James N Simpson (Gold Coast, QLD Australia) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Hardly Working: The Overachieving Underperformer's Guide to Doing as Little as Possible in the Office (Paperback)

Wow there's was so much I didn't know before reading this. Here I've been wasting my own personal time reading books and reviewing them at home when I could have been doing these very things at work instead of doing actual boring tedious work.

Inside this handy manual are lots of helpful advice on how to appear busy (a cluttered desk is a good thing), how to come in late or leave early with the boss none the wiser, and how to catch up on that much needed sleep and still get promoted.

The most brilliant chapter explained (with diagrams) how to sleep and get away with it. You sleep on the floor with your feet against the door so you'll be woken by intruders as they try and open the door. If you surround yourself with stationary you can pretend you dropped it and are picking it up or even if you don't that you must have fainted (and you can probably get the rest of the afternoon off as they send you home).

This is an excellent parody book of all the business, office and administration books out there that try and make you a better worker. Of course I don't really know that too many of Chris Morran's ideas would work too often in the real world but if you're prepared to try them out then I guess you can't really complain if you get fired. A good laugh and good buy to leave on a slack worker's desk and when they notice it pretend the boss said he/she found it nearby and assumed it was there's as they've been doing most of these things. That's where you'll get the real laughs.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Office humor at it's best..., February 24, 2005

By 

Danny (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hardly Working: The Overachieving Underperformer's Guide to Doing as Little as Possible in the Office (Paperback)

Well from what I can say, being an employee in the corporate environment, this book is pretty entertaining. A lot of the humor in this little "guide" seems like something out of the movie Office Space. It basically details how to do as little as possible, while getting credit for as much as possible, in the most humorous way. If you've ever worked, still work, or want to work in the corporate world, take a look at this for a quick laugh.