It's not an uncommon occurrance: it's almost break time and one task is complete with another not worth starting since it would make little sense to begin a task only to have to stop a minute later, so you take your 15-minute break a couple minutes early and return on time, 17 minutes later.
As you learn your job, you can basically establish a system that is efficient (or not) that allows you to do this with both 15-minute breaks and for lunch. As the day winds down, you leave 4 minutes early, granting you 10 more minutes off than you were alotted for your time in the office.
Is this a big deal? That depends on your company's view on time theft, and whether or not you can honestly say that you are being equally productive without these 10 minutes.
What is Time Theft?
Time theft is what is referred to above. Rather than taking the outlined break one is supposed to, employees take more. Another example of time theft might be calculating just how much time off one would have over the course of an entire career.
To save you from being a time thief anymore than you are by reading this, I've done the math for you.
Calculating Theft of Time in the Workplace
The worker noted above who takes 10 extra minutes off each day is named Ithaca Strapdong. Ithaca is a good worker. She is intelligent and has a great sense of humor. She shows up for work on time if not early, but she likes to leave just a little early for breaks, lunch, and at the end of the day. And this does not count the fact that she never uses her breaks to use the restroom or get something from the nearby vending machine.
Ithaca is such a good worker, and not bad to look at or talk to either, that her bosses tend to look the other way when it comes to this one trait of hers. If confronted, they'd say, 'what's really the cost?' And they're right. Harping on her over 10 minutes might cost 20 minutes of productivity. The benefit for her, though, is this:
- 10 minutes per day x 5 days per week x 50 weeks per year x 50 years per career = 125,000 / 60 minutes / 8 hours per day / 5 days per week = 52.08 extra weeks off
One Extra Year off From Work
Ms. Strapdong has managed to turn a 50-year career into 49 years just by stealing 10 minutes every day. Just as spare change can add up in a jar, so can a few minutes every day in the reduction of one's time at work.
Some people will read this and think of how this year equated to lower production while others won't feel that it has a negative impact on the workplace. It is not the purpose of this article to make any conclusion on the matter, just report the facts, and the fact here is that an extra 10 minutes a day comes to slightly more than a full work week at the end of the year, and for those who are willing to work for no benefits other than honest pay for honest work, this small consolation may be the one thing that lowers employee turnover, but I wouldn't count on it.
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