Incognito: Methods of Mini-Vacationing at the Workplace

The daily grind can be… well, a grind. They don’t call it the daily R&R or the daily isolation tank for a reason. For the throngs of people going through the hum-drum hustle and bustle of everyday life, finding the brief opportunities to hide out at work can be the difference between thrusting your head through your computer screen or having yourself a nice “woo-sah” and making it through to 5:00. Here are some tips to help capitalize on brief vacation opportunities – and these are paid vacations, mind you.

1. Bathroom Solace

   Bathroom breaks are the one thing your iron-fisted supervisor can’t take away from you. What are we, farm-hands? When you gotta go, you gotta go, and taking those brief breaks on your own porcelain La-z-boy can be enough to help make it through your next spreadsheet.
   You have to be careful when navigating bathroom breaks – where does your boss sit? In a secluded office away from you? Do they have direct view of your cubicle? If they have the opportunity to see you get up 15 times in a single day, it may raise some questions. In the event of an interrogation regarding your bathroom habits, feel free to use any of the following: bad chinese/mexican/any kind of foreign cuisine of your choosing the previous evening, having a weak bladder, diabetes, or the age-old Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Ahh, yes… the pièce de résistance of gross excuses to make frequent trips to the bathroom. Pulling the IBS Card is a 99% guaranteed way of avoiding further questions for the sake of decency and having a free pass to sneaking away from your office to play Temple Run 2 for 5 minutes at a time. Watch out for those monkeys!

2. Podcasts

   Sitting at one’s desk and focusing on nothing but data entry or Excel formulas can get pretty old, pretty fast. Does your boss let you put in headphones at work? For goodness sake, don’t let it go to waste. Giggle to yourself semi-audibly as you listen to Marc Maron drop the F-bomb a hundred times in the course of an hour on WTF with Marc Maron. Check out the Nerdist channel with dozens of available podcasts about comedy, nerd-dom, and more. They say curse words too! Just make sure your headphones are in before you start playing – the quickest way to get taken out of your happy place is having Pete Holmes talk about all of his awkward sexual encounters and you forgot to put in your headphones. If this happens and your boss approaches you, deny deny deny. “Whaaaat? This isn’t my Gmail account! I just hit this button and… wowzers. The Internet sure is dangerous!”

3. Mental Breakdowns

   The previous two are mainly targeted toward those of us with office jobs – not really the service industry. But rest assured, workforce, we’ve all been there too, and if anyone needs a mini-vacation it’s the good people at your local eatery or coffee shop. Being forced to stand in front of guests all day and being yelled at for your assumed incompetency (despite your college degree) can wear on the soul, and sometimes you need to take a moment to relax.
   Having a mental breakdown is a classic technique to get what you want. If you don’t want to go back out and face the terrible customers at table 32, freak out! Are you an actor? Whip up some tears! Don’t make it about the job, either – that’s how your boss questions your ability to handle the work load. Carry around a wallet-sized photo of a dog with you, and let someone find you wailing while holding onto it next to the drink machine. When they ask what’s wrong (even if they don’t) tell them Sparkles is terribly sick. “The doctor says he won’t come back from it… he only has a few days to live!”
   It should be noted that this technique works very well for attractive females. Every restaurant has that one manager who is way to inappropriate with the female waitstaff. Take advantage of his susceptibility to female attention and tell him you need a moment to weep the loss of your dog. If he seems like he won’t relent, talk about how nobody in the restaurant likes you and everyone keeps giving you a hard time! Make it the boss’s fault! People will hate you, but hey – how much is a little alone time really worth?

4. Pull the Fire Alarm

   Oops… did I say that? Don’t do that. Good Giant does not condone the practice of pulling the fire alarm, and is totally opposed to the practice, which is totally illegal, of pulling the fire alarm without just cause, just so everyone has to leave the building and wait for 30 oh-so-appreciated minutes of fresh air while you wait for the fire department to arrive. Good Giant absolutely opposes putting a wad of tin-foil in the microwave in the break room and setting it on level 10 for 15 minutes. We absolutely do not agree with assuring your awkward cubicle neighbor that “cooking over an open flame in the break room is 100% allowed! Didn’t you get the memo?” Don’t do that. Wink-wink. Wait, no wink-wink… Wink. Wink-wink. Wink-wink-wink. Wink-wink. Wink-wink-wink-wink-wink-ow, my eye…

5. Give Your Boss a Scavenger Hunt

   Everyone loves a good scavenger hunt! And if your boss is the kind of supervisor who desperately wants the approval of his/her staff, it might do you some good to surprise them with “something the office put together for you.” This one takes some planning. Get to work early and post your magazine-cut-out letter on their computer screen telling them the office put together an adventure for them. Lead them to the break room. Then to the conference room. Then to the parking lot. Then back to the break room, and repeat. When your supervisor realizes he’s been going in circles, he’ll come by your office and say, “Who’s responsible for this!?” At this point, everyone in the office reveals that they too have scavenger hunt notes on their computers! (Optional: If someone in the office does a great Nicholas Cage impression, have him/her declare, “We have to find the Declaration of Independence!“)

6. Hire a Traveling Carnival

   Okay, okay, here’s one… so get in touch with a traveling carnival, bouncy-castle company, petting zoo, whatever, and tell them to arrive at your office at noon. When you see that they’re ready outside, declare, “Office Party!” If your boss asks questions, tell them corporate sent out a memo yesterday, duh. If your supervisor has any childhood left in their hardened heart at all, they’ll be like, “Well… okay, you crazy employees.” Encourage everyone to convince your boss to get in the dunking booth, and give them a humiliation bath. The time it takes to dry off will almost certainly keep everyone out of the office until closing time.

7. Build a House of Mirrors in the Building

   At closing time, after you’ve clocked out and packed up all your things, head to the bathroom and lock the door. Climb the toilet to reach the ceiling, move a panel aside, and climb up there and hide. Wait for about 5 hours until it’s dark and you’re sure the cleaning staff has left. When you’re ready, drop down and pull the giant floor-to-ceiling mirrors out of the various locations you’ve been hiding them all over the office for the past few months. Commence to setting them up right from the elevator door to lead your boss and coworkers into a maze of confusion and dismay. Extra credit if you can have the elevator doors shut behind them and then deactivate the call buttons. Extra-extra credit if you thought ahead enough to plant booby traps around the various corridors you’ve created. Make sure your boss winds up in a circle-mirror chamber with you at the very end and say, “Very good, very good… but which one of us is the real Darryl Erlenmeyer?” Have your smoke bombs ready.

8. Start a Blog

   Not to get too meta, but if you’d prefer not resort to extreme measures as listed above, start a blog about an interest of yours and spend copious amounts of time writing articles for it at work. When your boss comes by and asks about your progress on your latest project, go with, “Yeah, making some progress… but this one’s a toughy!” Better start practicing your shrugs and incredulous expressions in the mirror.

“COMPUTERS SURE ARE HARD!!!”