[With Jason Major taking the week off to watch basketball and think up ways to work the Cubs into his next list, we break out a March tradition, the Top 7 Least Productive Work Days of the Year. Enjoy reading it and being unproductive for a few minutes.]
To all of you reading this at work, this list is for you. Chances are one of the other windows open in your web browser has something to do with the NCAA tournament, whether it’s your bracket (the most popular joke this time of year is to laugh about “your bracket that’s already busted!”), or the games have already started and you’re checking the scores. The Internet has increased enjoyment of office jobs by around 200%, to the point where it is a necessity if you are going to accept said job. It’s such an important part that productivity would probably decrease if it were taken away out of declined job satisfaction. Still, some sports days of the year are so big that less work gets done those days than any other, and this week’s Top 7 pays homage to those.
7. The day before a fantasy draft
You could pretty much change this to “the week before a fantasy draft” and those five work days would end up in the top 20. Chances are you have been a victim of drafting a guy who has recently been injured without you knowing. Never again. You must check Rotoworld a minimum of 460 times a day to ensure that Roy Halladay isn’t having a shoulder issue. Random question: how in the world do those generic fantasy magazines that come out in December continue to stay in business? Who buys those? I just saw one the other day out for fantasy football 2009. I guess that people starved for fantasy will buy the first one that they see. Someone should come out with a fantasy baseball 2010 magazine and see if it sells next month.
6. First day of company softball season
I used to have a job in radio sales, and there was a new employee who lasted three months (which is actually an eternity for new radio salespeople, the industry has nearly as much turnover as a multi-level marketing job selling pizza coupons door-to-door). She sold absolutely nothing the entire time. Not one thing. The only thing that she ever did for the company was organize a softball team, and she spent nearly all of her time doing it. I am sure that this happens elsewhere too. She even called a meeting on the day of the first game.
5. Opening Day
Legend has it in St. Louis that this is the most skipped work day of the year. Had that have been the list’s topic, this is #1. But most of us are still showing up to work that day, happy or not. Instead, we take advantage of a slew of day games and the first day religiously checking fantasy baseball. A common occurrence: being used to fantasy football and heavily cheering everything that your team does. This happens for probably the first week until you realize that there are 156 games and 30 weeks left. That Brian McCann RBI double probably isn’t going to make much of a difference. ###MORE###
4. First day of the baseball playoffs
Keeping true to form with Major League Baseball’s brilliant scheduling strategy, like World Series games that start at 9 p.m., and which may include Wednesday’s idea of having the Venezuela/Puerto Rico WBC game on ESPN while the U.S. is banished to the MLB network, many of the first playoff games of the postseason happen when most people are at work. GameCast-type applications for baseball probably do more views on this day than any other of the entire year.
3. The day after the Superbowl
The best idea for what is easily the day with most work hangovers is to move MLK’s birthday or President’s Day to the Monday after the Superbowl. It would save a lot of lost time and productivity, and give those of us in atrocious winter weather cities something to look forward to on holidays.
2 and 1. First two days of NCAA Tournament
Here’s a nominee for worst company of the year: a friend’s company shut blocked all sports-related websites only during the NCAA tournament. He tries to go online this past Monday only to see the message that certain sites have been blocked until the start of April. This is pure evil, and is in at least the same ballpark as handing out million dollar bonuses to people who sank the company. With capabilities now, the slacking off at work during the tournament has reached unprecedented hilarious levels. You can now clearly watch games on your computer while you are supposed to be working. It’s also always quite humorous to see the laziest person at the office do 60% of their work for the year on running an office pool—with the other 40% coming from organizing the softball team.
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