There are people who dream of being their own boss, but in reality there is something better. Don’t work in a big company without someone sending you work and earn a good salary for it. Would you quit a job like that?
That’s exactly what happened to a Reddit user who described his experience at a job where he’d been “working” for seven months without doing anything.
Imagine that you are hired by an important company where you are going to get a good salary but, when it comes time to join and delegate your tasks, no one does. They pay you to do nothing all day. Despite everything, the employee seemed satisfied with his job: “I’m not going to get a second job while doing this. I’m completely lazy and I don’t even want to do this job, let alone a second one.”
A job limitation with salary but without work
The employee said in his publication that in 2022 he was hired by the world’s largest real estate company in an administrative position with a salary reaching almost six figures.
But a week before he joined the office, the person who appointed him was sacked. In fact, on his first day at work, someone from another department had to show him which table was which because no one was waiting for him. “I’ve been sitting in an office behind the office of the woman who hired me for months, all alone.”
This unexpected situation left the new employee without a direct superior to supervise him and without a clearly defined task from day one. Faced with such an unusual situation (and some boredom), the employee tried to contact other managers and department heads alerting them to his strange situation. However, his pleas went unanswered, and he continued to perform minimal tasks that he assumed on his own.
His only official activity is creating spreadsheets on team payroll, something he spends no more than 15 minutes a week doing. He will then send those documents to the Head of Department and attach a blind copy to the Office Coordinator, just to save attendance and show that he is completing his assigned tasks on time.
A model employee
Despite the complete absence of workday and supervision of his workday, the employee religiously chose to adhere to his work schedule so that no one would move the rabbit from his work to “limbo”.
The employee explained that, in order to record his attendance, he always records. He visits the office three days a week to verify his credentials and meet the schedule agreed to in his contract. However, the employee admits that he left a few days ago. We assume, of course, that you do this without leaving pending tasks.
His company implements a hybrid workday model, so the other two days he does “his work” from home.
The employee assures that he has always been paid on time despite having no actual duties during his time with the company. “They pay me every month, even though I don’t have a job. Nobody realizes that I exist,” he commented in his publication.
As he told other users, when he needs a day off, he sends a request through an app and someone from human resources approves it without any major issues. But “I haven’t spoken to anyone in months,” he confirmed.
Some users mention the possibility of finding a second remote job to entertain themselves “during their workday” and, in the process, earn an extra income without doubling the workday. However, the employee flatly refused, assuming that his goal was to support himself with minimal effort. In fact, he found his own work.
Although this employee’s case may seem isolated and unusual, in reality labor audits often discover similar cases, and we even had some cases in Spain. Meta, for example, hired engineers during the pandemic to prevent their competition from hiring them but, as they later admitted, they actually had no specific job and were paid to do nothing.
A version of this article was published in June 2025.
In Xataka | If the question is how to do your work without extending the working day, the answer is simple: avoid the “time trap”.
Picture | Pexels (Startup Stock Photo, Andrea Piaccudio, Vitaly Garev)
