Over 50% of the average working day is taken up pretending to give a fuck about other people’s children, according to new research.
A study carried out by Rochdale man Will Thomson, 32, found that he spends at least half his time at work either listening to anecdotes about children, looking at photos of children, or covering for people who can’t come in because their children have picked up some sort of bug.
“It’s not that I hate their kids, I just don’t understand why they think I care,” Thomson told our reporter, expressing concerns that the total indifference he feels towards his colleagues’ offspring is often stretched so thinly that he is sometimes in danger of actually remembering their names.
“At times it can be tough to decide which of their kids I give the least of a shit about, so I try to spread my lack of interest out evenly,” he explained.
“Mornings are a struggle, and I usually have to sink at least two cups of coffee before I can even begin to pretend that I’m listening to the latest update on potty training, bedtime routines or whatever else it is kids do when they’re not covering everything you own in shit and vomit.
“On a good day, I can usually sustain half-hearted interest for a good couple of minutes before I completely tune out and start thinking about what I’m next going to do with my disposable income.”
Thomson, who spends most of his free time gaming, writing satirical news articles and disappointing his girlfriend, estimates that productivity in most companies would double if people spent less time banging on about their progeny and more time actually working.
“I got a bollocking last week for playing Angry Birds during a conference call, but apparently it’s fine for my colleague to Facetime his toddler every fifteen minutes to find out if he’s gone ‘poo poo in Mr. Potty’ yet,” he said. “I’m half-tempted to get my other half knocked up just so I’ve got an excuse to take random days off for ‘childcare reasons’, skiving bastards.”
Thomson’s co-workers, however, expressed skepticism at the findings and suggested that he might just need to grow the fuck up.
“I mentioned a few weeks back that my son was going to a Halloween party dressed as Luke Skywalker, and Will spent the rest of the morning telling us about a Star Wars drinking game he used to play that once resulted in him having to have a toy TIE Fighter surgically removed from his ‘exhaust port’,” said one.
Another told us, “As much as I enjoy living vicariously through a guy who can still go to the pub every night without consequence, I find it hard to accept any kind of criticism from the man who once paid £200 to have his PlayStation controller custom-painted to look like a pair of tits.
“Which reminds me, I must pick up a breast pump on the way home. Fuck my life.”
