My first boss busted me for skiving off work. I still don't regret it

Getting told off for leaving early on a quiet August Friday was the best lesson in office bullshit I didn't know I needed

Someone snitched on me to the boss.

At the end of a tense catch-up meeting, she said, “And there’s something else I need to speak to you about.”

My stomach dropped out of the bottom of my pencil skirt. We were sitting in uncomfortable, bowl chairs that were low to the ground and impossible to get gracefully out of, especially in workwear.

I knew exactly what she wanted to discuss, but she was going to make me say it. “Do you want to tell me what happened on Friday afternoon?” she asked, her tone that of a school teacher.

It was a muggy day in August 2010. I was a marketing executive – a junior employee with an inflated job title that made me feel more important than I was and distracted from my under-compensation. I wanted to be a journalist so I told people I edited the department’s magazine, which I kind of did but I also spent an inordinate amount of time printing sticky labels.

I liked my manager. She was about five years older than me and I was her first direct report. She took her job seriously; one afternoon a week she’d leave early to attend a project management training course. She was clearly determined to be a Good Boss and tried her best to engage me in the work of that organisation. She was the first and last manager to give me a pay rise (and I didn’t even ask for it). It wasn’t her fault that I was in the wrong job.

That Friday, I was staring out of the window, thinking about how I was wasting my life. We’d just been through a departmental restructure, my job was put at risk and lots of people had been let go. A big project I’d spent weeks proving to my boss I was capable of doing, had been put on ice.

My boss and the rest of the senior leaders were all out on a strategy day. Slipping out early wasn’t even my idea. Let’s say it was Ryan who came up with it. Ryan was the kind of guy who put a lot of effort into doing as little work as possible. By midmorning, he’d clocked there was a prime opportunity to skive off.

I didn’t see it quite the same way Ryan did. I didn’t want to leave because I wanted to shirk my responsibilities, but because I had nothing useful to do. I was just so bored.

There was a swell of excitement among the few of us who were in the office that day. Some people were game, and others were too nervous to break the rules. Nonetheless, the prospect of a shorter working day lifted the low mood that had hung in the air in the wake of all the redundancies. Clocking off early felt like the kind of harmless transgression we needed.

Ryan ducked out at lunchtime. I left at 3.30 pm. 

I didn’t even do anything cool with my recuperated hours. I just got the train home. As I sat in a quiet Tube carriage, I felt vindicated simply by beating the Friday afternoon rush hour. Commuting in relative peace was enough to make it worth it.

Then Monday came. I never found out for sure who told on me, but I had my prime suspect. Avoiding my eye as I walked back to my desk was a dead giveaway.

When my boss gave me that sliver of a chance to confess, I did so immediately.

“I left early. I know I wasn’t supposed to do it, but I just didn’t have any work to do and so many people weren’t even in that I thought it would be ok,” I offered by way of explanation.

“We pay you to be here during the hours of 9 and 5,” she said. “There’s always work you can be doing.” She suggested that I could’ve reorganised the stationery cupboard.

What went through my head were all the times I’d come in early or stay late. I made a mental note to see if I could figure out how many extra days' worth of work I’d done that I could offer up as compensation for this hour and a half I’d taken.

“What with the restructure and everything, I’m not clear what my priorities are right now,” I said. What I wanted to say is how humiliating and difficult I’d found the restructuring process. I’d had a teammate who had the same job title as me and in the departmental reconfiguration, there was only space for one of us.

My boss wasn’t willing to engage with any of that awkwardness. “The restructure is done now. We need to put our best feet forward,” she said.

What I heard was that I should be so grateful I was still employed there. I wasn’t feeling especially grateful. I was still smarting that the new department head, who I was convinced didn’t like me, had put the kibosh on me managing the magazine redesign I’d pitched so hard for and instead had regelated me to writing obituaries.

“I’m really disappointed and I’m afraid I’m going to have to mention this to the department head”, my boss said to cap off the bollocking.

Not long after that episode, I’d apply for a spot on a master's program and quit that job to move to New York, train as a journalist and change the trajectory of my life. 

I’d start writing more ambitious articles about counterculture, social justice and mavericks. I’d sometimes look up my old department head on LinkedIn and see how he’d filled up his profile with more corporate jargon over the years. I’d end up leaving full-time employment altogether. I’d come to understand that busy work papers over the cracks of inefficiency, how office politics breeds mistrust and that presenteeism is the death knell of productivity.

But in those bowl chairs, I didn’t know any of that yet. I didn’t have the language to articulate my frustrations. I just stung with shame.

So I just looked into my lap and mumbled, “I’m sorry, it won’t happen again.”