Gen Z is ‘task masking’ in the workplace. How harmful is it?
People of all ages are adopting a new TikTok trend called 'task masking,' something that appears to have existed long before TikTok existed, or when generation Z was born.
@user224@lemmy.sdf.org As long as everyone stops complaining about boomers! 😉
What a fuckin' joke. By the title blaming "Gen Z," the implication is that those newer to the work force - ie, entry level and junior positions - are most guilty of this, when later in the article it points out management and executives engage in "fauxductivity" at higher rates, and that it's far from a new phenomenon.
I'm not a zoomer, but this bullshit is often a pretty significant part of my day. I work in an industrial facility in a maintenance role, and all of our regular work is planned and scheduled in advance. We wrap up all our jobs for the day, and that's it - we can't just go out and start turning wrenches on live equipment. Might kill a bit of time tidying up the shop and trucks, follow up on some orders, but beyond that there's not much to do. Current supervision is pretty chill because they know how it is, but it still feels like a bad look to be spending the last couple hours of the day sitting with my feet up, staring at my phone. And at the last place I worked, we'd actually get in shit for not appearing busy no matter how empty the schedule was.
“Appearing busy” is the dumbest industrial age, capitialist bullshit
OEE must go better. Be good line, go up.
I know someone whose supervisor tells them to drive in circles are the warehouse, wasting money, for the cameras because higher up people also have nothing better to do than watch the cameras and pretend to be busy by complaining about the actual workers not pretending to be busy.
As the article points out, pretending to do work and look busy isn't new.
It happens for a lot of reasons, and I'm sure I'm leaving some out:
Hey! I happen to be more productive afterwards when I spend 6 hours perfecting my neovim config at work, thank you very much!
What does it mean?
From the article:
Task masking, or “fauxductivity” as some call it, refers to when office employees find ways to make it look like they’re extremely busy working on something.
Fauxnalism- make up a shitty portmanteau, generalize about an enormous group of people based on their age without any hard data, assert you have special insight into something that doesn't exist to divide and distract from real issues and generate clicks and outrage and profit. 50% of "news" in 2025.
Ironically, this article is fauxductivity it adds nothing to anything, and could mostly be AI slop.
@el_muerte@lemm.ee Just like most social media posts occur during workday hours!