Author’s statement: Neither I nor SitePoint condone the website referenced in this article. This is a topical news story and we take no responsibility for any loss of productivity!
Many of the visitors to SitePoint are freelancers and small business owners. Wasting time at work is our prerogative and it’s directly related to our profitability. However, most of us have also worked for large corporations and may have noticed a few employees not devoting 100% of their time to the job.
That’s why sites such as CantYouSeeImBusy.com are so shocking. It allows workers to play games which are disguised as documents or spreadsheets. It’s been done before but these are better than most. You look busy, but you’re having fun — and fun is against the corporate policy of many industry giants.
I subjected myself to these outrageous abominations purely in the interest of investigative journalism.
Breakdown
Breakdown is a Breakout clone but you hit words instead of bricks. It looks like Word 2003 and your mouse controls the horizontal scroll bar which is the paddle. Normal words require one hit, bold words require two, and horizontal lines are invulnerable.
Cost Cutter
Cost Cutter is a puzzle game that’s a combination of Tetris and Bejeweled. And Microsoft Excel. Chart columns move in from the left and you can remove blocks by clicking any with one or more adjacent blocks of the same color.
Leadership
Leadership is Lunar Lander on a PowerPoint chart background. You need to maneuver your ship using thrusters to land on a pad and progress to the next level. I mean slide.
All high scores are saved to the website. This simply provides another reason for idle employees to shun daily tasks in an effort to beat other slackers.
I spent several hours investigating these games. Although they’re basic, they’re all addictive and more interesting than real work. I will be conducting more thorough research to discover the long-term effects of exposure…
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