“Some days I didn’t do any work at all, I just larked around. It could be said that I had a bad attitude, in fact it probably has to be said that I had a bad attitude. All I’ve ever wanted from a job is to skive. Skiving is a whole way of approaching – in the sense of avoiding – work. It’s not the same as slacking, because skiving can involve a far greater involvement of energy and initiative than doing the work could have ever have necessitated. Get in late, knock off early and do fuck-all in the interval except steal stationery: that’s my attitude to work…After about a month I was called into the deputy-boss’s office and sacked…Although I felt pretty bad about being sacked I realised that it was not for me, this world of work, that I was too selfish to do a job, that I actually valued my time – my life – so highly that I would rather waste it than work at a job.”
From “Sacked” in Working the Room.
