Fake work screen that fills in as you type

You can pick from three screens above: Sheet, Tickets and Chat.

In the boss key game, you flip from Snake to these same three screens before your manager walks in. The game gives you extra points for leaving it to the last moment.

A fake spreadsheet

The spreadsheet adds up what the team’s meetings cost this month. If a sheet is all you need, our fake spreadsheet has it on a page of its own.

• Weeks 1 and 2 are already filled in. Each key you press types one digit into Wk 3 or Wk 4.
• Every figure stays within 4% of plan, so nothing looks off from across the room.
• The decisions reached row is the only one that counts value instead of cost. It stays at zero until week 4.
• The file is “What our meetings cost (do not forward)”, and its third tab says “Do not edit”.
• The coworker presenting in the fake Zoom meeting types into this same sheet while presenting.

A fake ticket board

The ticket board has columns from Planning to Done. A real kanban board sets a WIP limit, a cap on how many tickets can be in progress. On this board, every title you finish typing joins To do and pushes the oldest ticket in progress into Blocked.

Blocked only grows, and Done stays empty.

60% of time at work goes to “work about work”. This board skips the other 40%.

A fake team chat

The team chat is one thread of five coworkers getting through a working day. You type the replies, like “Sounds good”, one key at a time.

In the thread, the 2 pm meeting moves to 2:15 and back. Friday’s pizza comes to one slice each.

A real chat is busier. The average worker gets 153 Teams messages a weekday, and 117 emails a day on top.

How many people pretend to work

Enough people pretend to work that it has its own name, productivity theater. Most of the tricks we list for how to look busy at work need no screen at all.

Older ways to fake a work screen

Before browser tabs like this one, people set a screenshot of their work apps as the desktop wallpaper and kept the game in a window on top.

Programmers kept a build scrolling past in a terminal, since nobody interrupts a build. The fake coding screen has a terminal too, running under the code it types.

Your calendar is the screen coworkers read most. A week of solid blocks there looks like a week of work.

Mouse jigglers and the Wells Fargo firings

Wells Fargo fired more than a dozen staff in May 2024 over what FINRA disclosures call “simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work”.

31% of US workers have nudged their mouse to keep a green dot in Teams or Slack. Teams on the web can hold your status on its own while you’re in other tabs, and how to keep Teams active shows the setting.

This fake screen moves no mouse and presses no key, so activity software counts only the keys you press.

Using the fake work screen on a phone

On an iPhone, the screen covers the page instead of filling the display, and the address bar stays in view. Tap anywhere to type, and tap Exit in the corner when you’re done.