A TRUE AMERICAN HERO

Diary of a goof-off: No work, no pay
A Des Moines woman details her idling on the job on her employer's computer.

A Des Moines hotel worker has been fired for using her employer's computer to keep a massive, detailed journal cataloging her efforts to avoid work.

State records indicate that Emmalee Bauer, 25, of Elkhart was hired by the Sheraton hotel company in February 2005. During most of 2006, she worked at the company's Army Post Road location as a sales coordinator.

At one point during her employment, Bauer was allegedly instructed to refrain from using company time to work on her personal, handwritten journal. Rather than stop writing at all, Bauer allegedly began using her work computer to keep the journal up to date.

"I am going to be typing all my thoughts instead of writing all day," wrote Bauer, according to portions of the journal that were entered into evidence at a recent state hearing dealing with Bauer's request for unemployment benefits. "That way, there isn't any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off."

Over the next several months, Bauer composed a book-length journal of 300 single-spaced pages, describing in excruciating detail her dogged efforts to avoid any sort of work.

"This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."

Other journal entries, according to evidence presented at the hearing:

- "I just have to get through the next seven hours and forty-six minutes and then I will be free."


She lived the dream. You owe it to yourself to read the rest:
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070119/NEWS10/301190003/1001