We’re all ‘time thieves’ at work. Is that really such a bad thing?

Working at the office all day was a struggle for Nicola Sura. She’d seen the toll that working a corporate job had taken on her mom’s physical and mental health, and she never wanted the same thing to happen to her. 

Around six months into Sura’s first full-time role in 2019, she started questioning her life choices, as well as those of everyone around her.

“I was, like, how are people doing this? Everyone seems completely fine. Everyone’s just going about their day,” Sura, who works in corporate retail, tells Fast Company. “It was killing me to just be there for eight hours at my desk.”

The move to working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic was when Sura learned a trick that would change everything: time theft. 

She started taking long lunches and watching TV while on the clock because nobody was monitoring her, and she finally found time to do her chores.

“I started feeling, like, okay, this is how I’m going to get through corporate America,” Sura says. “For me, it was always a means to survival.”

Time thievery is defined as stealing back moments in the workday to run errands, put on the laundry, take a nap, and do anything else that isn’t in your job description, without taking official breaks.

Sura now runs a TikTok account where she helps her 57,000 followers become better time thieves. Her number one rule: You have to be good at your job to get away with it.

“If you are very clearly a slacker or very clearly struggling, then it won’t work,” she says. “That is the foundation you have to start from, or else you will get fired.”

A productivity hack, or a risky coping mechanism?

Time theft has become more common since the working-from-home era.

One recent survey of over 5,000 people across Europe by the market research firm YouGov Switzerland found that 80% of work-from-homers admitted to doing nonwork tasks during paid hours. A 2025 study, published in the journal Behavioral Sciences, found that working conditions that have become more commonplace since COVID—such as a lack of supervision for those working from home—correlated with employees taking extended personal breaks and sending personal messages during paid work time.

Productivity experts and organizational psychologists have mixed views on time thievery. Some see it as risky, or as an unhealthy coping mechanism that masks deeper dissatisfaction. Others see it as a natural progression toward a more flexible way of working. Circa 2020 or earlier, some remote workers might have felt guilty tending to the laundry during a lull in the day—but given the nature of remote work, why feel guilty about juggling chores at all, so long as the work gets done?

Selda Seyfi, a management consultant who writes about productivity on her Substack called “Maximize Your Minutes,” views time theft as “energy management and an intentional integration of what you want to do versus what you have to do.”

“The whole concept assumes we still work in a 1940s factory model where your employer owns your brain for eight hours,” she says. “Any deviation from that is seen as stealing, which feels outdated.”

Seyfi also argues that it’s unrealistic for workplaces not to expect employees to do necessary life admin, especially when banks and post offices are only open during work hours. “Everyone talks about protecting weekends, but no one questions you when you’re checking emails at 9 p.m.,” she says. “The boundary always seems to go one way.”

How reclaiming time changes workplace dynamics

From an organizational perspective, when used occasionally, time theft can reduce absenteeism and presenteeism, says Amanda Tobe, an organizational psychologist who specializes in career progression. She says it can reduce anxiety and mental fatigue when used within reason, supporting “emotional regulation and cognitive functioning, which may indirectly improve focus and work quality.”

Anita Williams Woolley, associate professor of organizational behavior at Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, notes that many jobs are “lumpy”: Some days are overloaded, others slower.

“People use lighter periods for errands, because work isn’t perfectly matched to a 9-to-5 grid,” she says. “Employers who don’t acknowledge that force workers to do this without being transparent.”

Williams Woolley adds that errands can offer stress relief and a sense of autonomy, especially when work feels inflexible or surveilled. But she warns that there may be costs: “Secrecy can push people into a more transactional relationship with work, eroding trust and belonging,” she says. “Even if performance is strong, unreliability can stick.”

There’s also the risk of discipline for time thieves who push their luck. Employers who suspect workers of being absent for long swaths of the day may enforce policies such as monitoring laptop activity, or even dishing out punishments like fines. In 2023, for example, a remote accountant was dismissed and fined around $1,000 for “time theft” after tracking software was uploaded to her work laptop.

Career happiness coach Jenny Holliday warns that even if you get away with it, time thievery may work in the short term but become costly over time. She says it can mask deeper feelings of resentment or disengagement, and even be a means of revenge.

“If you’ve been passed over for a promotion or a pay raise, why not spend half your day on other things?” she says.

Productivity doesn’t look the same for everyone

Sura isn’t convinced by the criticisms, especially as more companies push employees back into the office full time. She doesn’t see time theft as quiet quitting or coasting. While she may occasionally reframe the truth—like saying her internet is down so she can catch up on sleep or watch a movie—she says she’s anything but unproductive. 

Sura has since moved on from the job where she learned that it pays to be a time thief, and has held a couple of corporate roles since. She now juggles contract work with being a full-time content creator. In her previous roles, she was consistently promoted and received positive feedback from managers and colleagues, so she knows firsthand that productivity doesn’t look the same for everyone.

“Your work speaks for itself,” she says. “You can do good work without operating at a 100% capacity all the time. Slowing down and working at a sustainable pace matters.”

Another criticism Sura often hears is that time thieves leave others to pick up the slack. She rejects that, too.

“Nobody is telling you to work harder,” she says. “Go ahead and also be a time thief. We should all be existing this way.”