The Art of Taskmasking: A Modern Workplace Trend
I once worked alongside a colleague, let’s call him Jonathan, who had developed quite the habit of taking calls with his AirPods in. Jonathan would confidently roam around our office, darting in and out of vacant meeting rooms, his voice projecting loudly as he engaged in conversations with whoever was on the other end. It was never about anything substantive, mind you; rather, it was a repetitive cycle of “yep, yep,” “I hear you,” and “let’s circle back.” When Jonathan eventually left the company, he confided in me that he hadn’t done any actual work for months. Those so-called important calls? They were essentially his version of work cosplay.
My thoughts drifted back to Jonathan when I stumbled upon a rising trend among Gen Z in the workplace: “taskmasking.” In simple terms, it’s the act of appearing busy while not being productive at all. Content creators on platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels describe various methods for mastering this art. It could mean typing rapidly at your keyboard, striding purposefully with your laptop tucked under your arm, or even inserting your headphones to give off the impression that you’re deep in a meeting.
For a generation that began their careers during the tumultuous Covid-19 pandemic, the thought of monotonous daily commutes or the inability to do laundry between meetings seems utterly abhorrent. Yet, businesses are increasingly insistent on dragging employees back into a post-pandemic, hybrid work environment. In January, Amazon employees begrudgingly returned to a five-day-a-week office schedule. Morgan Stanley summoned its bankers back to Manhattan in 2022, while investment titans like JP Morgan have bluntly told UK employees to “find somewhere else to work” if they resist the return to the office.
“It’s because corporate America believes we’re more productive in the office that these taskmaskers are fighting back,” explained Sundas Khalid, a data scientist at Google who actively vlogs about workplace trends. (Interestingly, employees at Khalid’s own company are expected to be in the office “at least” three days a week—provided their productivity remains high.)
It’s no surprise that taskmasking has garnered a steady stream of attention in business publications such as Forbes. This phenomenon feeds into the stereotype that younger employees are lazy and lackadaisical—an impression I did not encounter while managing a youth media publication, where I often felt quite ancient at the age of 35. Yet, taskmasking is merely an age-old narrative. Boomers and Gen X’ers have successfully skived off work for decades. During my time in the fashion industry, I was regaled with tales of power lunches, bottomless expense accounts, and marathon cocktail hours. “Of course, that’s all changed now,” I was often told with a hint of nostalgia.
One journalist who navigated the industry in the 90s shared how he would dictate his articles over a payphone, hang up, and promptly head to the pub. Before the era of emails, smartphones, or instant messaging, a degree of taskmasking was embedded in the workweek. Employees would find themselves hanging around to use the solitary fax machine in the office or searching for a phone to call someone who had paged them. (Not that I recall pagers—I’m not that old.)
Understanding Taskmasking
Consider all these taskmaskers as a contemporary twist on a time-honored phenomenon— the methods we use to project busyness at work have merely evolved in their simplicity, frequency, and arguably, their allure. Taskmasking serves as yet another convenient way to criticize a demographic that has already faced its fair share of generational criticism.
We should be questioning why some young professionals perceive work as something to be outsmarted and manipulated to their advantage. What has gone awry in the modern workplace that leads individuals to feel the need to feign productivity?
It may stem from the hyper-connected office environment—one where employees are constantly at the beck and call of their managers, subjected to a relentless barrage of performance reviews and metrics. Such an atmosphere can disempower workers from engaging in meaningful tasks. At the very least, it sends a clear message that employers do not trust their staff to put in the necessary hours; it’s no wonder that some employees react by behaving like children skipping class.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a rather urgent call to take—loudly—from the next room.
Zing Tsjeng is a journalist, non-fiction author, and podcaster.
