Would you like to get paid for doing nothing?  Then get a job at the U.S. Postal Service.  Because mail volume has went down, there isn’t enough work for all the employees.  Normally companies would have layoffs, or at least temporary layoffs, but because of the union, the USPS cannot let excess employees go.  So the people with no work to do cannot be fired, and they cannot go home for the day, so they are assigned to “resource rooms”, where they have to sit around until there’s work to do.   Sometimes the wait is for a few hours, but sometimes it’s for entire shifts.

According to this article, employees don’t like this.  If there’s nothing to do in those rooms, I can see that.  But some people bring books or puzzles to pass the time.  That wouldn’t be so bad.  If you have a portable gaming system like the Nintendo DS, that would be great.  Some people sleep.  Those holding rooms might not be the most comfortable places, but getting paid to sleep sounds like a good deal.  Well, a good deal for the people getting paid.  What about the people having to pay for it?

Since the USPS is run by the government, taxpayers are paying more than a million dollars each week for these employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.  The agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of “standby time” per week, which is the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees do nothing.  This costs more than $50 million per year!

So there are jobs out there where you can get paid for hardly working.  But I doubt the USPS is hiring now, so you’ll have to find another one.  I reckon you might have to work at a job before it turns into one that involves little work.   Because few job listings say “little work required”.  And if they did, there would be millions of people applying…