The Globe and Mail

Retail workers are proficient at busywork: they fold, stack, dust and rearrange. For someone at a desk job, it's a bit more difficult, as evidenced by some of the people featured in “Working Hard to Look Busy,” a recent New York Times article about busywork.

“Looking busy when you're not in order to fool the boss can be something of an art form,” reads the story. “But now, when business is verrry slow and the possibility of layoffs icily real, looking busy is no joke. In retail and real estate, restaurants and law offices, many workers are working hard to look necessary — even when they don't have all that much to do.”

Experts say that busywork can help a worker feel better about themselves. Maybe it can lead them to tackle some long-delayed tasks, such as filing or organization. But it's not a good idea for everyone dealing with a significantly lightened workload.

“This is a bad time to manage the impression that you're a hard worker,” said Robert Giacalone, a business school professor at Temple University. “There's fear out there, and that fear generates suspicion among people in power that workers are trying to manipulate their images because they're afraid.”

The story has several examples of people engaging in busy work, but I can't help but feel bad for one person, a lawyer. Here's his story:

One corporate lawyer, 40, who was a counsel in the Manhattan office of a 950-lawyer national firm, said that when the economy stalled last summer, he spent his days following the Washington news and calling clients in an advisory, nonbillable capacity.

“It was a way to show the client that even though things were slow, I'm still looking out for your best interests so that when things come back, you can turn to us as experts,” said the lawyer, who specialized in structured finance.

Scrounging for work, he called lawyers in the firm's other practice areas, trying to market himself to pick up hours. Then calls went out to former clients. To old friends from law school. To friends from college. “But they were all looking to save their own skins,” the lawyer said.

His time sheets increasingly read, “professional development.” Earnest, but nonbillable. He volunteered for the firm's diversity recruiting program. Law firms have an ethical obligation to take on pro bono work, so he explored that, too.

“A lot of partners who were anti pro bono used to say, ‘If you do that, find another job!' But they're the ones who are sitting at their desks, twiddling their thumbs and doing pro bono to keep busy,” the lawyer said. He even read to a class once a week at a public elementary school in the city.

“I was busy not making money,” he said. “But because I was out there trying to do things for the firm that were valuable in a different way, I thought that might be enough.”

Three weeks ago he was laid off.