Reply #8: Yep. Also the half-eaten bagel....

[sofa king]

But don't do a half-cup of coffee, or some clever bird will dip in a finger and discover it's cold (thank you, random Internet adviser, for that tip). Turning off the screen-saver and/or sleep mode so that it always looked like you just left your computer a few minutes ago was a viable option in older times, but now with widespread use of logins and passwords that's a serious danger you should avoid. Perhaps a better option would be to set sleep mode so that it kicks in very fast, then let it shut off while you're talking with others in your cell, and be sure to note it. (Edit: there is an actual, conscientious reason to set it like that, which is that many hard-drives have a hard-coded "death date" after a certain number of write-cycles and the guy who works the hardest (or watches the most porn) has the hardest working computer--but you have to explain that to more than one person to make it fly.) They may later conclude that a sleeping computer doesn't necessarily mean you're gone.

On one pointless and hellish temp job I had an actual office. So I left without a coat one day, then wore the others into the office, and threw those on the back of the chair every day while the "safety" coat was hung behind the door.

When it was beer:30 or I had other reasons to be gone, I'd pull out the safety and slink off. Next day, yesterday's chair coat would become the "safety."

My conscience prevented me from actually jacking my employer by writing out my timecard as if I was there, so occasionally someone would say something like "I thought you were there that evening." "No, I had to leave in a hurry that day," was my stock answer.

The point, in that particular case, was to temporarily divert a boss or co-worker. Most of the time, when someone wants to screw over the temp at the end of the day but can't find him because he's away from his desk, they'll move on to a more available victim and forget about it. But if they come looking and know you're gone, then you've let them down and they won't forget.

The potential to get screwed over was the illusion I sought to create, not milking the clock.