For Nicola Sura, the daily grind of office life quickly became unbearable. Watching her mother's health deteriorate under the strain of corporate work, Sura had vowed not to follow the same path. Yet six months into her first full-time role in corporate retail in 2019, she found herself trapped in the very cycle she'd hoped to avoid.
"How is everyone just fine with this?" she recalls wondering. "People were moving through their days like it was normal—but sitting at a desk for eight hours was draining me."
Everything shifted when the pandemic sent her home. Without managers peering over her shoulder, Sura discovered a survival strategy she now calls "time theft": quietly reclaiming slivers of the workday for personal needs—longer lunches, folding laundry, watching a show—without officially clocking out.
"I realized this was how I'd make it through corporate America," says Sura, who now shares her approach with 57,000 followers on TikTok. Her cardinal rule? Excellence comes first. "You have to be reliably good at your job. If you're visibly struggling or slacking, this won't work—you'll get caught."
A Widespread Practice
What began as a personal coping mechanism has evolved into a widespread phenomenon. A YouGov Switzerland survey of over 5,000 European remote workers found that 80% admitted to handling personal tasks during paid hours. Research published in *Behavioral Sciences* in 2025 linked reduced supervision in remote settings to increased personal breaks and off-task messaging—suggesting that time theft isn't an anomaly but a predictable response to modern work structures.
Competing Perspectives
Experts are divided on whether this behavior represents healthy boundary-setting or a red flag.
Management consultant Selda Seyfi, author of the "Maximize Your Minutes" Substack, reframes time theft as intentional energy management. "The idea that employers own your attention for eight straight hours is a relic of the 1940s factory floor," she argues. "We accept after-hours emails without question, yet judge someone for folding laundry during a slow afternoon. The boundary only flows one way."
Organizational psychologist Amanda Tobe notes potential benefits when practiced moderately: reduced absenteeism, lower anxiety, and improved cognitive recovery during natural lulls in workflow. Carnegie Mellon professor Anita Williams Woolley adds that most jobs have uneven rhythms—"lumpy" workloads where downtime is inevitable. "Smart employees use slower periods for life admin," she says. "Employers who ignore this reality force secrecy instead of transparency."
But risks remain. Secrecy can breed transactional mindsets that erode workplace trust. And consequences can be severe: in 2023, a remote accountant was terminated and fined approximately $1,000 after monitoring software detected prolonged personal activity.
Career coach Jenny Holliday warns that time theft can mask deeper disengagement. "When resentment builds—after being passed over for promotion, for instance—stealing time can feel like revenge," she says. "It might relieve pressure short-term, but it rarely solves the underlying dissatisfaction."
Pushing Back on Judgment
Sura rejects the notion that time theft equals quiet quitting. Though she occasionally bends the truth—"My internet's down" might really mean "I need a nap"—she emphasizes consistent performance. Across multiple corporate roles, she earned promotions and strong reviews before transitioning to contract work and content creation.
"Productivity isn't about constant intensity," she says. "You can deliver excellent work without burning at full capacity all day. Sustainable pacing matters."
She also pushes back on the criticism that time thieves burden colleagues. "No one's asking others to work harder," she counters. "I'm saying: reclaim your time, too. This shouldn't be a secret tactic—it should be how we all exist in a humane workplace."
As return-to-office mandates spread, Sura's philosophy resonates with a growing number who question why work must conform to rigid, industrial-era boundaries—especially when output, not optics, defines real contribution. For them, time theft isn't deception. It's reclamation.