In news that should shock probably no person in any civilized society, people don’t like doing actual work at their jobs, according to a recent study. So what the hell is keeping us distracted from our spreadsheets and webinars? Shockingly, the biggest culprit isn’t GIFs of Kate Upton jiggling, as much as it’s good, old fantasy football. In fact, thanks to our favorite fake sport and the desire that it gives us to slice our friends’ throats, American businesses could lose as much as $6.5 billion because of fantasy football this year, according to a study by some firm called Challenger, Gray and Christmas.
Acknowledging that its study is “very rough” and “non-scientific,” Challenger estimates that if 22.3 million American workers spend one hour each week managing their fantasy football team, the cost to the nation’s employers in terms of wages paid to unproductive workers over the course of the typical 15-week fantasy football season could approach $6.5 billion. (Via The Denver Post)
The key word obviously being “if”, but one hour? That seems a bit, well, short-ended to me. I mean, I’ve had office jobs that I’ve hated and some that I’ve loved, and when it comes to picking my flex starter, it could mean an entire afternoon of “DON’T YOU SEE HOW BUSY I AM?”
“Employers will not see any impact on their bottom line and, for the most part, business will proceed as usual,” [Challenger chief executive John Challenger] said in a statement. “However, even if the economic impact is faint, it is important to acknowledge fantasy football’s overall impact as a societal and workplace phenomenon.”
The article goes on to explain how the outplacement firm determined this outrageous dollar value, but I clicked out of it and pulled up the injury update for Kevin Smith and tried to figure out if I can get hot value for Kevin Ogletree yet (15th round, thankyaverymuch) and both of those things are way more important than some stupid study or imaginary equation.
But since I know you’re about to leave this post to go see if Matthew Berry has some hilarious new story about his kids that he’s going to tie into which kicker to start this week, I’ve included some important statistics of my own after the jump.
