Imagine this: you’re on the couch, remote in hand, ready to watch your favorite show for the umpteenth time. Your to-do list is staring you down, but you choose to stay put, cocooned in comfort. People from all walks of life have stories like these, and they’re eager to share them.
It’s not just about giving in to laziness; it’s about the clever, sometimes funny, ways we handle it. Whether it’s finding the shortest route from your bed to the fridge, devising elaborate schemes to avoid chores, or mastering the art of making easy meals, these are tales of smart idleness.
What’s even better is that these stories connect with all of us. We’ve all been there, looking for the easiest way to get things done. So, take a seat, relax, and enjoy these stories of laziness without shame. It’s all about being honest, having a good laugh, and maybe even finding a bit of inspiration.
I wanted bacon. But didn’t want to stand in the kitchen while tending to it. My answer was to prop up my iPad next to the stove and FaceTime with the bacon from my bed so that I would know when to go and flip it. You can’t believe how awesome it was. Like watching the cooking channel but the food is just right there, waiting to be flipped/ eaten. I saved about 10-15 minutes of time I would have to stand.
At school, I would always intentionally buy orange juice from the top row of the vending machine so that it would fall the greatest distance, and land with the biggest impact, thus eliminating the need for me to shake it up.
Sometimes I use mustard in my sandwiches, even though I’d rather use mayonnaise. Why? the mustard is in a squeeze bottle, but the mayonnaise is in a jar, and I don’t want to dirty a knife.
My wife asked me to bring her a pair of socks. I put the socks on our cat’s back and told her to call the cat. Kitty delivered and saved me from having to walk into the next room.
I was lying in bed with the light on and wanted to go to sleep with it off. I called my house from my cell phone and asked for myself in a disguised voice. when my mom came in to bring me the phone I asked her to turn the light out when she left. hung up both phones and went to sleep.
My college roommate was that guy who always wore his pajamas to class because he was too lazy to put on pants. When summer came around and it got too hot to wear pajamas outside, he would cut off the legs and make pajorts.
Used to have one of those ‘clap on, clap off’ lights in my room. I hated clapping so I just made an audio recording of me clapping and mapped it to one of the programmable keys on my keyboard.
I lived in a loft apartment and was having a lazy weekend with a friend. We decided to order pizza but neither of us wanted to go downstairs and answer the door. So, we did what any lazy girl would do. We found a basket, an old jump rope, a bathrobe sash and a scarf, tied them together and lowered the money down in the basket and had the pizza guy tie the rope around the box a couple of times so we could bring it back up. We tipped him well enough to make it worth his while and we still got called weird before he left.
I have a dog and a cat, and I HATE sleeping with the door open. Sometimes dog wants to sleep in the bedroom, sometimes dog wants to sleep outside the bedroom. But he never decides until I’m comfy in bed. Solution? Keep a laser pointer on my nightstand. Once the dog decides where he’s sleeping, I’ll shine the laser pointer on the door so that my cat paws it closed. It has now become a routine that my cat will wait by the door for the laser before lying down.
A former friend of mine once broke up with his girlfriend by simply ignoring her until she stopped texting/calling. Took a couple of weeks, but at least he didn’t have to go to the trouble of actually telling the girl he was breaking up with her.
I have a Nike fuel band, the one that records your movement and translates it into ‘fuel’ points. Anyway, the Nike Twitter account held a competition where the person who racked up the most points each day for five days won a big prize. Looking at some of the winners from previous days, they were winning with scores from 10k-15k points, my personal best was only about 4k.
The next day, I decided to go for it… by cheating. I put my fuel band into a ball of socks and put it in my washing machine and set it to a spin cycle (no water), then I went and watched some sh*t TV with my housemate. I kept going back to put it on another spin cycle every few ad breaks.
In the end, I got the most points that day and I won 4 tickets to go see Manchester United vs. Manchester City in April, a signed Manchester United Shirt, and 4 more Nike Fuelbands which are meant to be for my friends but they can f*ck off.
Made appointments to show a car I was selling with two different buyers for the same date and time. They effectively ended up bidding against each other and I sold it for much more than I expected.
My roommate and I arranged our dorm room to be “lazy-capable.” One person was able to reach the mini fridge and light switch from her bed, and the other could reach the window and AC/ heat from her bed…
I had BBQ sauce on my cheek at a restaurant. Rather than get up to grab a napkin, I used a piece of bread to wipe it off and then ate it. That’s also the fattest thing I’ve done.
I didn’t want to get up to get scissors to open a package I had, so I grabbed the cat and used his claws. It was soft plastic and the cat was indifferent.
My roommate in college went home for a three-day weekend, and I stayed in bed the entire time. I got up twice to pee and brought four bags of sour cream & onion potato chips to bed with me. She walked in on Monday at 9 p.m., laughed so hard she cried, and forced me to get in the shower.
When I was in college I ordered pizza for delivery because I wanted cigarettes and asked if there was a driver there that would pick me up some cigs for an extra $10 on top of his normal tip. we had a circle k next door to my apartment complex I could see from my window. the cigs cost me $33.
My husband did this but I took advantage so I’m guilty too. We were in his mancave attached to the garage. It’s about 100 feet from the house. Using his cell he called the house phone. One of the kids answered and he told him to come to the cave. When he got there my husband told him to grab a beer out of the fridge that was about 10 feet away. I said, “While you’re there, grab me a soda.” I feel so ashamed.
I was once on a US military ship, having breakfast in the wardroom (officers lounge) when the Operations Officer (OPS) walked in. This guy was the definition of NOT a morning person; he’s still half asleep, bleary-eyed… basically a zombie with a bagel. He sits down across from me to eat his bagel and is just barely conscious. My back is to the outboard side of the ship, and the morning sun is blazing in one of the portholes putting a big bright-a** circle of light right on his barely conscious face. He’s squinting and chewing and basically just remembering how to be alive for today. It’s painful to watch.
But then zombie-OPS stops chewing, slowly picks up the phone, and dials the bridge. In his well-known I’m-still-totally-asleep voice, he says “heeeey. It’s OPS. Could you… shift our barpat… yeah, one six five. Thanks.” And puts the phone down. And then he just sits there. Squinting. Waiting.
And then, ever so slowly, I realize that that big blazing spot of sun has begun to slide off the zombie’s face and onto the wall behind him. After a moment it clears his face and he blinks slowly a few times and the brilliant beauty of what I’ve just witnessed begins to overwhelm me. By ordering the bridge to adjust the ship’s back-and-forth patrol by about 15 degrees, he’s changed our course just enough to reposition the sun off of his face. He’s literally just redirected thousands of tons of steel and hundreds of people so that he can get the sun out of his eyes while he eats his bagel. I am in awe.
He slowly picks up his bagel and for a moment I’m terrified at the thought that his own genius may escape him, that he may never appreciate the epic brilliance of his laziness (since he’s not going to wake up for another hour). But between his next bites, he pauses, looks at me, and gives me the faintest, sly grin, before returning to gnaw slowly on his zombie bagel.
I threw away all my dirty dishes once and just bought new ones because I really didn’t want to wash them after they’d been sitting in my sink for three weeks. I should feel shame about it, but instead, I just feel like a bad a**.
In my first year of UNI I found a walking stick and kept it in my room. It was the perfect length so that, from my bed, I could use it to poke my TV to turn it on; to flick the light switch on and off; to turn on the heating and to open the window. I felt rather lazy sitting there jabbing at things with a walking stick because I couldn’t be arsed to move from my bed.
I was in a class called OJT (on-the-job training) in high school. Every day the last 25% of school was dedicated to me being able to leave class to go to “work”. We were given grades by our employers which would then turn into grades for the class.
As a high-school senior I convinced the teacher who oversaw this program that because I had my own corporation that I used to sell stuff on eBay I should be able to be my own boss. She agreed.
I failed that class because I didn’t bother to fill out the paperwork to give myself a grade.
A friend and I were walking back from Wendy’s. He would take sips of Sprite and then just spit it out. When questioned, he said “I’m too lazy to swallow”
I was watching some TV with a friend in his room. There was a wire from something kind of draped over the corner slightly obstructing the view. It was annoying me for a while so I finally got up and just kinda moved it out of the way. Then I sat back down and my friend just calmly turned to me and said “thank god you did that, it’s been bothering me for weeks”
An ex-girlfriend of mine was one of the laziest people I’ve ever met. When we went shopping she would get annoyed if I parked anywhere apart from right near the entrance, for example.
One time she was sitting on the bed eating crisps (it’s the little details that make a story) and I announced I was going out for a run. I asked what she was going to do whilst I was gone and she just said “nothing”. She then shut down like a robot being powered off. Just slumped a bit and stared at the bed – it was actually pretty funny to watch.
I got back an hour later and she was still there, just doing absolutely nothing. It was kind of impressive, her ability to be so lazy she couldn’t even be bored.
Wanted to fall asleep in my easy chair, and didn’t want to get out of my chair to walk to my bed. Also didn’t want to turn off the light, or stretch to reach the remote to turn off the TV. So I shorted the outlet next to me with my multitool, tripped the breaker, everything turned off and I went to sleep.
I once had a job that required me to create directories and apply permissions. Every day I got a spreadsheet with the changes needing to be made and when I started they were a few weeks behind. So instead of creating directories I just wrote a program that took the data from the spreadsheet and automatically created the folder structure and applied permissions. My entire work day consisted of me double-clicking once in the morning. The rest of the time was browsing.
Asked my sister for a Doritos loco taco the night before. Wake up when she puts one on my bed roll over go back to sleep. Wake up again roll over see the taco, inch my face towards it unwrap with my mouth eat it and blow the wrapper off my bed roll over and go back to sleep. I Will do almost anything to avoid breaking my blanket cocoons.
My dad once wanted my mum to make him a cup of tea. She said ‘no’. So using his mobile he called the house phone.
She got up to answer it (not knowing it was him. Cast your mind back to the horrors of life before caller I.D) and he said ‘While you’re there, put the kettle on will you love?’.
I was walking behind someone who was eating fast food. He stops and drops the empty bag up against the building like a faux oops moment. He was ten feet away from an empty trashcan.
There are others, but this was the first one I could remember this morning.
We have an acquaintance who works as a college teacher because she couldn’t pass the test required to be a public school teacher. She works at the local college and lives maybe a quarter of a mile away. She also does not have a driver’s license (This is important.). Rather than walk to her house after her lessons for the day, she ALWAYS waits for one of her colleagues to get off work to deliver her to her house. And I’m not talking about a 20-minute wait here. It’s more like 4 to 5 hours that she sits up there waiting to get a ride home when she could be there in 10 minutes easily.
I was practicing with my band and we were all really tired, so for one song we all just played as lazily as we could. I sat backwards in a chair, guitar resting on the ground and chin on the back of the chair, the other guitarist laid down on the floor, the drummer only used the bass drum and snare, and our bassist lay back on the couch. She had to sing, so she put the mic in between her boobs. We have never sounded so awful.
My boss asked me to make him coffee, which was not in my job description in any way. However, he wasn’t the kind of guy that would react well to me pointing that out. I put a small amount of salt in his coffee, making it officially the worst cup of coffee he had ever had. He never asked me again.
29 years ago I got caught smoking in the stairwell at my local high school.
Unfortunately, it was the principal of the school that caught me. Brought me to the office and demanded that I write 10,000 times “I will not smoke cigarettes in school”.
Went to our new computer class (Radio Shack TRS 80’s (trash 80’s)). Asked the teacher to help me write a program that would print out 10,000 lines of text.
The teacher was happy that I was so interested, showed me how to do a basic program and I printed out “I will not smoke cigarettes in school”.
I also printed out the little 5-line program and wrote my name on it. Delivered it to the principal’s office (she was out at the time).
The next morning I got called in, and she told me that I was very creative and asked if I wanted to help out in the “New” computer room. Spent the next 3 years learning how to be a geek.
As a hungover Norwegian in a hotel room in New York, I decided I needed to get some food, so I did what any sane person would do and looked up pizza in the Yellow Pages. Domino’s had a huge ad, and the prices seemed decent, so I gave them a ring and asked them to deliver a pizza and some sodas to the address of the hotel.
After a short while the receptionist calls, and I put on some sweatpants and a T-shirt and take the elevator down to the lobby to meet the delivery guy. Shuffling back into the elevator, I notice this older, posh-looking woman entering right behind me, turning around towards the elevator door and exclaiming “21 please”. I push the button for her floor but try to keep some distance between us to spare her from the smell of beer bottles and ashtrays.
After a few floors, she briefly turns around, then back towards the door, and finally back towards me and starts eying me down. After a weird moment of silence, she looks into my eyes with a stern expression and finally speaks:
“You have to be kidding me…”.
I was a bit taken aback by her comment, and although I knew I looked like a bum and probably reeked of yesterday’s fun, it couldn’t possibly be that bad, right? After another awkward pause, I cough and muster up a “Sorry?”, looking at her apologetically.
The old lady is now staring down at the pizza box in my hands and points at me with an accusing finger. Her look is angrier now.
“Domino’s? You are in New York, a city that has some of the greatest pizza in the world, and you order Domino’s??”
As I am trying to decide how to react, her face opens up to a small smile, and finally, she starts laughing cheerfully. “Relax, I’m only joking with you. Enjoy your pizza, it looks like you need it!”
One day, the husband is downstairs playing COD Black Ops all afternoon and into the evening. Suddenly, from upstairs he hears me call down, “Baby. Don’t come upstairs. You’re going to be mad.” Confused by this, he comes up to see what I’ve done. He finds me very cozy, tucked up in bed in a nest of pillows and blankets.
“What’s up?” He asked, completely bemused.
“I told you not to come upstairs,” I said, but then he insisted I tell him. I held up the Kindle and said “It’s gotten dark outside, but I was too lazy to reach over and turn on the light.”
And, because he is far too good to me, he turned on the light as he left.
I once hired a team of Koreans to sign me up for every business analyst position in London so I wouldn’t have to find my own job. They spent a week applying for every online position they could find and signed me up to over 40 online job boards.
The calls rolled in and I got offered three positions within a month.
The best laziest thing I’ve ever done…cost me £150.
My friends and I used to do some dumb sh*t when we were younger (13 or 14). Well, one day while chillin’ outside the school after hours we decided to test all the school doors to see if we could open one. Turns out there was a back door that was broken and if you pulled hard it would open. We break in, eat pizza from the staff room, drink pop & chocolate milk, and then leave.
That night we slept over at my place and played video games all night. I wake up at 7:30 in the morning to my friends asking if I want to go break into the school with them. I said, “Guys.. it’s 7:30 AM I want to sleep!”. They decided to proceed without me.
I wake up at around noon after a nice nap and decide to call my friend’s house to see if he wants to hang out. His mom answers the phone and tells me that they’re in jail. When they went in this time they had triggered a motion detector and the police came and arrested them. They were charged with B&E, destruction of public & private property, and trespassing. I would have been bent over and screwed if it weren’t for my lazy a** wanting to sleep in.
I need caffeine in the mornings. I can’t be bothered to pour myself a cup of coffee and add the right mixture of creamer and sugar to get rid of the bitterness. Instead, I spend a quarter (company subsidizes) at the soda machine for a Mt. Dew. Because it’s winter and cold, I put the can next to my laptop’s heatsink to bring the can down to room temperature. I’ll even run a program that I know will max out one of the CPU cores just so it generates more heat and cranks up the fan.
Didn’t eat for 36 hours. Laid on the couch the whole time because I couldn’t function hungry. It became a vicious cycle of being too fatigued to figure out what to eat. I also get so picky and emotionally unstable when I’m hungry, even a little bit, that I get upset trying to figure out what to eat and everything stops sounding good.
I’m realizing people are going to tell me I have depression. This was a one-off occurrence, I eat so many times throughout the day and I can’t imagine doing this again. I think I just get tired of having to eat sometimes because I have a condition that makes me very nauseated if I eat a normal person’s portion, so I have to figure out how to eat very frequently throughout the day to avoid feeling crappy and weak.
Have you ever been just about to fall asleep, when you’ll suddenly be struck by an absolutely amazing idea?
It’s something of a double-edged sword, as they say. On the one hand, you’ll have conceptualized something that could be truly monumental. On the other, though… well, you’re tired, you’re finally comfortable, and it would take an excessive amount of effort to get out of bed and find a piece of paper. Besides, if the idea is really that great, you’ll remember it the following morning.
Right?
After having let more good ideas slip away than I’m comfortable admitting, I finally started keeping a notebook on my nightstand. Unfortunately, it didn’t do me much good. I was entirely too lazy to sit up and write down coherent notes, and more often than not, I’d start doubting the brilliance of my thoughts by the time I got halfway through a sentence. This led to me having a notebook full of half-complete scrawls and the occasional doodle, which – though possibly entertaining in its own right – was hardly the sort of creative reservoir that I had intended it to be.
So, in an effort to combat my own lethargy, I tried a different tactic.
Rather than attempting to write down an entire thought when one struck me, I decided to take the lazy route and just offer myself one- or two-word notes. They were each intended to reignite whatever thought process had originally prompted my ideas… but they almost never worked. One morning, I woke up to discover that I’d scribbled “SHOE M*RDER” and circled it several times. On another occasion – after convincing myself that I’d devised the most emotionally evocative melody to ever grace human ears – I found a note that said nothing more than “lemon lemon lemon lemon lemon.”
Clearly, my attempts at reminding myself of things weren’t working out… but rather than putting in a little more effort, I decided to be even lazier the next time I thought of something compelling. I reasoned (or, if we’re honest, rationalized) that since my notes weren’t having the intended effect, what I really needed to do was invoke the same state of mind that I’d been in when the ideas had occurred to me. I would accomplish this – so I told myself – by leaving some kind of subtle prompt near my bed, then laying down for a nap later in the day.
It didn’t work. Or, well, maybe it did, but I still can’t remember what my next idea was. I woke up to discover that I’d jammed all of my pens into a half-full glass of water as my “prompt,” and then – when I laid down for my nap – I saw fit to knock it across the room and leave a faint stain on the wall.
Maybe I was just trying to inspire myself to clean.
I like to think I have made my laziness work for me over the years.
After the first year of Uni, I decided that I would no longer get crisps, sweets or fizzy drinks from my regular grocery shop. I could have whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, but I had to go and get it from the corner shop. Which was at the bottom of a big old hill. Cut that sh*t right down.
A few years later, I basically quit smoking because I could no longer be bothered to go outside for a cigarette break. Must be three years smoke-free now.
So I was in my bed late at night and prepared to go to sleep. The air conditioner was on and I set it on a cold setting and in was way too cold in the room. I had two problems. The first problem was that the lights were off and I couldn’t see anything and the light switch was all the way across the room. The second problem was that the AC machine was also on and it would take effort to walk to it.
I really didn’t feel like getting up, so I remembered that there was a Nerf dart machine gun under my bed and got it out. Luckily all the darts were already loaded inside. I pressed the trigger and unleashed about ~100 darts in the direction of the light switch. I didn’t hit it and when I ran out of ammo I gave up and slept with the AC on. I was freezing cold and couldn’t sleep for like 2 hours and during that entire time, I never got up to turn the lights on and turn it off.
I had food delivered to me but I didn’t want to have to get up to open the door so I put in the “Special Instructions” box that I had recently had back surgery and asked if they would please walk into the front door and bring the food to me inside. They delivered, walked in, brought me my food, and then I offered an extra dollar to the guy for bringing me a coke from the fridge.
I felt disgusting afterwards.
Even worse: My apartment complex and the restaurant literally shared a parking lot. This guy made like $10 bucks for walking 50 feet.
My husband can’t close a drawer to save his life. He’ll open the drawer to get out a pair of socks or whatever, then just leave it hanging open. He does the same with the closet door. And he’ll carry his plates to the kitchen counter (right above the dishwasher), but won’t actually stoop down to put the dishes in the dishwasher. He works hard but is so lazy when it comes to these things.
I just remembered this brilliant observation from my wife. It’s Halloween it’s a little chilly but not too cold to take our 2-year-old daughter trick or treating for her first time. While walking her from house to house we noticed a minivan parked almost in the middle of the road with young teenagers getting in and out every few houses while two middle-aged mothers sat and followed them very slowly. While passing them (windows downside doors open) my wife said very loudly ” If I ever get so lazy that I can’t walk our daughter for trick-or-treating just go ahead and divorce me!” I love my wife!
My dad forced me to take piano lessons as a youth. I hated piano, I found it to be the most boring, least hardcore instrument on the market (I love classical music now, ironically). Anyway, I recorded myself practicing the piano for 45 minutes (with mistakes included) on the electronic keyboard then set it to play every night while I’d lay in bed reading or doing something less boring than piano. Eventually, my dad caught on because my teacher said that for an entire year, I hadn’t progressed at all.
The smartest laziest thing I have EVER done was to get rid of all my dishes, silverware, and drinking glasses, save for 1 of each. As a kid I would always eat in my room and the dishes would pile up until I got tired of looking at them. Now that I live on my own, if I want to eat something I have to clean the only plate and silverware I have in order to eat. This keeps messes from piling up and pretty much means washing dishes takes about 2 minutes.
My mom spends the winter out of town. She wants me to email her pictures of the kids every day. I’m bad about keeping up with things like that, so I wrote a program to do it for me. Every day at the same time, a script looks in a folder, picks a random picture, and sends it to my mom. That folder happens to be under Dropbox, so I can easily upload to it from my phone.
Now I just take pictures when I see the opportunity and throw them in the Dropbox folder. I can get ahead on weekends and holidays, so I don’t have to worry about it every day. My mom is happy to get pictures of the grandkids every day when she wakes up, and practically all I have to do is take pictures when I have the chance.
In my old apartment, my window opened to an alleyway where all the trash cans were kept and trash was collected (the garbage truck would roll through at unGodly hours and wake me up).
Me being lazy me, didn’t feel like taking my trash and walking down to the trash can and emptying the bin, etc. I would open my window and toss ALL MY TRASH near or in the trashcans. Mind you, I was on the 2nd floor, not too high but just the right amount to get a good toss.
Sometimes though, well, more like 80% of the time, I would miss and the trash would just land next to the trash can. I would just say “Meh, close enough”, close my window and be done with it.
One day after throwing it the guy from across the alleyway in a separate building opened his window after I had thrown about 3 bags out and said:
“Hey, man! do you know who’s causing all this noise? I’m trying to sleep and I got work early” to which I respond, “I think I saw a car with a bunch of punks in it riding around making noise” and he replies “F*cking kids”, and shuts his window.
I smiled the most evil smile and continued to do it until the day I was gone.
My family likes to take turns to cook a dinner for the night. So, when it was supposed to be my turn to cook the dinner (I had never cooked anything for them before at the time)… So, what I did was tell them “Have you ever seen me cook anything besides eggs?”…
However, as sweet as my mother was, she wanted to teach me how to make a burger (I know how to, but don’t want to)… I proceeded to make the process of making the burgers so difficult and ended up burning the burgers. Needless to say, they never asked me to cook them anything again.
While yawning I grabbed a glass of water. When the yawn was over, kept my mouth open and poured some water in.
At the moment, taking advantage of the fact that my mouth was already open to get a free sip of water out of it felt both like a stroke of genius and total retardation.
I was out shopping yesterday. When I was leaving, a guy looking for a parking spot saw me and decided to wait for my spot. He waited for about 10 minutes for me to put my kids in the car, pack up the stroller and put that in the trunk along with the stuff we bought. The parking lot was not even close to full (just somewhat packed around the entrances) and there was another spot clearly within this guy’s view not 20 feet away.
We were about to leave the house and I was standing by the doorway, he was still in the kitchen LITERALLY a foot from the light switch. I tell him we best hurry if we wanna make our movie and he nods. I tell him not to forget to turn off the light, and what does he do? He proceeds to walk PAST me just a foot out the door more than me, wave his hand towards the kitchen and murmur.
