Lifestyle

Here’s how much you make while you’re pooping at work

Ladies and gentlemen of the working world, let’s take a quick poll.

How many of you have ever spent a liiiiiiiiittle bit of self-indulgent extra time on the loo, even when it wasn’t necessary?

Be honest. This is a safe space.

Perhaps there was someone in the cubicle next to you, and you were self-consciously waiting for the perfect moment to drop the kids off at the pool — a loud flush, or the advantageous slamming of a door. After all, timing is everything.

Maybe you were scrolling through Facebook while seated, and lost track of time, liking your cousin’s elegant wedding photos with one hand while wiping with the other.

Still, maybe it’s just been a long morning, and as your coffee took its toll, you decided to treat yourself to a nice moment of pensive solitude.

Pooping at work is a daring and politically charged task. It’s been scientifically proven that if somebody successfully identifies your footwear beneath the stall, you will never be able to look them in the eye again.

Alternatively, if you tend to have your coffee at the exact same time every morning, you might fear your colleagues are tracking your bathroom schedule.

“Good morning!” beams Susan from accounts, and you nervously smile back, knowing she’s fully aware of exactly where you’re heading and exactly what you’re doing.

But despite the inherent social shame associated with pooping, there’s a much-overlooked plus side: You could be making thousands of dollars a year.

Well, kind of.

There’s a disturbingly large quantity of apps devoted to tracking how much money you’re “making” every time you do a Number Two at work.

Poop Salary, ToiletPay, Log-Log, Paid 2 Poo, Pricy Poop, Poop Break … seriously, the list goes on.

Each app offers the same basic function: You enter your annual salary, and hit “Start” on a built-in timer as you enter the bathroom.

When your business is complete, stop the timer, and it will tell you how much money you’ve “made” by simply doing your business.

In a twisted, ill-smelling way, you might say it’s a form of corporate rebellion.

Five minutes on the john may not sound like much, but let’s do some quick math here.

The average full-time working Australian earns around $75,000 AUS ($55,866 US) per year, on a contracted 38 hours per week.

The average human being poops between one and three times a day.

So let’s say you poop twice a day at work, with each session lasting approximately five minutes.

That’s $3.17 AUS ($2.37 US) per session, or $6.34 AUS ($4.72 US) per day.

Or $31.70 AUS ($23.61 US) per week.

Or $1,648 AUS ($1,227.57 US) per year.

Mate, that’s well over a grand you’ve earned in 2016, just by pooping. Go forth and celebrate.

Of course, the argument only works under the assumption that every single minute of your working day should be productive, which probably isn’t likely.

Likewise, the apps don’t recommend deliberately spending more time in the bathroom than you need to. Like, come on, you’ve got work to do.

It’s purely a frame-of-mind thing — there’s just something inherently satisfying about knowing there’s a bit of cashflow coming in simply for going about your business.

Unless you’re a freelancer or have a phobia about public toilets, in which case you’ve been handed a pretty s—ty deal.