Pretend Busy Office Robot

When I did the mail run this morning pushing the trolley at light speed on level six, Wakachin came zooming around a corner and I almost ran her down. She was moving fast too, holding a DOCUMENT. She looked busy but saw me and jumped.
"Don't worry, I won't run you down today, because you look busy," I said.
"It is easy to look busy. Just hold something in your hand," she said and continued on at high speed down the corridor.
As I sent the mail trolley flying once again in the opposite direction, I thought about what she said and realised it was true. Often, in the office, you don't really have anything to do but if Boss sees you standing or sitting idle, you will be asking for trouble, asking to be interrogated. But all you have to do is jump up with a paper or some kind of document and move in one direction with a look of intent, stride up to a machine and make a copy of that document. Then you could move to another machine and fax that document, fax it to NOWHERE. Just press buttons randomly. If you do that, you look busy and everything is OK, you will never be suspected of having nothing to do. The illusion of activity, of productivity. As an office robot you will learn to master this ability until you are so convincing that nobody can tell whether you are working or pretending working.
Another good one, in the mail room, is taking a bunch of letters from one side of the office to the other, slowly going through them one by one and reading each address. You don't even have to read the address, only pretend to. Meanwhile you are really thinking of an interesting anecdote to write about in your blog that night.
When you have pretended to read or check each address, and everything seems to be in order, you make your way purposefully back to the other side of the office, pick up a pen and make some squiggles on a scrap of paper. You can draw a funny face, but you will probably draw a mad face with eyeballs rolling around and the mouth a wavy squiggle representing OFFICE MADNESS. But don't let Boss see it. If Boss comes around the corner, flip the page and write down some numbers and pretend you are making a complex calculation. She will look and nod, impressed at industrious worker bee, and go off grinning insanely to get her seven hundredth coffee of the day.