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Online Shopping At Work? Those Hours Add Up

by Jamie Cuccinelli

We've all asked ourselves the same question: Work on those spreadsheets or work on finding yourself the perfect LBD? Dazzle your boss or search Sephora.com for some particularly dazzling eyeshadow? If you tell me you've never been tempted to online shop at work, sorry but I'm calling you a liar. I know we've all been there and felt the lure of some good old retail therapy while in the office. But what's surprising is that the average employee spends the equivalent of nine whole work days online shopping per year, via their office computer.

This new UK study of 2,000 British office workers found that the average person spends 18 minutes of each of their work days shopping, totaling nine days every year. And that number is about to rise with Santa's sleigh. Employees are expected to spend an additional two whole work days getting their Christmas shopping done between now and December 25th. If that's not enough to get you off of Nasty Gal, the study also found that a whole 46 percent of people actually cancel out their daily earnings by online shopping at work and 36 percent have had their bosses catch them in the act. Oops...

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I totally get it, though. When boredom and procrastination strike, it takes a lot to resist wasting some time by whipping out the credit card, but with 38 percent of people admitting to spending the majority of their work day shopping instead of, ya know, actually doing their job, you gotta agree that it's gotten a little out of hand. So try to say no the next time you hear the call of the shopping gods when you're sitting at your desk. A better job performance could lead to even more money to blow on a Kate Spade holiday edition bag later on! But I can definitely say that I'm thankful that my job mainly consists of oogling at pretty clothes online. Thanks, Bustle!

Images: Syda Productions/Fotolia; Getty Images