Your lazy coworker could actually be helping by doing nothing

Lazy coworkers don't just exist in the office — it turns out the animal kingdom has its equivalent of the guy who takes two-hour coffee breaks. But rather than being a detriment, a study by Eisuke Hasegawa of Hokkaido University in Japan found that communities populated by lazy individuals are actually more resilient in the long run.

Hasegawa's study, which was published in Nature and reported by NPR, focused on ants. According to his research, ants love to slack off: At any given time, about half of the ant colony is just wandering around, not moving, or grooming.

"Even when observed over a long period of time, between 20 and 30 percent of ants don't do anything you could call work," Hasegawa told NPR.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

But while lazy ants might not serve any purpose in the short term, "in the long term, they are not [inefficient]," according to Hasegawa. The lazy ants will replace dead or tired worker ants. The same is true of human communities: Hasegawa likened lazy coworkers to backup power.

Before you go judging the woman in the next cubicle over for taking her third lunch break of the afternoon, listen to the report below. Jeva Lange