DO YOU live to work, or work to live? Perhaps, like many of us, you’re not sure and just live at work. Not in a workaholic sleep-under-the-desk-to-beat-the-boss-to-work sort of way. But in a living-so-much-I-just-don’t-have-time-to-do-work-at-work sort of way.

A survey by Office Angels reported by www.management-issues.com shows that workers wash (8 per cent of people shower at work), get dressed (65 per cent of women and 35 per cent of men keep a mini-wardrobe at work), put on make-up (72 per cent of women keep a stash of slap in their drawers) and eat their breakfast at work (22 per cent buy breakfast cereal and sandwich fillings to take to work). The survey authors dub this living at work “home-ing”.

But taking it too far is just plain annoying — 18 per cent of workers are irritated by colleagues who bring pets or children into the office. The survey also shows that we like to e-mail friends and organise our social activities and household chores from work.

It’s no different in the US, where Time (June 26) reports that the average American office worker “goofs off” for more than two hours a day. Most of this 126 minutes is spent relaxing or gossiping. The author suggests that workers enjoy this time more than official vacation because it is time they are surreptitiously stealing from the boss.

In Britain, though, we’d still like the boss to give us a day or two off. A survey by Sharp Consultancy, a financial recruitment firm, finds that 97 per cent of workers rate extra days off as their top perk.

“Success is measured less by money and titles, and more by what is sweepingly referred to as work-life balance,” the publisher of a new US magazine called Success tells The Economist (June 17). It’s a double-edged sword though: flexible working can leave people wedded to their BlackBerries. Then there are the hard-core inflexible corporate types who prefer “extreme jobs” that demand all work and no play.

One assumes that these headcases have their heads screwed on and are aiming for leisure-filled early retirements. But an article in Fortune (July 3) suggests that they are kidding themselves. Many of us will want to carry on doing some work into our dotage — not because we have to but “just because it is so personally rewarding”. And let’s face it, drinking cocktails in infinity pools could become boring.

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