In 2013 the American Psychological Association surveyed 1,084 employed adults. Fifty-three percent checked work messages at least once a day over the weekend. Fifty-four percent did so while home sick, and 44 percent on vacation.
The same survey found that 71 percent felt they had control over whether they worked outside normal hours. “We’re learning that not everyone wants to power down, and that’s OK,” said David Ballard of the APA.
On January 7, 2009, before taking office, Barack Obama said of his BlackBerry, “They’re going to pry it out of my hands.” On January 22 the White House press secretary announced: “The President has a BlackBerry, through a compromise that allows him to stay in touch with senior staff.”
In 2018 Adobe asked 1,001 American white-collar workers which email phrases annoyed them most. First was “Not sure if you saw my last email…” at 25 percent. Second was “Per my last email…” at 13 percent. Other phrases on the list included “Any updates on this?” and “Sorry for the double email.”
Chicago police officers in the department’s organized crime bureau sued the city for overtime pay. They said they did unpaid work on their BlackBerrys when off duty. In December 2015 a federal judge agreed that they had done the work. He accepted their testimony that “they felt obligated to be responsive to BlackBerry communications they received while off duty.”
The city still won. The judge found no proof of a policy that such work would not be paid. He also found that “plaintiffs did not establish a well-grounded fear of adverse consequences.”
In 2018 four management researchers, including William Becker of Virginia Tech and Liuba Belkin of Lehigh University, reported on employees and their partners. They found that the mere presence of an expectation to monitor email outside working hours led to anxiety. This held regardless of how much time employees actually spent on email after hours.
The effect extended to the family. The expectation also harmed the partners’ health and their satisfaction with the relationship. The paper’s title is “Killing Me Softly.”
A Harris Poll published in 2024 surveyed 1,170 employed Americans about time off. Thirty-seven percent of millennial workers had taken time off without telling their manager. Almost 40 percent of millennials had moved their mouse to look active online, and as many had sent emails outside working hours to look as if they were working late.
Among the biggest reasons people gave for feeling nervous about asking for time off was pressure to always respond to work inquiries.
In May 2024 Wells Fargo dismissed more than a dozen employees in its wealth and investment management unit. Its filings with the financial regulator FINRA gave the reason: “discharged after review of allegations involving simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work.”
Devices that move a computer mouse by themselves are sold online for about twenty dollars. They are called mouse jigglers.
On February 22, 2025, federal employees received an email from the Office of Personnel Management with the subject “What did you do last week?” It asked them to reply with about five bullet points on what they had accomplished. The same day Elon Musk wrote on X: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
The email itself did not say this. Leaders at several agencies, including the FBI, told staff to wait before replying. Later OPM told agencies that replying was voluntary and that not replying would “not equate to a resignation.”
In 2006 the editors of Webster’s New World College Dictionary chose crackberry as their Word of the Year. It beat Pluto and netroots. The word was “referring to those addictive BlackBerries and the people who love them.” The editors chose it because it can describe both the device and the user.
Borrowed from military communications and used in American offices about a colleague who has stopped responding. It is a complaint, and it names the absence itself as the problem. Nothing is alleged about why they went quiet.