Don’t Masturbate at Work and Other Enlightening Recommendations

It may seem painfully obvious to keep your hands out of your pants within the confines of your place of business. Before starting this article, I thought such a preposterous writing topic would be quite distinctive to my particular situation. A Google search quickly shattered that expectation. From Marie Claire, to Vice and Huffington Post: everyone is talking about rubbing one out at work. A full 39% of New Yorkers confess to lone-rangering on the job. I guess it’s naive to think in a world of 7.5 billion people that I could be struggling with a problem unique to my experience. That being said, I’m no stranger to masturbating in unconventional locations. In the car while driving, at church at the age of 14 while running the slide projector during service, Machu Pichu, and other classics, all top the charts of the weirdest places I’ve given myself an orgasm.

I recently sought-out the help of a therapist after a 6-week stint masturbating in the office every day. It’s always comforting to confess your darkest secrets to a perfect stranger without the fear of judgement or ridicule. When we first began talking, I thought I was a degenerate, that I had some kind of process addiction because I was engaging in risky sexual behavior at work. After doing a little research, it seems that everyone is getting randy throughout the day and ducking into the bathroom to blow off a little steam. Mathew McConaughey’s famous Wolf of Wall Street meme, “You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers in this racket,” immediately comes to mind. With such a large number of compatriots engaging in this type of behavior, the veil of shame seems to have been lifted from my conscious.

Like video games, drugs or other flow state activities, masturbating seems to take you out of your head and into the present moment. Your attention and focus are singularly pointed to the imaginations flickering in your mind or the images dancing on the screen in front of you. The reasons for slamming the clam at work are probably as varied as the individuals who do it. In a hyper-competitive business climate with increasing demands on performance, it’s understandable that workers would seek a moment’s respite from the workday’s mania. Unfortunately, the consequences may outweigh the rewards, but honestly, who gets caught masturbating?