Fapping is the new smoke break. Masturbating at work is a “great way to relieve stress and tension,” a psychology prof at Nottingham Trent University said recently, not to mention a “great self-motivational reward.” A 2015 survey from Time Out that found that some 40 percent of New Yorkers masturbate on the job keeps recirculating on the internet, as does a 2012 survey from Glamour that put that figure closer to 31 percent. Either way, look around the office: Easily a third to nearly a half of the people you’re grabbing coffee next to in the break room are devoting some amount of their work day to stroking it. Should you be one of them? Ask yourself these questions.
Do you really have to do this?
Sure, you’re batshit horny, or thinking about your latest sexual fixation. But let’s think this one through: You ostensibly live in some sort of dwelling with a more traditional sense of privacy than any job is going to offer (outside of manning a lighthouse). It’s called your house. Is work really your best location for becoming fully erect and massaging your member to completion?
FINE, you really have to. But can you be super fucking quiet?
We assume that unless you’re a particularly breathy masturbator, you ostensibly have years of practice beating off in tomblike silence.
Does everyone clear out in your office in the afternoon so you have the place all to yourself?
According to one chronic work masturbator who has masturbated at work a few times a week for years, this is your best bet for jerking on the clock. He told me he often arrives at work late and stays later than most of his colleagues, so once everyone is gone, it’s into the bathroom and out with the laptop. (Note: He’s still not dumb enough to beat it right out in the open. You shouldn’t be either.)
Do you work for a giant corporation in a building with whole wings under construction, or an office space so vast that there are routinely free, unoccupied entire floors and/or empty offices with reliably locking doors?
The chronic masturbator told me that, second to a totally empty office late in the day, finding an unoccupied floor or office with a locking door is your next-best bet for employed masturbatory bliss, assuming you don’t get stumbled on by a janitor or realtor trying to show the place.
Does your office have a single-use stall with a reliably locking door?
It’s private, and there’s a reasonable amount of time you could sneak away to do the deed, no questions asked.
Can you get it done in under five to 10 minutes so as not to elicit any suspicion?
Take too long and someone’s going to need that bathroom and start asking questions.
If it’s a multi-stall bathroom, can you be quiet, efficient and contain any potential “jerking-off” shadows, or at least make them look like a nervous tic (e.g., a foot shake), knowing there’s someone sitting right beside you?
This is still doable, believe it or not. “I like to pick a stall in the public bathroom,” Patrick, a 40-year-old government worker, told us last year about his affection for work jerking. “Usually, there aren’t a lot of people around. But sometimes I have to wait for neighbors to leave.”
Do you have a patented system in place for pretending you’re doing official business?
“I’ll begin with my feet facing the proper direction, and then, I only turn around in the stall once I’m finished,” Abe, 30, told us about his approach. “Wipe, flush, done.”
Do you need visual assistance to jerk it? Do you have a phone? Do you have porn on that phone? Are you able to get off to porn without sound, or, less desirable but also possible, risk using headphones that render you unable to keep your wits about you if someone is outside?
“Thank god for Tumblr!” Patrick added.
But are you connected to office wifi while looking at this porn at work?
#problematic
Do you have an obvious “I just came” face that someone (a nosy coworker or a bruh in finance) will call your dumb ass out on?
Wipe it.
How quickly after you get off before your dick goes soft?
Because walking out with a stupid I-just-came face or a semi-hard dick-in-pants situation is a dead giveaway.
Are you a sloppy jerk — i.e., will you accidentally cum on yourself and blow your cover? Or, will you splash water on that cum thereby looking like you pissed yourself?
The latter is better, but they’re both stupid.
What’s your strategy if you get caught?
Like every sexual experience, you must hope for the best but prepare for the worst. While the more likely story is that someone will simply suspect you’ve been beating it on break rather than actually walk in on you (but uh, holy shit, you’re toast if that happens, unless that’s your thing), you should be prepared with some kind of explanation should anyone confront you.
And really, there’s only one: Constipation and/or the shits. That’s embarrassing, but you could live down explosive diarrhea that splattered out into the break room snack basket sooner than you could survive being The Guy Who Wanks at Work. So pick your poison. And safe (paid) jerking out there.
Tracy Moore
Tracy Moore is a staff writer at MEL. She covers all the soft sciences like psychology, sex, relationships and parenting, but since this is a men’s magazine, occasionally the hard ones. Formerly at Jezebel.
