Slop at Work#

Week 9#

The study#

Stanford Social Media Lab and BetterUp surveyed 1,150 full-time US workers in 2025:

• 40% had received “workslop” — AI-generated content that looks finished but isn’t — in the past month
• workers estimated 15% of what they receive qualifies
• dealing with the aftermath took an average of 1 hour 56 minutes each time

The math#

$186 a month in lost time per affected worker. Scaled to a 10,000-person organisation at the study’s reported prevalence: over $9 million a year in invisible productivity loss.

It costs the sender too#

Roughly half of respondents rated a colleague who sent workslop as less creative and less capable than before. 42% saw them as less trustworthy. 37% saw them as less intelligent. Nobody had to be caught lying for the relationship to take the hit.

Why this is harder than public slop#

You’re not unmasking a stranger’s fraud. You’re naming a colleague’s shortcut, inside a relationship you keep working within tomorrow. The forensic skills transfer; the social skill of saying so kindly does not come free.