It would be a dream job for some; sitting in an empty room, getting paid to wait. It would be fine if it was a private company but what if it were a government gig? Then the fit would hit the shan.

The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing. It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.

What exactly are they standing by for? An influx of Victoria Secrets catalogs?

It’s not all warm coffee and naps on conference room tables. Sometimes, the situation turns ugly.

They spend their days holed up in rooms — conference rooms, break rooms, occasionally 12-foot-by-8-foot storage closets — that the Postal Service dubs “resource rooms.” Postal employees use more colorful names, like “holding pens” and “blue rooms.”

GET THE GIMP! WE’VE GOT A TON OF ACME MAILERS TO SORT!

Would you mind getting paid to sit around? Kind of like your current job with even less work.

Paid to do nothing (Federal Times)

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10 bad purchases. Besides that head rug. Looks fantastic. Playa.