Back during Y2K I was working as a contractor for a large organisation. I was hired by a recruitment company, who were hired by the customer to provide a large number of contractors. Evidently someone messed up, and we had a guy join the team who couldn't code. He'd heard about the money to be made in Y2K, had done some simple exercises, and slipped through the screening process. But once he started it was obvious he had no idea what he was doing. We pushed back at the recruitment company, but apparently they couldn't fire him because they'd have to admit to the customer that they'd hired someone who couldn't code, and politically that wasn't acceptable. We were told to cover for him. So this guy clocked in every day and did nothing, literally nothing, all day, earning really good money for it. We disabled his login, so he couldn't do anything on the PC sat in front of him. If anyone from the customer organisation came by he had to look busy somehow - it was on him if he failed to do that and the customer started asking questions about him. He couldn't even read a book at his desk in case he got caught doing it. It must have been hell for him. We ended up feeling that he deserved the money just for being able to do that day in day out for months. I would have gone crazy. In the end, I moved on before he did so I don't know how it ended. I often think of that guy when pondering how life in a stable-but-boring job would be.