At the office the other day. A weekend day. Things are slow. Room is quiet.

And then, those mechanical sound. The sort of ambulance siren … with scratchy needle-on-LP thing … and yes … someone is playing Pacman on the google.com home page.

Someone turned around and gave the co-worker — a person with a title, actually — a bad time. And the response? “I was just looking at it! I didn’t know the game would actually play!”

Which is the excuse we all will use, OK? We didn’t actually know it would play.

I don’t know how much time is lost in office settings worldwide while employees look at sites that have nothing to do with the job. Some enormous number. No question.

I do know this: I get most of the looks at this blog during the workweek, and during work hours. When people are not being paid by someone else … they do not read me. Hits here fall significantly on weekends, because then people are “spending” their time, not the employers’.

Have to assume that isn’t unsual.

So, what about Pacman?

What is interesting here is that someone has done some arithmetic to determine how much money/productivity was lost while google.com had the Pacman application up on its home page.

And the guys over at Devicemag.com have arrived at a figure of … $120 million in lost productivity while people spent more than 4.8 million hours playing the game.

(And yes, I played the game. Though not at work. Really. Honest. I got up to a score of 18,000, which probably isn’t very impressive, but what the heck. Then I managed to stop … though while researching this piece I played again. Hmm.)

If I ran an office in which everyone had an internet connection, I would be tempted to be one of those evil bosses who limits what can be opened.

Haven’t we all been in settings where you make a quick walk through the room … and “catch” all sorts of co-workers on Facebook (current No.1 time-killer, I’d have to say), or writing/answering e-mail, looking at news sites or silly sites … How much do employers pay every day to people who spend a significant fraction of their “work” day … screwing around online?

(Yes, that is the former manager in me.)

So, Pacman was such a big hit that google.com is making it available all the time! Though it won’t be on the homepage. There’s that. You have to bookmark the site, or spend some time looking for it, and maybe if you don’t have your electronic crack cocaine sitting right there in front of you … you will be able to do something that makes you a little more useful  to your employer.