Santa may know when you're naughty. But it's hard to imagine he has any idea the extent of it without reviewing your browser history.
If he checked, he'd find that a lot of people are doing their Cyber Monday shopping while they're supposed to be cranking out reports, prepping presentations and otherwise shoveling the digital coal.
A new survey by Austin's RetailMeNot found 63 percent of employed consumers plan to shop online while they're on the clock Monday. And the survey of about 1,500 American consumers over age 18 also showed 53 percent of those who will be shopping while at work are willing to get busted by their boss just for a chance at those sweet deals.
The survey by the digital discounts company also found 26 percent of people will take a long lunch in order to shop. Another 9 percent will reschedule meetings and 9 percent will just leave work early.
Meanwhile, 12 percent of survey respondents said they're taking the entire day off to shop online. Now that's some dedication.
It's not terribly surprising to know more than half of consumers will do some shopping while at work on Cyber Monday -- especially given that last year's RetailMeNot survey found as many as 94 percent of employed consumer planned to do their personal shopping while on company time.
The biggest question is how much time will they spend? Dedicating 10 minutes here and there to scoring a few choice gifts is unlikely to raise too many managers' eyebrows. But a true deal-hunting spree that takes half the day... well, it's tough to erase that from your digital track record.
Another question: How many of those same deal-hunting employees will sneak away from their work duties to find the best matching donations on Giving Tuesday?
Probably not quite as many.
