
In a feat of laziness that puts the average employee’s occasional Facebook use into perspective, five Metro-North road machinists were “completely idle for the entire workday” 22 percent of the time last summer. According to an MTA inspector general’s report released Tuesday, rather than inspecting, maintaining, and repairing equipment throughout the system, the men stopped home for hours, did yard work, ran errands at Home Depot, visited relatives, ate fast food, and sometimes just sat in their trucks in commuter parking lots – then had the gall to claim overtime for made-up tasks. It almost sounds like just doing their jobs would have been easier.