A Worker's Guide to Watching the Tour de France

There's just 8 days to go until the Tour starts in Utrecht and we're carrying on with our daily build up to the biggest race on the calendar. If you're a cycling fan then it's an incredibly exciting time because you can watch live cycling every single day, unfortunately, if you do work then you can also miss a huge amount of live cycling each day. However, if you follow these tips then you can watch live cycling every single day without losing your job.

Career Choice
This advice is not all that helpful really. Basically, do a job where you work in an office. There's an incredible amount to hate about working in an office but one thing it does allow is easy access to a computer. I used to work as a teacher and if you do that then there's no chance that you can really nip away from work to watch some cycling. I now work in an office though which means that I can, sneakily, watch live cycling. If you also work in an office/near a computer then you can use the following tips and become an undercover cycling watcher.

Watching at work

Staring at spreadsheets or sitting with a cold beer watching
cycling?

I have the privilege of having two screens at work and, it's commonly accepted that the smaller laptop screen is solely for personal use; BBC, Cyclingnews, Facebook.....Daily Mail. Why not use it as your dedicated cycling laptop? If you do do this then there's a couple of things that you need to be careful of:

• Can your boss see your screen? If they can then turn down the brightness and tilt your screen so that they will have difficulty seeing it. You could also consider moving your laptop so it's directly in front of you and then wear very loose fitting clothes/incredibly wide shouldered clothes.
• How much does it matter if you're caught? Recently at work a colleague had to take his apprentice to one side to tell him off for playing championship manager during work time. Apparently he had been doing this for a few weeks. The moral of the story is that it's often more embarrassing to take someone to one side and tell them off than it is to just let them keep doing whatever it is that they're doing.
• How easy is it to get another job? You work in an office so your skills are probably pretty interchangeable....
• Would you rather be watching the Tour or in a job put not watching the Tour? Obviously you'd rather watch the Tour!?!?

Watching from home

You can work all year but the Tour only happens once!

It can be hard pulling a sicky in the summer but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. Ask yourself this, does the work you do on a Thursday have an equal or greater value than you would personally get if you just stayed at home and watch the stage to Plateau de Beille or St Jean de Maurienne? I suspect not. Everyone knows that Thursday is basically a day off in the office.

If you're not a fan of a sicky or if you don't have the Del Boy like bullshitting skills then how about using one of the following:

•  Boiler Problems: Claim that your boiler has broken and you need to stay home to wait for the plumber. Then you can work from home and watch the race.
• Waiting for a package: Most offices will now let you work from home if you're waiting for a delivery. Why not order yourself some French wine and make sure the delivery coincides with stage 4, on the cobbles, and enjoy both at the same time?
• Medical appointments: People wouldn't dare question what your particular ailment is. Ask your boss for the afternoon off 3 Thursdays from now, Pau-Cauterets, work through your lunch then leave at 1. You should get home in time to see the riders on the later part of the Col d'Aspin then the Tourmalet and the finishing climb.
• Business Meeting: This one is an elite level move. It can be easy for your work to check with the person you supposedly met. However are the 1 hour highlights in the evening enough to get the full story from the stage to La Toussuire? No, of course not. Create a fake email account for the person you're meeting and send yourself some thank you emails afterwards. Alternatively, find someone in the office or another business who is a cycling fan and be each other's alibis. Then just go off and find yourself a nice pub or cafe to watch the stage in.

There endeth the lesson and I hope to see hordes of slightly nervous looking businessmen and women in cycling friendly pubs each sharing a look with the other and they will know that they've made a greater revolutionary statement than anything Russell Brand could ever do.

Good Luck!