All hail the American worker: in a slacker's age, U.S. productivity is a modern miracle.

Down through the ages, people have vainly sought answers to the most impenetrable mysteries of human existence. Who built Stonehenge: Heliocentric Druids or itinerant stonemasons? Why were the Egyptians so obsessed with death? Did Shakespeare write his own plays? Why didn't the Aztecs develop the wheel? Did the Roman Empire collapse because of apathy or widespread lead poisoning? What was Custer thinking on that fatal day at the Little Big Horn? Last, but perhaps most mind-boggling of all: How does anybody get anything done in the American workplace with all the distractions whirling around them?

I raise this because of a recent spate of news reports depicting a workplace that has apparently entered a state of full-fledged anarchy. According to the always informative New York Post, employers are increasingly concerned about after-hours boozing, which is impacting productivity in the office the next day. Worse, some of this activity seems to be taking place on Wall Street, the last place you would want anyone making high-level decisions with a snootful.

Next, according to another published report, productivity in the workplace is rapidly plummeting, due to the burgeoning phenomenon of "cyberslacking," or the abuse of desktop computers by employees who spend as much as 40 percent of their time performing tasks that are not related to business. According to a riveting study in the Journal of Computer Information Systems, a scholarly publication exhumed by my local paper, employees are now spending an alarming amount of time surfing the Net, checking sports scores and chatting on the phone with friends, even when such activities are specifically prohibited. (This is not actually news, but the authors of the study seem to believe it is.)

Simultaneously, Barron's reports that the astonishing productivity gains rung out of computers in recent years have now plateaued, strongly suggesting there is a physical limit to how much assistance any electronic device can offer an employee. In other words, to be productive, it's time to get back to good, old-fashioned elbow grease.

Last but not least, the Wall Street Journal notes the growing popularity of conga lines, "energy dances" and impromptu in-office "parades" as a strategy to re-energize despondent or demoralized employees. In reality, such ceremonies lend credence to the gnawing suspicion that the workplace is rapidly becoming an absolute nightmare for those who inhabit it.

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It is a tribute then to the indefatigable American worker that he or she persistently manages to produce an enormous quantity of worthwhile goods and services despite widespread reports that he or she has degenerated into a shiftless loafer and lecher, and that the workplace itself has descended into a maelstrom-like state of advanced entropy. Despite seemingly reliable reports that 70 percent of all global Internet porn traffic is transacted during work hours, it is readily apparent that somebody out there is still managing to log a good day's work; if they weren't, the economy would go completely into the tank.

Similarly, despite growing indications that some employees are showing up for work hopelessly hammered from wild binges the night before, there still seem to be enough abstemious types out there to keep the economy from imploding. This suggests either that people are not showing up for work as wasted as the usually unimpeachable New York Post claims, or they are being covered for by industrious teetotaling coworkers.

And notwithstanding Machiavellian ploys by managers, consultants, gurus and celebrity lunatics to transform the workplace into a glorified clown academy where the staff is forced to perform unseemly dances, sing idiotic songs or engage in fulsome, politically correct rituals (conga lines indeed!), there still seem to be enough sensible, serious workers out there who are capable of rising above these distractions and indignities to keep the economy chugging along. Or maybe all the work is getting done by the companies that do not encourage conga lines.

Whatever the answer, the evidence indicates that the average American worker continues to be diligent and productive despite being trapped in a hideously oppressive atmosphere. How they're doing it is anybody's guess, but let's hope they never lose that work ethic. Having said this, it's time for me to get back to wasting my time surfing the Net and getting blasted on gargantuan martinis. I've already put in my two hours today--time to cyberslack.