Millions Plan To Skip Work Following The 'Game Of Thrones' Finale

According to a recent study, people are bailing on work because of the Game of Thrones finale

There’s gonna be a whoooole lot of empty offices on Monday morning. A recent survey titled “The Absence Is Coming” (lol) found that millions of people are planning to skip work because of the Game of Thrones finale. So, yeah, you should probably start deciding what illness you’re coming down with ASAP.

The survey, conducted by Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated, discovered that an estimated 27.2 million people feel that the Game of Thrones finale will have some direct impact on their workday, whether it means showing up late, not being able to concentrate, or phoning it in and working remotely.

Additionally, an estimated 10.7 million Americans will skip work on Sunday to watch the finale or take off work the following day to either “celebrate or cope with the aftermath” of the show’s hotly-anticipated ending.

Basically, Game of Thrones has invaded the workplace and there’s really nothing that anyone can do to stop it. The survey noted that an estimated 35.8 million employees have spent at least one hour per week of company time discussing, reading about, or posting about the hit HBO series.

If you need any more evidence that GOT is everyone’s one and only priority right now, please just head to Twitter. There’s a lot of emotions and wine and more emotions.

Researchers also asked employees which of the characters they’d most like to have as their manager (AKA, the real word’s Iron Throne) and Jon Snow pulled in as the winner. Hand of the Queen Tyrion Lannister was ranked second, mad Dragon Queen Daenerys Targaryen was third, and the conniving Cersei Lannister managed to snag a few votes which…um…what now?

If you’re currently freaking out and worrying that the finale won’t live up to all of the love and the devotion you’ve give to the series, please just take a moment and imagine how the writers feel. During an interview with Entertainment Weekly, GOT writer-producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss explained just how much pressure this whole thing is.

“We want people to love it,” Weiss said. “It matters a lot to us. “We’ve spent 11 years doing this. We also know no matter what we do, even if it’s the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions. There is no version where everybody says, ‘I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this’ — that’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping for the Breaking Bad [finale] argument where it’s like, ‘Is that an A or an A+?’”

Whatever the outcome, we can know for sure that there will be a whole lot of people who developed a very mysterious cold over the weekend. Sorry not sorry.