The timepiece is a standard-looking industrial wall-clock, specially designed to give office managers and teaching staff a bit of revenge on their clockwatching charges.

The Clock's minute-hand moves on elliptical (not circular) gearing. Thus equipped, time will appear to be moving along at an almost unbelievably good pace around the :15 and :45 minute marks, buoying the hopes of the indolent but, as it approaches the :00 and :30 minute marks, it slows down to a crawl. (Most coffee- breaks, lunches and quittin-times are scheduled for either the hour or the half hour)

It does keep good time though: at the four quarter-hour marks it will be spot on.

You can *almost* tell.
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 01 2009

[21Quest] If it was upside down like your clock then you could probably stretch the time discrepancy more without people catching on, but being upside down it would be obvious that there was something wrong with the clock to begin with.
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 01 2009


Love it. Flying time. Yay. Crawling time...not so good. Well thought out thee Toasted one.

Oh yeah...but I'm not one of *those* people. (remembers potential employers are now searching all social-networking web sites before hiring new staff.)
-- blissmiss, Aug 01 2009


Nice. [+]
-- Gamma48, Aug 02 2009


People with wristwatches would notice. Is there any way (electrical fields etc) to remotely affect the speed of a quartz osscilator?

Then only people with mechanical wristwatches would notice...
-- pocmloc, Aug 02 2009


Well, the people who aren't clock-watchers are in on the joke even if they don't realize it; if someone states "that clock's off" (and the most the Clock will be off is a few minutes at any given time) most people won't bother checking until it actually *is* lunchtime or whatever... at which point the clock is correct. § x1
-- FlyingToaster, Aug 02 2009


i do like this my thought was more along the lines of a watch, indivigul revenge.
-- j paul, Jun 01 2011


I would think a "Clockwatcher's Clock" would have special features for really bored people, such as an indicator of how long ago you last looked at it (perhaps with facial recognition [cameras are often built into clocks anyway, for spying purposes]). Like on a barometer, there's a hand you can set to where it was when you last checked it. Maybe even a string of statistics that help you gauge how long it will feel like before 5:00 comes, modifying the spacing of the numbers to accommodate the frequency of your checking.
-- phundug, Jun 03 2011


+ like waiting for a new post to appear at the halfbakery!
-- xandram, Jan 06 2022



random, halfbakery