This worker discovered a surprising trick which makes use of only one simple object for a potentially epic lifehack. 

What are some of the most ridiculous excuses you’ve ever used to get out of work? Feeding your addiction to a new anime series, feigning illness after eating one of Kitchen Macaroni’s towering orders of honey toast, or finding an unexploded WWII bomb in your closet are all some rather unorthodox reasons you might hear thrown around the SoraNews24 office, but it turns out that you don’t have to go to such extreme lengths to be able to leave work early. In fact, Japanese Twitter user @na74 recently shared a nugget of wisdom for an idea that made her boss question her health and offer to let her go home. This idea, which has since been liked over 146,000 times, can be found in the tweet below:

▼ “This is actually hand cream inside of a glue-shaped tube. When my boss saw me take it out from my desk and slowly rub it into my hands, he said, “If you’re that tired, you can go home…”, and was probably thinking that there was something wrong with me. I recommend it.” 

The joke is a bit more transparent if you’ve ever happened to see a Fueki-brand tube of corn starch glue, which is a popular arts and crafts staple for Japanese children. The hand cream product, which is also produced by Fueki as part of its cosmetics line, was purposefully designed to match the tube of glue for a fun parody product. It’s no wonder that someone might think you’re exhausted beyond reason or you hit your head if they saw you spreading what appeared to be glue on your hands!

▼ In fact, the label on the hand cream notifies the user that “This is hand cream” to distinguish it from the nearly identically packaged glue product.

According to the Fueki cosmetics site, the 40-gram (1.4-ounce) tube of hand cream comes in three package colors, pink, yellow, and blue, and costs 450 yen (US$4).

Since this trick is likely to only be familiar to a Japanese audience, we don’t recommend trying it outside of Japan. On second thought, we would never condone you trying to get out of work in the first place…unless you’re agreeing to accompany Mr. Sato as he goes to pick out some underwear to match his new ‘do!

Source, featured image: Twitter/@na74 via Hachima Kiko
Insert image: Fueki