Businessman Does His Work Lying On Bed Like Schoolgirl

Submission 1,617

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About

Businessman Does His Work Lying On Bed Like Schoolgirl is an exploitable redraw template depicting a middle-aged man in a suit and tie lying on a bed on his stomach with his legs kicked up in the air behind him as he's surrounded by files and his laptop over the caption, "Businessman does his work lying on bed like schoolgirl." The image comes from a headline by The Onion posted in March 2013 and became the subject of redraws and memes in 2021.

Origin

On March 29th, 2013, The Onion^[1] posted a photo of a businessman doing his work while lying on his stomach on a bed, his feet in the air, headlined, "Businessman Does His Work Lying On Bed Like Schoolgirl" (shown below). The image was posted to the @theonion X^[2] page on March 30th, garnering around 65 likes in 11 years.

On April 26th, the same image and headline were used as the thumbnail and title of a YouTube^[3] video posted by The Onion, garnering over 965,000 views in the same span of time (shown below).

On December 11th, 2021, X^[4] user @Lighterium posted a redraw of the image depicting Spamton as the businessman, garnering over 800 likes in three years (shown below). This is the earliest known redraw of the image.

Spread

The image became the further subject of redraws over the following years. On January 12th, 2022, X^[5] user @nogloomalldoom posted a redraw drawing the businessman as Tom Wambsgans from Succession, with Tumblr^[6] user pomegranateruin also posting it that day, garnering over 1,000 likes on the former and 5,000 notes on the latter in two years (shown below, left). On August 3rd, u/minnieru posted an Ace Attorney redraw to /r/AceAttorney,^[7] garnering over 1,400 upvotes in the same rough span of time (shown below, right).

On June 11th, 2023, X^[8] user @tupaag posted a redraw of the meme replacing the businessman with the character The Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, garnering over 26,000 likes in eight months (shown below). On November 6th, X^[9] user @hamaonoverdrive posted a version of the meme that gained over 1,300 likes in three months.