Basic Trope: A character who is determined to get by with as little effort as possible.
- Straight: Doug postpones important tasks and mostly goes through the motions, never staking himself on anything or doing more than the required minimum.
- Exaggerated: Doug's working days consist of clapping some keys here and there, frowning, walking around the room feigning frustration, sighing and slacking off when nobody is watching.
- Downplayed: Doug may go an extra mile if you persuade him with a tempting offer, but otherwise he isn't going to do anything more than the absolute minimum.
- Justified:
- Doug lives by the motto of not making waves.
- Doug only works to earn a living.
- Doug works for Burton, whose bottom line he does not wish to improve.
- Throughout his life, Doug has never been rewarded (or even thanked) any time he works hard, so why shouldn't he be a slacker?
- Doug just took all of two and a half years to graduate from Harvard magna cum laude, and yet is in an entry-level position he thinks he shouldn't have to fill.
- Inverted: Doug is an ambitious workaholic, who invests in everything he does like crazy.
- Subverted:
- Doug is just bored out of his mind with whatever tasks he's normally saddled with. When he finds something that interests him, he actually puts in a worthwhile effort.
- Doug only seems lazy because he is uninterested in the pointless busywork that his office bureaucracy is filled with.
- Double Subverted:
- Doug tends to lose interest fast.
- Doug deliberately choose an unproductive workplace knowing it would be easy to slack off and get away with it.
- Parodied: Laborious Laziness.
- Zig Zagged: Doug's level of commitment to his assignments at work varies depending on how much he knows about the topic.
- Averted: Doug always swallows his tongue and puts in a fair amount of effort.
- Enforced: Doug's actor wouldn't go the distance, so the writers rewrote the character to match the actor's attitude.
- Lampshaded: "Doug is so lazy I'm surprised he still keeps coming here and getting a paycheck."
- Invoked: Doug drinks heavily every work night so he has an excuse not to be very productive when he goes to the office.
- Exploited: Doug finds himself beset by requests for off-duty favors from his coworkers.
- Defied:
- Brendan catches Doug avoiding actually working and orders him to shape up or ship out.
- Fyodor puts a gun to Doug's head and offers him a choice: productivity or death (Resignations Not Accepted, and Doug's attempt to swindle a third option is met with a quick round of pistol whipping).
- Discussed:Mike: And there goes Lisa. I have never had a more determined colleague.Cathy: I just met the kid who will get her job. He's able-bodied, but he actively changed his trajectory so he'd activate the automatic door.
- Conversed: "In the real world, he would be lining up for welfare by now."
- Deconstructed:
- Doug appreciates nothing because of how little effort he put in, so he becomes extremely standoffish and even less motivated.
- Doug's slacker tendencies are the result of a particularly nasty nervous breakdown he experienced in the past, which seriously burned him out on everything for many years since. His lack of effort stems from not wanting to breakdown again.
- Reconstructed: In the process, Doug realizes how little he cares and likes it that way.
- Played For Laughs: Doug takes Wiki Walks with impunity and justifies his activities as "armchair sociology."
- Played For Drama: Doug has depression.
- Implied: Doug never seems to spend time at work and expresses extreme apathy about the job.
- Untwisted: Doug is the first to volunteer in an important group project because he knows it will get him some credit even though he does less work than anyone.
Back to doing what I've been doing the whole time: almost nothing.
