[aguasfrias]

Everyone knows you're a slacker, except management. Because management sucks. It's pretty much an axiom at this point.

>Do people regularly run into coworkers like me during their career and simply ignore it because they find it too awkward to criticize them?

There are other ways to reason about this. My favorite pet theory is that slackers are useful for offloading schmoozing duties. If a hard worker befriends a social butterfly, that worker no longer has to directly socialize as much.

But everyone around you who does your exact same job knows exactly how worthless or worthy you are. Don't kid yourself into thinking you're some master con artist.