AI made it faster to look busy. Enter workslop: immaculate memos, confident decks, and tidy summaries that masquerade as finished work while quietly wasting hours and wrecking trust. We identify the problem and trace its spread through the plausibility premium (polished ≠ true), top-down “use AI” mandates that scale drafts but not decisions, and knowledge bases that initiate training on their own, lowest-effort output. We dig into the real numbers behind the slop tax, the paradox of speed without sense-making, and the subtle reputational hit that comes from shipping pretty nothing. Then we get practical: where AI actually delivers durable gains, how to treat model output as raw material (not work product), and the simple guardrails—sources, ownership, decision-focus—that turn fast drafts into accountable conclusions. If your rollout produced more documents but fewer outcomes, this one’s your reset.