A paint by numbers portrait of workers

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MILWAUKEE, March 14 (UPI) -- The typical U.S. worker skips breakfast, drives a car to work, parts their hair in the middle and has had a date with a co-worker, a national study found.

CareerBuilder said Thursday that in a survey of 3,991 workers conducted from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30, 2012, almost a quarter of respondents, 23 percent, indicated they do not eat breakfast before heading off to work.

Under the breakfast category, 31 percent said they ate cereal, 19 percent fruit or eggs, 18 percent oatmeal and 16 percent toast.

Eighty-three percent indicated they took a car to work. Thirty-four percent said they parted their hair in the middle -- compared with 23 percent on the right and 30 percent on the left. For 14 percent, this question was moot, as they indicated they were bald.

Forty-three percent said they dressed in a "business casual" manner and 39 percent said they ate their lunch at their desks every day.

Thirty-eight percent indicated they had at some point in their careers dated a co-worker, CareerBuilder said. The beverage of choice at happy hour after work was beer -- 38 percent -- followed by water, which was named by 31 percent of respondents.

Given the many distractions at work, from music to cellphones to attractive co-workers, the survey found that 38 percent of respondents felt they felt they put in a full 8-hour day at work.

Twenty-one percent indicated they worked for seven hours out of their scheduled time and 18 percent indicated they really worked six hours out of the day. Eleven percent indicated 5 hours was spent productively, while 12 percent indicated actual work took up four hours of their working day.

The survey was conduced by Harris Interactive. The results had a margin of error of plus and minus 1.55 percentage points.