No, not that kind where prices go up. This is a different kind of inflation. It happens every month when the hounders remind people to turn in their field circus times for the month.
With the numbers threatening 7 million this year, it is appropriate to discuss publisher inflation. And one way to accomplish that is to go out in service and dog it. I have seen many ways to do that. I have been out where they start their time before meeting, and then run the meeting more than a half hour (I was told to get the group out in the territory in 15 minutes when I had to run the group). I have seen people that needed to be picked up after, and were not ready. Still, there was the time-starter call where the person was not really interested.
Then there are ways to waste time once out in the misery. I have seen the Pioneer Drive. And the Pioneer Shuffle. I have done whole street segments and maybe had one or two people answer the door, and they were not interested. I never made the effort to get them interested or to make a presentation that would sucker them in. Instead, I was brutally honest about why we were at the door, which turned a lot of people off. (I wonder why.)
Other time wasters are present. I have seen coffee breaks that take half an hour or more. Then there is the obligatory trip to the bank or store. Followed by gas (often out of the territory). Forgotten medication, book bags, ties, and/or glasses are also common. I have also seen us waste an hour driving across town, hunting for the place, and the person was not at home. I have also had days where I got in 2 or 2 1/2 hours of time in without talking to anyone and with spending less than ten minutes actually attempting. Usually it would be one call followed by an endless string of errands and breaks.
Street work is another matter. I remember doing what is known as dummy service. I would take my bag and make a trip along a place where I knew there would be no traffic to place the crap with, making no attempt to find anyone. Then I would count that as an hour of service. I have heard of phone witlessing done that way--dialing a number that they knew would be disconnected or that they would reach a business answering machine, and then hanging up to get an hour of dummy service. Another trick is to do letters and "forget" both to put a stamp on it and to put a return address. The letter would end up dead. Knocking on doors of houses that are boarded up is another trick to start one's time for a fake start.
On top of that, there are totally fake reports. Pioneers commonly fake their time (alas, I haven't heard of that in our congregation). I have heard of pioneers that needed 10 hours just tacking that time onto the time they did. Publishers have also been known to turn in a slip with time on it when they did nothing. And then, I have heard of cases where the hounder-hounder hounds the secretary to fill in slips on behalf of inactive publishers that did not turn in a slip nor did any actual time. This is very common in August, where they are supposed to fake slips for those that did nothing so they can inflate the numbers. In fact, people that have been inactive for a decade and are doing things to get disfellowshipped for might unknowingly be having time put in by the secretary on their behalf.
If there are nominally 7 million on the report, I would be willing to bet that at least 1 million are there because of fake time slips. As people fade, the hounder in charge will often put in a fake slip on their behalf to inflate the numbers. And I would bet that at least another 3 million are putting in dummy service or going out only to put in the time. They don't even try to increase the actual congregation size. Unfortunately, a not insignificant number of this are children that are forced to go out in field circus when they are as young as 2, when they should be playing. In this country, that is making up most of the growth.
It will be interesting to see how that is going to play out. After the embarrassment of the pedophile scandal on NBC last month and the oral sex article prompting a number of walkouts, I am hoping that they start heading south in a big hurry. They can only put in so many fake time slips before the Watchtower Society does what Enron did in 2002. They got busted and went belly up. Hopefully, so will the Watchtower Society.