Co-worker screws around on YouTube all day; what, if anything, to do?

[Whiskey_Dickens]

@Voyager

Nor will there be. Even if the very next meeting your boss has is to ream out this clown, he or she is not going to discuss it with you. If your boss knows you are productive, he or she knows this clown isn’t.

When I was a manager I got complaints about someone while we were in the middle of firing him. I couldn’t say anything except that I was aware of the problem.
And maybe the boss knows layoffs are coming, and so doesn’t have to do anything now.
Switching jobs sounds reasonable, but not because of your co-worker.

Oops, I wrote out my reply before reading Voyager’s post. Exactly the same experiences.

[Cuckoorex]

@msmith537

I’m not really sure what you mean by “ads”. What is it you guys are supposed to be doing all day?

Just to play devils advocate, maybe this guy doesn’t have enough to do? I’ve had jobs where I’ve literally had nothing better to do than surf the web.

Maybe he is applying the Pomodoro Technique and he’s actually MORE productive than you? He just takes a 5 minute break every 20 minutes as part of the Technique?

OK, so the display ads you see in newspapers; anything from full page advertisements to help wanted ads in the classifieds, to local businesses buying a small spot advertisement to announce specials or offer some coupons. We either take an ad sent to us by the client, check it for print-readiness, correct it if it needs correction, and send it off to be processed for printing (this is very often what happens with major corporations; they tend to get their ads created by agencies as part of a national ad campaign), OR we get a hodgepodge of info from the sales rep and we create ads from scratch.

Our production levels overall have gone down over the past year because one of the newspapers owned by the parent company got sold off, plus it’s just normally a slower time of year for advertisements anyway.

---

So, thanks for everyone’s advice; I’m just going to keep grinding away and putting out resumes for potentially better positions. Sorry, not gonna beat the guy up in the parking lot.

[Projammer]

If 12 ads a day is your normal, comfortable rate of work, I wouldn’t worry about YT guy. Like the others said, he’s part of the layoff buffer. If your comfortable workload is 8 ads and you’re stressing and having to bust ass to cover work he isn’t doing then it’s not healthy for you and you need to do something about it. Whether that’s talking to management or putting out resumes is a call you have to make based on what you know about the people and work market where you live or are willing to live.

[msmith537]

@Cuckoorex

OK, so the display ads you see in newspapers; anything from full page advertisements to help wanted ads in the classifieds, to local businesses buying a small spot advertisement to announce specials or offer some coupons. We either take an ad sent to us by the client, check it for print-readiness, correct it if it needs correction, and send it off to be processed for printing (this is very often what happens with major corporations; they tend to get their ads created by agencies as part of a national ad campaign), OR we get a hodgepodge of info from the sales rep and we create ads from scratch.

How long does it take to do one of those ads? Is that 12 ads a day or an hour? Because I feel like those ads are pretty small and it wouldn’t take me an entire day to do 12. Do they all show up in your queue at once or do you have downtime between when you receive them?

@Cuckoorex

Our production levels overall have gone down over the past year because one of the newspapers owned by the parent company got sold off, plus it’s just normally a slower time of year for advertisements anyway.

Also because…you know…newspaper?

[Cuckoorex]

@msmith537

How long does it take to do one of those ads? Is that 12 ads a day or an hour? Because I feel like those ads are pretty small and it wouldn’t take me an entire day to do 12. Do they all show up in your queue at once or do you have downtime between when you receive them?

You’re right, the ads usually are pretty small and quick; we have a handful of clients that request larger, more labor-intensive ads, but by and large it’s a pretty quick pipeline from the queue to the page. Re-reading my OP, I think I wasn’t being clear; I should have said the the ratio of ads that I work on during a given shift compared to YouTube guy is somewhere around 12 to 1, I’d guess. So maybe I end up doing 60 ads during a shift, and it would be surprising to me if he’s touched more than 5.

All told, we average somewhere between 3-5 thousand ads a month.

[Typo_Negative]

@Grrr

Your coworker is a blessing. Because when it comes to layoff time, HE will get the ax before you.

Not if he’s the bosses’ nephew. Or cousin. Or son of a client. Or cheaper than you.