For me it comes and goes, depending on what’s going on. On an eight hour day while not on the road, I may spend two hours going to nearby facilities (just travel time), three hours in meetings, half an hour chatting (work or non-work topics), time getting coffee, and brain-relaxation on the SDMB. Other days I’ll skip meetings, avoid going to our facilities, and spend the entire time doing work (with only a little time to relax the eyes). On the road during a program launch, I’ll typically spend an entire 10 to 16 hours doing either (a) nothing but exhausting work, or (normally) (b) 10 to 16 hours or exhausting work interspersed with massive amounts of time waiting for skilled trades, manufacturing engineers, or plant personnel to show up and then do their thing. It makes me not feel so guilty when back in the office and taking time out for coffee, or as I say to my wife, “they paid me for 15 minutes to take a crap today.”
So, “professional jobs” are only done in the office?
God, I hate people like this.
I work 8-12 hours on the floor of a factory. I have no access to a computer at work, and even if I did have access. would have no time to use it.
And some people here (on this MB) wonder why others (not members of this MB) think that they are a bunch of lazy, fat, slackers.
You have a screwed-up job. We start at 6 and end at 2:30, and get one unpaid 1/2hour lunch (and one paid 15 minute break).
My last job started at 6 and ended at 2—the lunch was paid for (and we could take other breaks as well, as it was a very physical job, but we had to account for every 5 minutes on our worksheets so we could bill the customer for the time).
Gee Skotjamb thanks for dropping by…Do you have any idea what “professional” actually means???
geee…
Did you actually read my post and the post I responded to?
Oh…
???
A substantial part of my job is what my boss refers to as “sit and watch.” I get paid for my lunch hour ( I work an exactly 8 hour shift ) and it is unscheduled - if busy I’m to snatch a meal when I can fit it in. It’s rare, but when all hell breaks loose you can be busy all day. Normally though, it is relatively relaxed, with quite a bit of down time.
I expect on a standard day I do 2-4 hours of real work, with an average leaning towards 2.5-3. However that is just the nature of the job - someone must be present 24/7 to deal with the ( inevitable ) problems and shepard the occasionally twitchy process I manage. But it just doesn’t take that much time to do that on MOST days.
edited to add: Oh and I didn’t pay close enough attention to the OP. I am not a “professional” per se ( in the white collar sense ) and don’t work in an office. Duh.
- Tamerlane
Just thought it was kind of …odd… for you to come into this message board as a guest and call everyone here “lazy, fat, slackers.”
Also I wanted to note that “professional” has over time indicated jobs which required, in the words of Merriam-Webster, “specialized knowledge and often long and intensive academic preparation.” Not just in offices but probably not on the floor of factories. Not that “professional” means “better.”
Sorry for the hijack.
In my experience, it really depends on the nature of the work. In my office, we deliver hundreds of files to our clients daily (we do subtitles). Because of these daily deadlines and tight turnarounds, we always have lots of work that needs to be done as soon as possible. But in environments where deadlines are days or weeks away, there tend to be fewer productive hours.
I’d estimate that the people I work with work 10 hours a day and actually do work for eight to nine hours of that. We really don’t know what each day will bring, though, so sometimes there are 9-5 days where you can take a real 30-minute lunch break, and sometimes there are days (like I had Friday) where you put in 12 hours and work the entire way through.
Semi-apology accepted. I still think you think I have some sort of “agenda”.
But that’s OK, as I think you have one as well…
I am a professional and I work in an office, mostly, except when I am in someone else’s office or station or boardroom or whatever.
I arrive at work before 0815 unless I have an earlier meeting, which is on average twice a week. Earlier meetings usually begin at 0800. I eat lunch with another person about once every two weeks, for about an hour. All other intake is at my desk, catching up on emails or necessary reading.
I leave by 4:30 about once a week, and leave at 5:30 or 6:00 the majority of the remainder. I am on call by phone for my off hours, and calls are fairly common but don’t bother me much. Once in a long while a call will generate having to go to out and talk to people. I don’t know what the OP means by not seeing a lot of work. When I’m at work, there isn’t time to do much other than work. I could not possibly post from work, for instance; posting is a leisure activity. I do see people not working much on occasion. That’s their problem. It’s my problem, too, if I am giving them performance appraisals next week, but mostly it’s their problem. 
To expand on my previous - software engineer, at work 8-5, 1 hour lunch, most people seem to do about as much honest work as I.
If a bug is found (by us or a customer) things change dramatically. This, for instance, is the first weekend in several months that no one had to work.
But wait, you say. If you guys would stop screwing around all week you wouldn’t have to work the weekend!
Not so, say I. If a test takes 4 hours it takes 4 hours. Not a heck of lot to do while the test is running, so my post count goes up the “busier” I am at work.
Well, they can do what they occasiionally do here. Give you off half a day, and then work 10-12 hours 2 days. (because the admin fucked up and parts aren’t here when you need them).
Gotta love factory work, right?
I’ve heard that the Best Buy corporate headquarters have a system where you can go to work when you want, for how long you want–if you need to be there for five hours on Sunday, fine; if you’re not coming in on Wednesday or Thursday, fine–so long as you just do your job. They said that productivity increased with that system and I don’t doubt it. I tend to work from 9-5 but the culture at work says it’s not cool to leave before at least 5:15 or you’ll be perceived as a slacker–sometimes I will even be just messing around online to kill time before I “can” go home. I like my job, and I’d go there for kicks to do work on a Sunday, if it was so relaxed that I could come in at 11 on a Tuesday or stay until 8 if I felt like it.
Anyway, to answer your question, I probably spend an average of half the time I’m at work actually working.
10 hour days, probably 1 weekend per month (travel & or direct work related), and emails a lot outside of work. I probably consistently am productive about 90% of the time at work.
I’ve got a simple rule: if I can take more than 20 minutes for lunch and have time to do my expenses at work, then I’m not busy. In the 5 years since about the first month at my new position, it’s pretty dang rare to have a slow time and usually around a US holiday like Xmas. I probably get in a non work, non customer related slow lunch about 5 times per year. Most of my working lunches are limited to a 1 hour block. Customers are a different matter.