How much of your time at work do you spend working?

I’ve been going through a kind of post-college, odd-job phase for the last year and a half (not to mention the random jobs I’ve had before that). I’ve worked in warehouses, offices, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels – a big variety. And of late I’ve been developing a loose theory that office-workers just don’t spend that much time working, compared to people in service jobs or blue collar jobs. I started a new office temp job recently, and it sure seems like people spend an awful lot of time talking to friends in their cubicles, going on coffee breaks, taking personal phone calls, surfing the web, etc. (Based on the number of posts on this and other internet forums that warn that things aren’t “work safe,” there must be an awful lot of web surfing. And generally speaking, you don’t have a computer to surf on unless you have an office job.) I’m not saying they don’t work, but it seems much more leisurely than most other jobs I’ve had. In general, the more blue-collar or service-oriented the job I’ve had, the more guaranteed I am to be working – hard – from the minute I clock in till I leave for the day.

Any validity to this theory? There are obviously major exceptions to this – the lawyers I’ve known definitely work their asses off, overtime. And there are retail jobs where people are basically paid to stand around and keep themselves from drooling. Anyways, how much of your time at work are YOU actually working?

I have worked for many companies and you are genrerally right. Most people in office jobs actually work half the day or less. There are many exceptions however. I have worked in companies where they tend to drive you hard. I believe the general guideline is the smaller the company, the less employers are allowed to goof off.

Big companies often need people for knowledge rather than brute force work. Computers have made it so much of the grunt work is taken care off but computers don’t take care of the real business knowledge or high-level decision making.

I am a consultant/contractor and I work about 80% of the time. Companies view you differently when they pay you buy the hour. I still haven’t figured out what most of the actual employees here do all day. That has been true of a couple of places that I have worked.

Two hours out of every eight is the average that is spent not working.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/07/11/wastingtime.TMP

That sounds about right for when I had a desk job.

Now that I work at a horse ranch…I work hard, physically, the whole time I’m there. I get breaks, but it’s not like I can just stop and chat with someone for 10 minutes on my way back from the coffeemaker like I used to do.

I work the night shift doing tech support, so I spend an extraordinary amount of time not working, since, most of the time, there just aren’t many calls coming in. The calls dry out around midnight, we’ve usually emptied the email inbox by 2 am, and then we work until 7 am. During that period, we get an average of one (1) call.

So for me, it’s over fifty percent.

When I first got my most recent job, things were very, very slow. I told my bosses - several times - that I didn’t have enough to do. They didn’t respond. I surfed a lot, but heck, what else am I supposed to do when I have 3 hours of work and a week to do it?

That all went out the window about 3 months ago, when things started to pick up. Nowadays I work at least 8 hours a day pretty damn hard, and a lot of days more than that. I might check the dope while something compiles, or dash off a quick email when my brain just needs a break, but other than that, I’m working.

I like it though. So far, work’s been a blast. Way more fun than surfing.

Teacher. I am supervising children for all but 50 minutes a day + 25 minutes for lunch: I would say that I probably goof off for about half of that 50 minutes a day: some days not at all, some days for the whole period. Or I wait in line to talk to someone for the whole period, which may or may not count as “goofing off”.

Last year, when I had morning planning, I NEVER goofed off: but this year it is in the afternoon, and, alas, I am a morning person.

Outside of my 8-hour day, I spend a lot of time at work–some of it is clearly “working”–tutoring or grading–but a lot of it is more gray: is going to a choir concert work or play? What about a philosophy club meeting? Hanging out and playing cards with my Academic Decalthlon team?

This is my situation right now. Although when things were slow for me, I was contracting at the company that later (as of November) hired me on full time. I’m in Product Management for a Fortune 500, and most of the employees in my department work their asses off, even the senior management. I’ll get e-mails from everyone no matter what time of day it is. And while I spend a lot of time in meetings, very, very little of that time is spent chatting or screwing around.

Hopefully things will slow down soon - most of us have been taking work home, something I promised myself that I wouldn’t do on a regular basis. (Fortunately, that’s not yet a regular occurrence since my time with my husband is sacred.) Thank God our product is launching soon - a few months after that, we’ll still have our asses on the line for a product launch in 2007, but at least we may have a little breathing room.

I’ve worked white collar and blue collar jobs both, and the rampant lack of a work ethic I’ve witnessed in the white collar jobs I’ve held are one of the primary reasons I prefer a blue collar job.

If I’m paid to work for 8 hours, I work for 8 hours. In an office, that tends to get me ostracized. In a shop, that tends to get me praise and promotions.

It’s generally much easier to goof off in an office, and so, people do.

Meh. I don’t work every single minute of 8 hours every day, but I’ve had many days when I was too busy to eat lunch, much less go somewhere to buy it. That also doesn’t count the days I’ve worked more than 8 hours.

I haven’t worked many blue-collar jobs, but my impression is that you’re not allowed to work more than 8 hours unless you have permission to work overtime. And, when you work overtime you get paid extra for it. You don’t have to work weekends or holidays or whatever, and whenever you do work you get paid for it.

If I have to work overtime, or on the weekends, or on a holiday, or whatever, I still get the same salary.

I probably spend about 15 minutes a day on something that is not directly related to work. Lunch is often work-related; today, we had a presentation during lunch. If I’m not mistaken, most blue-collar people get two 15-minute breaks per day, plus lunch.

Anyway, that’s my experience.

It’s very hard to say. I teach a few college classes, and the individual class meeting times are not that long. But I do spend a lot of hours prepping, planning, copying, grading, recording, printing, going to get my copy card reloaded, and doing other administrative paperwork.

That’s standard for wage slaves, regardless of collar color.

That’s standard for salaried employees, regardless of collar color.

I get two 10’s, but that’s the governments doing, not the companies. Where I’m at now, most of us take a smoke break and it’s back to the grind, and often times we work through lunch but still have to declare we took one for legal reasons and so either fudge our time cards by adding a half hour to the total, or miss out on a half an hours pay.

I’ve always been under the impression that, by law, everyone gets 10/15 minute and lunch breaks according to how many hours they work per day. Regardless of which muscles you’re using, everyone needs a few minutes every now and then to stretch or refill their water bottle or use the restroom.

If you are a white-collar worker (unless you are at the lowest levels), it isn’t going to go over very well if you start announcing “by law” stuff. Most of the time, an office worker has plenty of time to take breaks. Other times, it is cruch time and you just work as much as you need to. That is just the way it works. Today, I came in an hour late and took a 2 hour lunch. A week ago, they were calling me every few hours on over the weekend. I bill for time as a consultant but I have had salaried jobs that were the same.

We have a couple of call centers in my current facility. I am always amazed at hour they micromanage the reps to the extreme. I get paid a whole lot more than they do an hour and if I feel like getting up and eating breakfast or just chatting, that is what I do. It just depends on my own assessment of the current workload.

As a substitute teacher: almost all of it. The only down-time I get is lunch (although I’m considering going to lunch with the elementary kids and interacting with them outside of the classroom) and when they go to the library/P.E./Art, etc. Every other minute between first bell and last is spent guiding the little devils through their lessons and busy-work.

Oopsie, hit submit before hitting preview. I need to add:

Your experience pretty well matches my own. I’ve done some internships and a little office work and it seems like the day passes much more slowly because of the more leisurely atmosphere.

However, it may only seem so when compared to some of the arduous factory jobs I’ve had. I once worked a shift from 3:45 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Relative to that, anything is a walk in the freakin’ park.

I’d say in a given week I only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work.

Zoning out? I’m so totally

I’m a middlin’ level technology manager in a company with a stated “expected” 45-50 hour average work week for all salaried employees. (In other words, you can work 40 hours if you’d like, but you’ll receive poor reviews and no raises.)

I’m usually physically present in the office about 50-52 hours a week, going up to about 60-65 during the busy season (July through December). My time varies wildly, but I’d say that roughly 65% of those hours get billed to client work, and another 30% is billed to internal work (coaching, emails, training, etc.). That remaining 5% goes to breakfast, lunch, dinner, breaks, and/or gossip, and I don’t include it on my time card. A typical day has me in meetings from 9:00 to 12:00 and then from 1:00 to 5:00, interspersed with answering questions, checking email, reviewing people’s code, etc. Actual work (project planning, scheduling meetings, writing documentation, performing analysis, etc.) is from 8:30 to 9:00, 12:00 to 1:00, and from 5:00 to 8:00.

Some of this time is spent on the weekend. I don’t usually have to during the off season, but it is normal during the busy season. For instance, I’ve billed between 5 and 18 hours during five of the last seven weekends. (I noticed that - and was very annoyed - when I submitted my time card at the end of last month, which is the only reason I know this statistic.)

My record, by the way, is 89.5 hours billed in a week. I’ve always been a little annoyed that I didn’t put in that extra half an hour to break 90.

Anyway, my answer is yes, I really do work a full day most days. :smiley:

Most days all 8. Occasionally stop in the hallway to chat, but even that is generally work related. On my two PE classes, the whole class is spent “working” and then a bit outside of class as well.

But I’m very very lucky, all three of my jobs are ones I LOVE. My “real” (the 40+ hour a week one) is at an environmental company. Then I 2-3 classes at a University, and a dance class at a “community shools” type association.

The dance and aerobic classes are just pure fun. I’d do them for free, but they actually pay pretty nicely too. The enviro job is occasionally difficult of frustrating, but all I have to do is think of my recent stint at a local chain gym (MY GOD customers can be such jerks) and nothing at ALL comes close to being that bad.

And the funny thing is, on that job, I probably spent less than a third of the time actually “working”.

You seem like a real straight shooter with upper management potential. How would you like as many as FOUR people under you?
Office work is a little different from factory work. Sometimes I have actual work to do - research, building analysis models, creating or giving presentations, meetings or interviews. But a lot of my time is really just coordinating with other people and waiting for stuff to get done. If I am between projects, I am on what consultants call the “beach”. Basically you have no real billable work to do so you just walk around chatting and pretending to look busy. It goes without saying that you don’t want to spend too much time on the beach for obvious reasons.