Honestly. I have mentioned many times how much I like my job. I really do. It’s easy, it’s part-time (most of the time), I get full-time benefits (sick days, vacation, insurance, 401K), but egads, it is so boring this time of the year. Seriously.
I have read every single post on the SDMB in MPSIMS, IMHO and the Pit. I have perused Fark, ILoveBacon, and DamnInteresting. I have surfed Myspace, Googled everyone I have ever known and played all my turns on KoL. I have even played my 200 turns of Twilight Heroes. I am so bored. I still have 2 hours and 19 minutes to go. Although I let the kids stay home today, my daughter is not online right now, and everyone else is either working or sleeping that I normally chat with on googletalk.
My phone hasn’t rung since 2:22, it’s 2:42 now. No one has opted to ask questions via chat since 1:49. So, although I do Returning Customer orders, New Customer orders and online chat for our website, I am still bored out of my skull.
Wikipedia bores me, as does the IMdb. I have surfed Craigslist, and short of clicking on links with pictures – my cubicle is on the main hall, no way I want to do that! – I’ve read everything posted there in the last 3 weeks. ARGH! I can’t play any online games that have sound, as I have to have my speakers on to hear my chat alert – in the unlikely event that I get a chat – and obviously, it gets old turning my speakers down until I figure out how to turn the sound off on games, so Pogo, Shockwave and YouTube are out.
Someone entertain me. Or at least tell me what entertains you that is SFW and without sound. You will be my hero until I am bored again tomorrow…
Honestly? I have my iPod in my pocket and run the headphone cord inside my hoodie that I wear because they keep it cold enough to hang meat in here. I am not supposed to have it (though I am sure they have noticed and just don’t say anything since I am still productive and all) but it really makes spending the whole day staring at a computer screen and answering phones a lot easier.
Also, you might want to go to the dollar store and pick up some cross word puzzles/word searches/play doh/whatever you can do at your desk. I used to keep a drawer full of 100 piece puzzles in my desk at my last job and people would come by to borrow them from me when they got bored too.
Thanks for the ideas, but I could never have music going – our call center is way too quiet. If it’s loud enough to hear, my cubicle neighbor will hear it. There is seriously a shush factor here. As for crosswords and the like – i need to pick up some new books, it’s reading time this time of year. I should do that soon.
It’s my slow time of year, too. So, I just signed up for another semester of classes, 15 credits online. I go through the local State University system, and I recommend it highly. Come April, May, when I am thoroughly busy, I’m going to hate myself, but for now it’s great, and typically my grades are always good enough that worse comes to worse, I can skate the last month and still pass.
I’m in pretty much the same position; I work in a customer-facing job (tech support mostly, some customer service) and the volume can be pretty slow a lot of the time. I won’t recommend a whole lot more sites to visit, because I find that I have the same trouble… I just get bored surfing the 'net too much.
Some things I do, or have done:
Bring boring financial stuff to work, like organizing bank statements and filing your taxes
Write shopping lists
Pay bills and shop online
Bring in real books; I prefer nonfiction or light fiction since you can be pulled away frequently
Bring in strategy games; stuff that can be put aside easily, like a SimCity game (sound can be set to zero)
Bring in stuff at home to put on eBay
Bring in and open your mail
Clip coupons (I don’t even end up using half of them, but clipping and organizing saves me a bit of money, I guess)
Read the paper
Catch up on personal email
Fill out stuff to get free samples by mail (use a fake email address)
Every Pogo game has a speaker icon very similar to the speaker icon on the bottom right of your Windows screen within. Very easy to turn it off, and each game remembers how you last left it, so you’ll only have to turn the sound on each game off once.
Aside from sounding like I am dissing your ideas, they were all great ones. Keep 'em coming. Mostly, I am looking for new websites to digest. Those are always appreciated.
tdn thanks for the site, but uhm…well, some of the ads are NSFW. Luckily, I noticed and minimised the screen.
As for books - is there a decent library around? I always enjoy picking up a couple random books to read and have discovered some new favourite authors that way.
Can you tolerate reading onscreen? (I know some people find it too eyestraining.) If so, there has to be something you’ll enjoy on Gutenberg, or Arthur’s Classic Novels. It’s all free; try a few first chapters and see if anything grabs you.
If you like science fiction try freesfonline.de or the Baen Free Library. Bartleby is a reference book site that also includes Shakespeare and the Harvard Classics. There are sites devoted to poetry, and probably every other genre of literature. Just Googling for individual titles often works, if the author has been dead long enough.
Keep a paperback or two on hand for those slow times. I also have a handheld Tetris game that is a great timewaster. See if you can beat your previous high score! Hours of mindless geometric fun.
When I worked at a telephone answering service, it was either insanely busy or deadly quiet. For the latter, I had a notebook and started writing erotica.
