I don’t see what the problem is.
Get another job.
Don’t quit this one.
Profit!
I sympathize totally, after 7 years in a dynamic, exciting job, I’ve spent the last 18 months in Hell. I feel like all my skills I’ve gained in my previous employment are being lost w/ every soul sucking day.
Employee hating owners that they are, they are watching your personal calls, e-mails, internet use, etc. No radio, no personal pictures in my office. I’m just literally sitting around milking the clock and I farking hate it.
I work about half time, the rest, I’m just milking the clock. I would take a paycut, not a substantial one mind you, just to get into something where I felt needed & valued. I figure that I’d lose a little base wage, but make up for it in a little OT.
The company is in no fear of going bankrupt. The company also pays for your health insurance, and yet I’d still give it up in a heartbeat.
I hear the o.p. My last job was like the situation he describes, and it sucked in multiple ways. It made the rest of my life pretty miserable, and all I wanted to do was go home and crack the whiskey open. Now I have a job where I’m over my head, both in the amount of work and often the technical demands of it, I constantly have to learn, I have to aggressively call b.s. when contractors try to pull a fast one, and in general, I’m busier than a cat in a room full of laser pointers. And this is be best job I have ever had, by far, and it shows not only to me but the people I work with. My boss is frequently asking why they weren’t making use of me in the previous position, and I’ve gotten rare praise from senior technical people and managers as someone who kicks ass and chews bubblegum simultaneously. Sitting around with my thumb up my ass browsing the Internet sounds like fucking purgatory.
Stranger
I can dig it. A big reason I left my first job as a lawyer is that they just didn’t have enough work for me.
hahahahahahahaha. This. This is what gets Rand Rover to post sympathetically.
(Though seriously, I’ve been in this situation, and it does blow.)
If I were you I’d spend a good chunk of time using the internet to pick up whatever skills or knowledge will help you keep current. Then at least if anyone ever does call you to account for your internet usage, you have a useful argument in your favor. There is so much out there these days it’s unbelievable. I have been reviving my long dormant skills in the German language, using the readily available livestreams and recorded programs available on any number of German TV programs–and joining a couple of German message boards, one in my field. Ten years ago there was just no way I could use my German other than dig out my old college textbooks or find a German newspaper, which is getting increasingly difficult around here. Now I can do just about everything but go down to the nearest Lokal and desire the stout yeoman behind the counter to pour me ein Glas.
I would imagine you could find some sort of content for your consulting field, and just sit back and listen to the audio while you use your eyes to surf the Dope.
You have my sympathy too. I’m in nearly the exact same situation, except I am sitting at home. We don’t have offices, we go to the client site when on assignment. There has been no project work for me since before Christmas. So, I’m home, drawing a quite generous paycheck. I have to be available for an occassional email or conference call, but mostly it’s off to the gym!
I have very mixed feelings about all this.
Yeah, I’ve done that schtick too, and it does suck, after a year or five. In my case, I worked myself out of work. I was originally hired to do stuff that I ended up automating or improving to the point where my duties were no longer necessary. My boss realized I wasn’t needed, but his boss wanted someone there at nights in case something happened. My boss’s response was to give me the maximum raise every year. His thinking was, “You want him here, you pay for it.” Worked nicely for me.
My sister’s response when she was in a similar position was to do contract technical writing work in her spare time. Double the paycheck!
I feel for you. I’ve been there twice… well, once and a half. One was a software verification gig that hired me at a point where none of the software was actually written yet, thus could not be verified. I went to my boss a couple of times to ask what I could be working on, and as a result, more unwritten parts were assigned to me. Still nothing to do, but now with the promise of far too MUCH to do in the future.
I quit and took a job that was unfortunately in a similar place, this time through no fault of their own. Our work depended on information from another contractor, who was dragging their heels in an attempt to make us look bad by missing our deadlines. (They were pissed that our company kept taking over responsibilities that had originally been assigned to them, but weren’t getting done. More fool them, we were so glad to finally have work to do that we finished our work in record time. :D) The difference was that my boss saw what was happening and was apologetic about the downtime.
My dad’s company has a prestigious internship program, and he once discovered a young woman who had been spinning her wheels for 2.5/3 months because she had been dropped off at a desk in a corner of a basement somewhere and ignored. For the two weeks she had on his team, she was not just productive, but fucking brilliant – too bad the company did such a poor job of courting her, because she sure didn’t come back to ask for a full-time job after graduation.
Some companies are finally figuring out that their young employees have no corporate loyalty anymore (and why should we? we grew up in the shadow of the '80s crash and the dot-com bust), and if we’re not developing new and marketable skills, we are out of there. It IS a waste of our time. We’re there to learn, not twiddle our thumbs until the next round of layoffs. The worry and the guilt is more draining than being busy would be.
Until you have been in a job like this, you do not know what it is like to be bored for eight - ten hours a day. It sucks the life force out of you.
Yes, you need to get the fuck out of this job. What are you going to do today to get yourself started on that process? Do you need to update your CV?
I completely agree. Doing nothing is no way to spend your day.
This is good advice. Why not take the time you have and make something useful out of it? As others have said, you’re in a unique position where you get paid for doing nothing. So do something that you care about. Imagine if you came out of this with a great novel or a killer business plan…
I feel your pain. My job was like that for over three years. I hardly had any work. I was bored to death. Trying to look busy was a pain in the ass. I dreaded coming into work. I called off way to much. I did try to do some self learning but even that got old.
Thank god my boss was fired and I was placed in a new department. Now I am back on top after two years. I have work and have broadened my knowledge in several areas. We even got responsiblites from another division that I was involved in many years ago so I had all the knowledge already so it was given to me and I have ran with it.
I don’t dread going to work and enjoy my job again. I not only got a raise this year but a market review was done that added another 4.5% to my salary.
I look back on those years of solitude and felt brain dead. A challenge and responsibility really make a big difference.
The last office job I had (over 20 years ago) I was hired to just be “window dressing” for a semi-executive. He didn’t need an AA because his paperwork had been parceled out to the clerks he managed ever since Day 1 – that’s how he kept them busy during slow times. When I was hired, there was such an uproar over my taking over the paperwork that he maintained the status quo.
Why was I hired? Because the other managers at his level had AAs. He didn’t want to be left out. That was it.
A month later I walked out during lunch and never returned. I also swore that I’d never take an office job ever again.
There’s a point where I don’t have enough actual work to do at almost every job I’ve had, but as a systems admin it’s kinda par for the course (I’m at a level in my career where I’m essentially a combination urban planner and firefighter–and when nothing’s broken and I’m waiting for the next budget cycle to build something, not much I can do). One of the big determining factors as to whether I stay at a job or not is whether I can get training/coursework in during the slower times.
Oh, I feel for you. Completely. And. Totally.
I’m currently “between projects” at work, because I was hired to work on this project over here and it’s currently In Development - but they’re going to have something for us to test any day now, just you watch, and I can’t be temporarily transferred to that project over there that’s really really busy and overworked and really needs more people to work on it because I’m contracted for this project over here.
In the past 3 months, I’ve “honed my abilities” through online study but honestly, there’s only so much SQL coding you can read without practicing it somewhere and without a project to practice on, my access to the databases to play around with SQL is real limited.
I’ve applied for so many jobs that I am qualified for in a 3-state radius that I’ve run out of places to apply and I know I’ve inadvertently applied for the same one multiple times more than once just because it was listed on several job boards. I’ve even run through the stuff I’m only sort of qualified for, or just “have an interest in”.
I’ve started to apply for stuff I’m not even remotely qualified for just to get my damn resume on file somewhere else, hoping that somehow the Employment Gods will pity me and someone will call me.
Oh, and I haven’t mentioned the best part - all this useful chair-warming? Yeah, it’s 150 miles from home, so I get to get up at 4:30am every Monday, drive for 3 hours to get to work, just to sit and do nothing for 40 hours a week, and I only get to see my family on the weekends.
Believe you ME, I am applying for everyfuckingthing I can back home. And for every permanent-sounding job where I am now, so that if I get THAT I can move.
And yes, before you ask, I do feel like scuzzy slime for bitching about my job situation when there ARE so many people who are looking just as desperately as I am, only with no paycheck coming in to help. I sympathize.
Oh yeah, and…
my desk is the former AA’s desk. If I leave for any appreciable amount of time (say, to take a nap as was suggested upthread), it’d be noticed and I’d get in trouble. sigh
So I have to stay here and look busy. Go me.
And they don’t have to do anything. Other people have to do their work and cover for them - because that’s easier than having to take any sort of action against them.
OP, these are “flaky” times. You have a regular paycheck. That’s more than a lot of people have. You can pay your bills. When things settle out you can start looking for something more interesting and demanding. But for now, look at it this way. Either they give the money to you, or they give it to someone else. It might as well be you.
It isn’t perfecct, but it’s pragmatic.
Agreed, even though I’m not the OP. That’s what I keep telling myself, and that’s why I keep getting up at 4:30 every Monday morning.
I think the difference is that that in previous jobs, I may have hated my job. This job makes me hate life.
There’s always going to be something about every job I find frustrating or ridiculous enough to bitch about it on a message board.
Fortunately my job is related to my field. Basically it’s an internal corporate version of what I used to consult in (which would be why they hired me). And since my position deals with other companies in my industry, there’s not much of a leap from researching these vendors and consulting firms and networking for a future position. And actually, on paper my job sounds interesting and relevant so I’m not worried about the resume thing.
I’m also working towards some professional certifications, which I think will be about a six month process.
Given the economy and the fact that 9 month stints don’t look that great on your resume, I think long term plan is to get those certifications, keep looking around at what’s out there and plan to leave early 2010.
Bitc hing about work, just rpoves you’re just as normal as the rest of us. And yes, the best thing to do is send out feelers while playing it safe. Never burn a bridge until after you crossed it, and even then, you don’t want to if you can help it.