So what I do is scan pictures all day. We call it “digitizing history” so that it doesn’t seem like a complete waste of time. I have had this job for about 2 years, part time because I’m in college right now…
So the story goes… I’m a slacker, and a damm good one. I do my work at what I would call… Half speed. I could do more. I could do it better, but I don’t. I’ve just been sitting around waiting to get fired for about 2 years now.
Not that I want to get fired… I just have other stuff I’m concentrating on… (thats my excuse dammit!)
Much to my chargin (I love that word…) the head boss walked up to me lonley little cubile and tapped me on the shoulder. I remove my headphones, and look up. A small shiver of dread managed to funnel its way into my head “Oh no, there goes your rent money for this month”… And then she starts in about how good of a job I had been doing for two years and they were sorry they couldn’t give me a raise…
So I shit myself. Well nearly, before I managed to gain control of myself I sputtered “Are you serious? I’m an utter slacker”… Thankfully my boss is from the Ukraine, and didn’t know the slang slacker!! I actually bothered to ask the rest of the staff here and apparently I do a good job.
Talk about changing my outlook on work.
Anyone else have a story about how they just thought they were another horribly useless cog in the wheel, but were wrong?
You had better be careful. If you don’t tone it down they will confuse your competence with ambition and before you know it they’ll promote you to a REAL JOB. It happened to me! :SHUDDER:
Just so you know, my boss does hate you. She told me.
Uh oh…, you’re teetering on the edge of the abyss here. You sound like you might be considering possibly taking some responsibility for, and gratification from, your endeavors.
They’re making you, a perfectly good slacker, into one of the Office Drone Collective.
Soon, you will have a conservative haircut, wear nothing but grey suits, and be out of touch with current trends in popular music!
It’s too late for us, but maybe you can save yourself.
FLEE! FLEE TO THE HILLS!
Once there, you can live free, like the startled rabbits of nature, eating tubers & smearing yourself with dirt to stay warm. And you’ll have all those Deadheads up there doing the same thing for company.
Hell, I’m sitting here at work, I have 3 SDMB windows open (MPSIMS, General Questions, IMHO). If I get the energy I just might open great debates. Maybe peruse eBay, and refresh the CNN site every so often, oh, and the new Onion is due today. The weird thing is…they LOVE me here! What the hell?
When I am called upon to do my job (the geek thang) I try to do it as fast as possible so I can back to sitting on my ass, tapping the cursor over the refresh button, to see if any new or interesting posts have popped up. They see my quick work as a positive, because they don’t know the truth. Once you reach a point of knowledge in your job, real work can be avoided, or reduced to “been there, done that, I can do it this time easily”. I just coast.
My brain is barely used anymore. I save my brain for after work, where I’ve added things into my life that have the types of challenges I enjoy. Some say knowledge is power, but for us slackers, it’s just cruise control.
Well one other person so far then is in the same boat as I. Isn’t life strange Nurse Carmen?? I’m just wandering if you are making more than minuim wage… I am so I’m confused by that too.
I am in no fear of being completely absorbed into the cubicle… Well ok so some fear. My boss yesterday told me how she liked my shirt I made… which says “Jesus makes robots”. (I smart!) I was then asked what color was the next choice for my hair… etc.
Maybe the idea is Office Space is true. My advice now to everyone is, stop working hard! Go fishing… Maybe take it upon yourself to do some office renovation. I feel like a member of the Socialist Worker Party now… Weee!
Oh… I take lunches on the clock… Just more insult to injury.
Duncan.
When life gives you lemon, make lemondade… When life give you hand grenades what then?
NurseCarmen sounds just like me. I sit here listening to death metal all day, my desk littered with stacks of CDs, most with mutilated corpses on the front cover. I show up late to meetings, play games on my cell phone during the meetings, ALWAYS have 3 or 4 browser windows open, and generally speak my mind even if it makes others mad or uncomfortable. My boss’s boss’s boss comes to me with a problem and I make him stand at my desk and wait until I finish an obviously personal e-mail before I will take his question.
The thing is over time people have learned to appreciate the level of honesty they get with me and I get the job done most often going above and beyond what is required / asked of me. I do it better and faster than everyone else. Also in my defense lots of my job is researching technology so internet research is a normal part of my job. For the past two years I have been ranked among the top 10% of employees in my company.
Right now I’m resolving a DB2 licensing problem, dealing with a telnet SSH protocol 1 vs. SSH protocol 2 issue, updating 45 systems in our mainframe CM tool (macros rule - sit back and watch!), editing my personal website, and posting this message.
I’m the graphics & FrameMaker expert in my group (I’m a tech writer). This has been acknowledged and recognized by both my current and previous manager.
However, my current manager thinks I’m some drunken slacker who puts off important work so I can surf the web all day.
Not true.
But I still have to watch my ass, because there might be layoffs soon.
This is what clinches it: my cube is in the worst possible position if I want to web surf. Everyone else in my group can see her coming and can minimize open browsers or ALT+TAB to switch to a window that contains “work.” I can’t see or hear her coming (she wears cheap discount sneakers every day except Wednesday, when she always wears heels - she’s weird that way).
So lately I’ve been sucking up to her (subtlely) and trying to cover all my bases. This includes cc-ing her on EVERY email I send out to the web team or whoever so that she knows I’m on the case and am getting things done. For her, it’s not enough that I tell her that I’ve sent edited .htm files to the web team. She wants to be cc’d on everything, with attachments included.
She also thinks I’m antisocial because I don’t go on break or to lunch with the rest of the group. OK - does she not remember when I said it wouldn’t be fair to the others for me to take two paid 15-minute breaks on top of the six or so five-minute smoke breaks I take over the course of a day? And I don’t go to lunch with them for a couple of reasons: first, the conversations are banal as all hell; second, until my manager leaves at 3:30-4, this is the only time I can openly surf. Big deal. There are at least two others in my group who regularly don’t go to lunch with the group. Does she have a problem with them?
Sorry if this has gotten Pit-like. It’s just that yesterday I was so fed up I was seriously considering asking her to fire me (if I were to quit, I wouldn’t get unemployment). Things are slow at work right now, but when I get work to do, I do it fantastically, thank-you-very-much. I just don’t always get the recgonition I deserve. My old boss told me once, “Well, scott, we can’t always be giving you a pat on the back.” Excuse me? I’m just asking for “Good work. Job well done.” I got that when I wrote a 60-page style guide and re-designed all of our paragraph styles in FrameMaker. That was nice. But an encouraging, morale-boosting “Good job!” would be nice every now and again.
Competent Slacker - I like that, wonder if I could get it added to my job description.
I even got a pay rise they were so impressed with my work and in the two weeks since have been given two projects to manage all by mine self. Very cool considering one project is to organise a night out at the Harness Racing and the other is to organise a golf day Party time Hmm might just go spend the day researching golf courses…
Party time