I worked under a contractor for a mega corporation. They kept us because they liked our skills. And we were always “on deck”. Sometimes, there was no work.
My coworker would sit as a work station and turn the same screw in and out for the whole shift. He would say, “I gotta look busy, else they will send me back to the shop. And the next job may be outside, in the cold!”
I preferred joking and chatting with the team. Time went by really fast.
This was a long time ago. Today’s corporations probably don’t have this issue.
In the case of the job I left for my current one, a thing they could have done is redimension.
Apparently they’re trying to do the stone tablet version of Waterfall. For a type of project which should take under 1 year from “team meet each other” to “please remember to tip your waitress”, these people had already spent over 18 months trying to define everything, including how many people would have to be where each day within the next three years, and real needs be damned. We had people travelling internationally and spending the whole week in crappy hotels (the location has lots of hotels, but they tend to be of the hovely kind) in order to do exactly nothing all week.
I’ve had bosses and clients who would distribute comp time, training, WFH days… there are jobs which do require physical presence when something comes up, and I’ve worked in factories where the rules included “you can read novels at work so long as you drop the book yesterday the instant anything comes up”. There are lots of things one can do to avoid having people wonder if they’re starting to look like the seated version of a cigar store’s wooden Indian.
Okay, so not working sucks.
But what sucks worse is working till you’re frazzled and can’t sleep well because you’re worried about the client tomorrow morning.
I’d love to take my crayons and go home, right now.
Except that I don’t have enough crayons saved up yet.
I’ve been fortunate in my career that the frazzled days were few and far between. Most of the time, things were steady or slightly backlogged, but rarely was there panic to meet deadlines. Not a biggie once in a while. But I’ve never been anywhere that had so many people doing nothing for such long stretches of time. It’s the kind of thing that gives government employees a bad rep - lack of planning up the line means those who have to execute the plan are in thumb-twiddling mode.
I understand that staffing can be tricky - you need to be ready for the surge and you’re not going to have employees who’ll gladly sit at home, unpaid, till needed. But isn’t that why managers get the big bucks - to figure out that kind of thing? No matter. Today is essentially my last day. Tomorrow, I come in long enough to pack up personal items and sign some exit paperwork. And on Monday, I get to start a real job. I hope.
I once walked out of a job where I realized I was just “window dressing” for a middle manager. The duties and the training I had to go through for those duties were only for industry “crunches” which happened maybe 3x/year. The rest of the time I was required to sit at a desk in front of said manager’s office and “look busy”…except there was nothing to “look busy” with because the work generated by the manager was miniscule compared to the other managers on the floor.
That was my very last office-type job. I’d rather physically kill myself working food retail, tbh, because I’m at least DOING something.
Funny, I disliked the downtimes of food retail because then I was required to look busy. As opposed to the managers who could chat with anyone they wanted openly but heaven forbid you’re not wiping the counter for the billionth time.
I had the exit paperwork emailed to me - it’s already signed and ready to be turned in. I need to get one signature when I turn in my badge, and that can be done pretty early. I’ll need the badge to log in, do my last time card, and purge the computer of my personal log-ons (like this site.) My 40 hours for the week will be up at 10, and I’ll be heading home by then.
Boss came by to see what my plans are for tomorrow and what loose ends I’ll be leaving. I told him I got everything wrapped up days ago. Good job being aware of what your minions are doing… :rolleyes:
It’s my last day. Shredding is done. Personal items are packed. In about half an hour, I’ll walk around saying good bye, then I’ll turn in my badge and head out the door.
Boss told me earlier I’ve got a place here if the next job doesn’t keep me busy enough. Yeah, dude, I’ll keep that in mind.
FWIW, when I complained about that kind of stuff once at a place I worked at, they bitched at me for not finding more stuff to do on my own and/or coworkers I could help with the shit they weren’t doing.
ETA : Did I mention I was an assistant sysadmin ? As in, by definition, if we’re doing our job right there IS nothing to do 'cause shit runs like clockwork ?
Turning in all my paperwork was kinda anti-climactic. I said a few good-byes, found out another guy is leaving (that’s 3 from our group of 10) but I forgot to leave a final message on my white board. I meant to write “So long and thanks for all the fish” but I didn’t remember till I was driving down the road. Oh well…
If you are that bored at work, simply appoint yourself emergency preparations officer and start staging mock drills for fire, mass shooting attack, or blimp crash.
I’ve always been able to find something to do, even if it’s the Task From Hell, like soaking/washing dirty trays or mopping the cooler floor :eek:
One time I actually scrubbed walls and picked dirt from grout with a box cutter blade. Nobody asked me to do either. It sure beats trying to look busy :shrug:
Actually, I had another coworker bitching to me that he wasn’t getting enough to do either.
I found out, when saying good bye to one of my coworkers, than they really needed electrical drafters, which I’ve done and which the boss knows I’ve done. He could have used me to help do that work. That tells me he really wasn’t a very good manager.
The more I think about it, the gladder I am to be out of there.
Perhaps a slight digression, but the OP cites government contract work and some others have mentioned government work as a sort of genre of employment. At the risk of stating the obvious, the problem isn’t government per se, the problem is the natural tendency of very large organizations to be mismanaged and to be stupid and inefficient, if not outright counterproductive. But it’s not inherent, and good managers can do just fine in either public or private environments, just as they can be useless twats in either environment, and good managers at the top can promulgate a healthy culture all the way down the line.
For example, some of the most demanding and rigorous consulting work I’ve ever done was for the federal government, and without a doubt some of the stupidest and most offensively idiotic louts I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter have been executives at large multinational corporations. Talk about the marvel of private enterprise – it goes far beyond just inefficiency, to actually devoting major time and resources to political infighting and plotting to have your enemy’s projects fail. Let’s remember that one such company – Pacific Bell which I think is now more commonly called AT&T California – is famously immortalized in history as the source of such boundless stupidity that it was the inspiration for the Dilbert cartoon strip!
Trust me, they do! They just have to be large, complacent, and profitable, and incompetence festers like bacteria.
Contracting is a funny business. I was hired by a contracting company to do data science work … but they had nothing lined up at the time, so I was shoved into doing a Business Objects fronted of all things, and then database backend development. I spent ages doing practically nothing. My contribution to that first months-long project could have been finished by an experienced person in a few afternoons (or an inexperienced person like me in a week or two). Good thing I had unrestricted internet access or I would have gone insane during the off-times.
In my current contract it took something like a month to get my computer as well, and I was still working on getting required software a couple months into it. And I’m on-site, so browsing reddit isn’t usually an option. There really are few things as frustrating as having nothing to do and being able to do nothing … just sitting there … blankly staring at something you’ve already done so you don’t look totally useless.
