Okay. For starters, this is my first real professional type job. I’m used to the kind of employment where you have to sell your soul to get an extra shift and lose all hope for humanity in the process.
The first 6 months I busted my butt, and everyone around the office had a good laugh at how ‘dedicated’ and ‘efficient’ I was. The first week I was here one of the V.P.'s came in and joked to my boss, “She’s been sitting at her computer working all day! What’s wrong with her?”
So here it is, I’ve been here almost a year now. My big project from the summer is over and done, and things are slow.
Reeeeaaaalllly slow.
I’ve spent most of my time for the past few weeks here and doing classwork. I haven’t had any work on my desk for about a week, and the phone only rings once or twice a day.
Why am I here? Is this normal? Am I crazy?
I’m beginning to feel kind of guilty about picking up a paycheck, as I’m used to working my butt off for every second of time I’m on the clock. I feel so guilty that I’m thinking about getting another job just so I could be doing something productive. (I’d hate to leave though, because the benefits are great, and I love my boss)
FTR, I work for a lobbying company, and I’m basically an executive assistant.
So, help me out here. How do I justify sitting on my arse and getting paid for it?
Tell your boss things seem kind of slow, and ask if there are any projects coming up that you can get a head start on. If your boss says things are like this sometimes, then that’s the job. Remind him every week or so that things are slow, and you’re looking for work to do (danger: this could get you laid off, but with a clear conscience; at the next job interview, when asked why you got laid off, you just say they ran out of work for you to do). If he’s comfortable paying you to do homework and post on the SDMB, then you have what is known as a good job.
Heh. My boss is kinda cool like that. She’s already told me it’s cool to work on my homework here. I think she tries to shelter me from the rest of the company. They were trying to train me on switchboard in case of emergency and she told them they couldn’t steal me ::
I know it’s like this sometimes, especially as I work in Political Operations, and after the election, things just died around here.
Still, I feel quite guilty about getting paid (a good sum, too) for being here to answer the phone should it happen to ring.
Your employer probably knows that this is par for the course. I had pretty much the same job working for a political nonprofit. When we were in the middle of a major initiative or election, the work never stopped. But there would be nearly as much downtime as there was high intensity.
I wish more of my students had your conscience and work ethic. Sounds like a dream job for many of them…
Sounds like the management isn’t making most efficient use of resources, but then if they can handle it and still keep afloat as a business… (I presume this is a private company, not a govt. job?) I second Ethilrist’s suggestion of checking with your boss to see if you can get a head start on anything new. As long as you’re ready and willing to tackle work that needs to be done, you shouldn’t need to feel guilty if they haven’t given you any new work.
But your feeling is definitely understandable. While it’s definitely frustrating to feel overworked (e.g. me, right now), I think it’s also frustrating to feel like you are too idle. Especially if it comes right after a period of heavy work – sort of a “Whew! Finished! okay… now what?” feeling.
[and]
Let me just also say that the more of XJETGIRLX’s posts I read, the cooler I think she is!
Yes, quite. I have little work to do, and I have a 4-year degree. The woman I share a cube with has even less work to do than I do. She does her homework at the office (the company pays for her to go to college) and plays computer games all day.
(Before anyone thinks I’m bitter, I’m not at all. We don’t do the same job, and besides I get to work from home.)
My boss wanders the building chatting with people, and I’ve even seen him wandering around downtown when I get to work (those days I have to go into the office).
I agree with Ethilrist. One of the things that got me a good review is that I would always ask my boss if there were something I could do when things were slow for me.
Even if there wasn’t, she knew I wasn’t goofing off…that I was trying to find something to do.
I have figured out that MOST of the time, I can get about 5 days of work done in about 4 hours. So the rest of the time, I search for an online school to go to while I check the SDMBs and take phone calls.
I’m not sure my BOSS would be thrilled about that, but at the same time, it’s still nice!! haha
I hope I never apply for a job from somebody on here. haha
I was thinking of starting just such a thread today.
I’m a temp right now, and the project I was hired for is in a hiatus period. The original plan was for me to be off work during this period; I was planning on finding a short-term temp job and coming back when the project resumes.
But - get this - they told me that they thought I was so good, they were sure I’d get “snapped up” at once if I left my employ here during the hiatus. This in spite of the fact that I virtually signed my name in blood saying I’ll be here in January, when the project re-starts.
Well, I think they’re full of it, and I would have turned down any offers conflicting with my committment, but here I am anyway. Nothing to do, nothing at all, at all, at all. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
Every week or so I go remind my group that I have no work, and I’m willing to help out in any way. My standard joke is “I’m willing to scrub the toilets, just give me some work!” Unfortunately the toilets are already well taken-care-of. So here I sit.
Even the SDMB has become tiresome. :eek:
I feel like the only non-producing member of the staff (which is true); I’m bored to tears and it makes me depressed; having time to stew all day is exactly what I don’t need. I need to be busy. Many would kill for my job, but for me it’s turning into a nightmare.
Any day now I’m going to go give those toilets a good scrubbing, whether they need it or not.
How do I justify sitting on my arse and getting paid for it?
By realizing your employer is willing for that to be the case. Perhaps they’re happy to pay you to do little just so they know you’ll be there when they need you to do a lot.
Years ago, a friend had a similar situation. It finally bugged her so much, she took a job elsewhere that paid quite a bit less and ran her ragged. Sounds silly in a way, but sometimes the very hardest thing to do is–nothing.
Most employment situations do not work this way, so I wouldn’t say it’s normal. It’s certainly not typical. But it’s not unheard of, either. It may be normal at your company.
I had a job in college where I worked evenings babysitting a computer network. When I started, my boss said that if no one called him at home, I had done my job, as far as he was concerned. By the time I left, I’d gotten several raises and streamlined the system so it ran like a dream, so I was getting $16 an hour to sit on my butt and watch movies on my computer 40 hours a week. It was great.
I agree with Gary T’s sentiment: they are paying you to be there if something should come up unexpectedly, and for when they know things are going to be bearing down fast. I’m in the same position: a good chunk of the time, I’m effictively getting paid to surf the 'net and work on personal projects. However, that’s balanced out by the crunch times, and that they know (so long as I’m not on vacation) that if something comes up, there will be someone guarenteed to be there that has the time to take care of it.
Also, they may be vewing the downtime as kind of a benefit: never mind that the kinds of people they normally want in those positions are the kinds of people who start going stir-crazy if they don’t have something to do.
You could always take up underwater basket weaving and practice it at work to give you something to do…
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