(NOTE: For the purposes of this question I'm defining work as "actively contributing through some skill to a task that directly furthers your goals in your job as they are understood between you and the company/your superior")
Typing this as I start my shift at my wfm job, where I'm feeling a little lost. Part of the issue is that I basically made the job up - I used to be part time contract until I pitched my current role to a superior during a talent inquiry a few months ago and then she decided it was a good idea, so there's no well defined list of tasks I can latch onto. Don't wanna go too much into it but half my time is spent doing the stuff I was doing on contract, which takes basically little to no effort, while the other half is left unstructured to me where I'm to do research, gather and consolidate feedback about user experiences, and act as a generalist "fixer" type for intermediate level tech and workflow stuff.
I feel like I spend so much time in my workday doing nothing, and I'm both scared that will reflect poorly on me for my continued prospects at the company and guilty that I might be slacking (only because it's nonprofit, otherwise I wouldn't care). Also probably a bit of :among-drip: syndrome mixed in there because this is my first non grocery store job.
Idk I just vomited all that out there. It's a free website :shrug-outta-hecks:
I have done nothing all day except shop for food, look for something at another store, talk with a neighbor and listen to a pod cast. I have not touched my pc at all today for work
Yeah. Today constituted semi-busy, and I was working for...2 hours so far (if even). Went to eat with my dad, continued working on a woodworking project I'm doing, love on my cats
I honestly was like you at first op, vis a vis this:
I’m both scared that will reflect poorly on me for my continued prospects at the company and guilty that I might be slacking
Your boss is not gonna notice provided you do what you need to. I always do work as it relates to coworkers that I care about (and sometimes go beyond), but honestly, just doing the occasional additional effort for people I like (and /or doing things I like) coupled with doing your normal stuff properly will gain you a very positive reputation.
Gaining that is huge, because first impressions and what other people believe about you will matter almost as much as what you actually do.
the big secret is they have no idea how hard you were working both now and before.
Exactly. As long as you continue to be timely when needed (and this is especially true if you help out other coworkers that are in a bind), you're not going to be hassled about how much you're doing (or not doing)
I actually do spend the vast majority of my day at work physically making stuff for my employer. This is because I am one of the few people in the US still employed in a manufacturing position, however.
That sounds nice. I've always appreciated work where you can just get in the zone and hammer stuff out
Bullshit job haver here. If none of my clients need my help in a given day, that's fine they are living their lives and I assume no news is good news. I just gotta hold office hours in case something comes up.
Some days I'll be there all day and working nonstop because a client has a really complicated problem. Most days I spend all day reading or internet. A couple times I've brought my soldering iron and some electronic projects.
My supervisor left and there's no plans to find me a new one until end of the month, and nobody in the company really knows what I do anyways.
I work in education. I spend about 75% to 100% of my time on the clock actually working. Education is pretty different from office work though.
My job is pretty much dependant on how busy it is. I'd say on a good day I might have 4-5 hours of actual work. Smaller tasks that actually matter might make up another 30 minutes to and hour if that. Most of the rest is sitting around being bored or fighting with the company's systems since they haven't been working too well since late last year.
On a "good" day, assuming I have free reign of my workspace, which often needs to be shared out among colleagues in my team, I will get between 4-6 hours doing relevant tasks MAX. The rest is spent on lunch/cofee breaks, or looking for something to do. On some days, I will literally only get any significant amount of work done right up until lunchtime (so we're talking 3-4 hours MAX), then I have to share the bench and I'm left literally twiddling my thumbs, looking frantically for something to do so I look busy, or doing paperwork of dubious necessity.
It sounds like you're working in person - do you think you'd get more or less done working from home (assuming it's a job where that's feasible)?
Not really feasible to work from home in my profession unless you're one of a select group of contractors who basically look at the finished product and send their opinion across to the relevant parties. Suffice to say, I don't have the qualifications for that, so all I can do is quality control. I've never held a WFH job - I couldn't possibly tell how that would go. What I do know is that given free reign of my PC, I will "happily" spend all day doomscrolling twitter or youtube.
I'm a nurse so my experience is probably different than a lot of others. When I worked 12 hour shifts it depended on how bad the day was where I be spending a solid 12 hours plus my lunch break just working minus maybe 10 minutes total for toilet breaks, other days I'd work around maybe 11-11.5 hours with some time for talking with coworkers, but even then I was mostly just chatting and charting. Working an 8 hour shift now, I'm going for like 8 hours every shift since a lot of the time working the 12 hour shift, my most downtime was in that final 4 hours. Generally though I'm busy for my full shift and I slow down a little bit when I have extra time so I'm not just constantly stressed on the job. Still, plenty of times where I have to give up a lunch if I want to have a remote chance of getting out on time since otherwise I'm stuck doing additional time because 12 or 8 hours just isn't enough time to do everything necessary in a day when shit hits the fan.
Oh and I get no breaks beyond my lunch break.
Jeez that's rough. My mom did 4 10 hour days a week as a PTA and even with that extra day off it was so debilitating for her, she'd just spend the whole day in bed or on the couch
:rat-salute: for your work
You gotta talk to your other nurses about staffing. We are a relatively busy unit but everyone gets at least an hour or two of down time unless things get bad.
I peak at about 4h of real work. Today im thinking grinding out the days tasks in the last hour before i log out
Yeah I've looked it up before and 3 hours of work seems like the average for office work
I don't even have a cushy office job with a salary but the first 4-5 hours of my day is spent watching cartoons and when people show up I use that as an excuse to take a lunch break.
I also show up 5-10 minutes late everyday and leave 5-10 minutes early but because we manually write our times in I just say I'm on time consistently.
