I am ashamed to admit it, but since about January I've had numerous days where I have literally spent 1% of the day doing actual work. That includes basically just checking whatever emails I might have.
I work for a big Fortune 500 financial company in the IT division. I'm a contractor, and a systems analyst. They pay me to work on projects. If I have no project, I have nothing to do. I'm not alone. My friend who also moved here to work for the same company often also has nothing to do. He reads a game message board all day long.
The last project I was on took forever to get started because I was waiting for other people to join to tell me what it was they wanted to accomplish. After we got started, there were a few meetings here and there, and I tried to create a data model, but I couldn't create system requirements unless I got access to the production general ledger database. They decided that they didn't want to give me access to it, and I've since moved to a different team (where I have a couple of small projects now). Since being on that last team, it's been over a month since I requested that access, and they still haven't made a decision on that. So, where I work, politics and indecision take precedence over actually getting any work done.
It's amazing really. Especially when you consider what they actually pay me. Most people here would simply be appalled and amazed.