How much of your work-day is actually spent working?

[Harmon]

Why? I am paid to be at work from 8:00-16:30 to man a phone. We have a commitment in our contract to have a service level of 90%. Basically 90% of our calls must be answered within 20 seconds. We have minimal staffing usually 3 people on at all times. This way there is always 2 people to answer calls just in case. There are times when things break and it is none stop calls. I am here in case something like this happens. Most of the time it is slow but the bodies need to be staffed for the times when it is busy.

Hay, if you can do it and feel good about it, then great. Personally I would feel like I was stealing or taking advantage of the job, but if that is the job then I guess you should feel good about it.

I can't. I have to see something at the end of the day, feel as though I have accomplished something. Sitting at a phone doing 1 hour of work in 8 hours- nah, couldn't feel good about it.

 

[BOZ]

i go to my job to get paid, not to accomplish something. i make sure every day to do enough work so that my bosses don't notice how much i'm slacking off. i come in every day, work my full shift, never call in sick (unless i'm very sick, heh), and usually try to do what the bosses say. all in the interest of not getting fired and keeping my relatively cushy job.

 

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

i go to my job to get paid, not to accomplish something. i make sure every day to do enough work so that my bosses don't notice how much i'm slacking off. i come in every day, work my full shift, never call in sick (unless i'm very sick, heh), and usually try to do what the bosses say. all in the interest of not getting fired and keeping my relatively cushy job.

I'd have to say that I do about the same.

 

[AIM-54]

Depends on the day, really. It can be as different as 20% to 100%. Somedays I come out and I've really accomplished a lot. Others I wonder what the hell I was doing all day. Now, I was interning for free for the last year and a half, but generally I work pretty hard. Now that I'm getting paid, I feel somewhat more guilty about my slacker days. Today is clearly one of the latter.

 

[Gidien]

I think I'm close to winning this contest (or losing it, depending on your viewpoint) as I wort a part time job where no more than 10% of my time is spent working.

I run a computer program at my University to run some tests. I have to save the data and change the test type after every run. Every eight runs I change some cables, and every eight runs I have to manually move the components being tested. So, about 30 seconds of work every five to fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I sit at this computer in an isloated sterile room and wait.

Nothing else to do but surf and minesweeper. I even eat my lunch between runs. No guilt here tho... someone's got to do it.

 

[jaerdaph]

It depends on the particular day. Some days are slow and I hang out here. Other days are extremely busy and you won't see me at all.

 

[Boojum]

Currently, it probably works out to 60% working, but it's in blocks of work and blocks of non-work rather than a more even mix. I teach an SAT prep class, and two sessions out of every three, I'm teaching for basically the whole time. The third session, however, is a practice exam which I proctor, so I basically read directions and update time remaining for a couple of minutes out of every hour, and spend the rest of the time reading magazines or playing games on my DS. That's about to change though, as I've just been hired as a gamemaster for an MMORPG, and I don't know how the time on that is going to work.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

Actual productive work - 3 hours
Watching progress bars creep across a screen - 4 to 12 hours

Some weeks when i'm not to busy i effectively get paid hundreds of dollars to play Unreal Tournament 2003 and 2004 and catch up on my DM paperwork.

 

[Rel]

Interesting thread. It's pretty difficult to say what my average day is because it varies wildly. I'm a self-employed videographer and some weeks I work every day (rarely) and some weeks (like this one) I have no jobs at all.

When I'm not out "in the field", I try to stay caught up on paperwork and billing so that requires some time each day. And I also spend some of my slack time cleaing up around the house and doing laundry and such. But there is plenty of leisure time built in too. It is a rare day when I'm going 100% (though I like those days because when I'm busy all day, I'm making mad lewt!).

The downside of course is that when I'm not working, I'm not getting paid. But then there's no guilt involved either, so that's a bonus.

 

[BOZ]

not that much today... when the cats are away, the mice will play.