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

[Tetsubo]

I work in a factory. At the moment completely alone. I work all the time I'm there other than breaks.

 

[Harmon]

You can’t sit down and cruise the Internet on a construction site unless you’re the boss, and I am not the boss.

Depends on the job- I have had jobs that were mind numbingly boring, standing around talking about bull stuff all day. That job I would say I worked an hour for every eight.

More typically its 20 min to the hour of mad dash, with 20 minutes of the hour being pushed to the limit of my endurance, and the last 20 being split with ciphering out the situation and traveling to collect materials.

Some jobs are just mad dash from 0700 to 1200, from 1230 to 1500 hrs, its pretty typical on those jobs to get only one break in the day (lunch).

I have heard people comment about how hardly construction workers work, but try to get one of those people on a job site and they can’t or won’t do it. Why? I would guess they see how hard we actually work and they don’t want to do it.

 

[Harmon]

I'd say 1/2-1 hour out of 8 hours is actual work on an average day. The project I work in I take on average 10 calls a day with an average talk time of about 6 minutes. I love my job. Today I have been on the phone for a total of 22 minutes and have been here aprox. 6 hours. Today is a slower than normal day.

I would feel ashamed to accept a pay check for that amount of work. No offense intended, I just couldn't do it and feel good about my day.

 

[der_kluge]

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.

 

[Xath]

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.

...Can I get an application?

 

[Dagger75]

I'd say 60% of the time is actual work. 30% time I am goofing off and surfing the net.


In my old Helpdesk job I was on the third shift. Some WEEKS I would get ohh 10 calls for the whole week. Most calls lasted 20 mintes. So in a 40 hour week I would work about 3 hours. Some nights I got NO calls. That was 8 hours of pure net surfing. Actually we watched movies and played Starcraft most of the time.

 

[Xath]

I'd say 60% of the time is actual work. 30% time I am goofing off and surfing the net.

And 10% is spent doing what?

 

[Brother Shatterstone]

And 10% is spent doing what?

Bathroom brakes...

Depends for me, but anywhere from doing no work to days with no time for the Internet.

 

[der_kluge]

...Can I get an application?

Surprisingly, most people could do what I do. Passing the interview process is the hard part.

When I was a programmer at Wal-Mart, writing Visual Basic code, I used to joke that I could train 13 year old kids to do what I do. Well, that might be a stretch, but sometimes it amazes me.

 

[Tarrasque Wrangler]

I spend maybe a half-hour a day (broken up over 8 hours) corresponding with my co-worker buddy on emails. And since some of those are actually work-related topics, and we're at least doing it quietly unlike all the people around me who have no problem yakking at their desk for 10 or 15 minutes at a time, I don't feel too bad about it. I get more work done in my day than some of the people who work OT do.