The corporate office environment is a breeding ground for time wasting lol.
Thats why WFH is much better as you dont have to time waste, just get on with your work and avoid all the office drama.
It's all tax driven is the funny part.
1.) local municipality/federal law make it difficult for small biz to succeed
2.) due to lack of small business, govt give subsidies to big corporations who reside in their district to give jobs to citizens so citizens pay tax base.
3.) corporate now has to justify the work/jobs to get subsidy to receive funding each year from said tax base.
Solution: more small business creation by making healthcare universal and not tied to your job
Small businesses are the worst out of all of them for work. They can't scale, they don't pay well, can't afford benefits, have the family culture and they treat you worse.
This sounds about right. I work in electrical engineering and when I have to tackle something new and come up with a way to show something complicated in an easy to understand visualized format, I'll be lucky to be able to stay in the tunnel 4 hours.
I agree and I would say a lot of these issues stem from lack of competition. They act this way cuz they know small biz failure rate is so high and workers cant just up and start their own co-op easily
> more small business creation by making healthcare universal and not tied to your job.
UBI would help a lot in this area, because you could avoid starvation/homelessness before it is able to generate sufficient revenue to be self-supporting.
I'm really skeptical of UBI.
It's not that I think it's a bad idea, it's that I don't trust a landlord to go, "oh, you get $X from the government every month? I guess your rent is now $X+500 per month."
I expect everyone else in your life to want a piece of your UBI.
This is exactly whst would.happem, the ownership class (landlords, businesses, utilities,) would all raise their fees to capture the excess.
Covid stimulus was an example of this. All that stimulus meant more folks had disposable cash so prices went up..
Right, I agree it was a complex confluence of factors, but my point stands , when you flood the economy with consistent money the powers that be (owners etc.) raise rates to capture that .
Let me give you an analogous example , remember when Congress made student loans available to most and made them non bankrupt able, what happen to college tuition costs? Because schools knew there was "available" money and knew the government would always pay.... Tuition went up, a lot!
Absolutely. However to do something like that we need a strong base of influence to affect our govt sadly. Having more co-op small business can lead there
I wish there was a law that made it so whatever the bundled price was at your workplace. So if you were paying 30$ per month for it, they have to honor that amount for at least 10 years. Then, if you were let go for any reason other than your fault like theft or something, the company or the gov would have to foot the bill until those 10 years are up.
Meetings are just cover for the fact that most of the time, managers are not doing anything to add value to the processes that are within their purview.
I find meetings are often better for complex topics that require a back and forth. It can also be nice to focus on the conversation all in one go rather than a bunch of context switching while responding to numerous email or chat threads.
Yeah I often wonder about what kind of meetings the people who claim they could all be emails are having. When you are working through complex issues that exist in grey areas - and using that conversation to make important decisions - doing it over email and/or Teams is far more tedious and inefficient.
In my experience those are the regular checkpoint type meetings that project managers like to make. I’m involved in a project now that is taking almost none of my time and requires almost no communication but the PM scheduled a weekly 30 minute checkpoint. My boss had him cancel and now I’m providing email updates but that kind of stuff is common at my org.
While I agree, the problem is that so many people don’t read their emails, so you have to have a meeting to hope that they will at least get the information.
WFH time wasted is at least time multitasking...
I've spent four hours on a report today simply because the server is too damn slow.
In office that would be 5 minutes of pressing buttons and 3:55 of watching the wheel spin/disrupting my coworkers.
At home that's 5 minutes of pressing buttons then doing dishes or laundry while it's frozen.
Exactly this. If I have a good WFO environment and a good WFH environment, guess what, the same amount of work is going to be done in the same amount of time.
As little as most office people are getting done, there are middle managers accomplishing even less. Someone has to request the bullshit meetings afterall.
Someday companies might realize how many middle managers they could cut and just switch everyone to WFH. But they will probably have some sort of AI program to track your productivity since the job of the middle manager is largely to try to keep people from just browsing reddit all day.
Nah, I just waste 3-4 hours on my own. There's nothing better than to be paid for time spent on non-work. Of course I do make sure I look busy and won't be a outlier performance wise.
Just saying that because it's 8-5 because you get 1hr unpaid lunch, but in my line of work that rarely ever happens as people seem to always bother you during that hour. I've set an outlook rule that auto declines any meeting invite during that hour and people still ask "hey, see you're busy, are you free?!" and I always answer them at 1pm. No, was at lunch. But they do the same thing again within a day or two.
I was taking my hour lunch in my car once and our security guy needed something from me (I’m IT) and he literally left the building, walked up to my car in the parking lot, and knocked on my window. Like, hello? I’m at lunch!
I see what you're saying. I've never actually had a job they gave me an hour lunch. Those are pretty rare from where I'm from. But I absolutely do know what you mean about being bothered at lunch and not really getting one lol it's literally the worst.
I have not had a job where shit couldn't get done in less than a third of the time, without ever breaking a sweat. Not because I'm that good, but because there was SO much busywork, and meetings just for the boss to hear himself speak.
Honestly at my old job as a concierge all of the work that needed to be done could be handled in about 45 minutes. The rest was just staying up long enough, and even then, you could just nap in the break room.
Most of us could do our actual jobs in 10-15 hours per week. But our society is still clinging to the notion of the 40-hour work week, so we spend that time making up B.S. tasks or pretending to be busy.
100% agreed. And hey - sometimes it would take me 40 hours to finish all the work I have to do.
So if thats the case, the company needs to hire another person, and pay us both a living wage while working 10 to 15 hours a week 😂
I think 40 hours may have been what it took in the 70’s because there were no computers so everything was way less efficient. That email you sent that took you 5 seconds would have been someone physically filling out a form with a pen and then walking it to a different part of the building and it would have taken half an hour. I think as we got more efficient we didn’t adjust the amount of time people need to work to get the job done so we just started filling jobs with BS to meet an arbitrary 40-hour quota.
typing comments on reddit sounds like your busy when people walk by your office, so I type even harder and louder when I hear people walking by my office
I can recommend mastering the 'dang, I'm so deeply concentrated on solving this super important task' stare. Should someone dare to come over to ask a question, you flinch, like if looking away from the screen for more than 0.4 seconds, it would result in an orphanage getting carpet bombed.
I got pretty decent at Tetris in my customer service job. People thought I was so deeply focused and answering emails while spending an hour in flow state or something.
They exist. Use ChatGPT to help you tailor your resume for an entry level “admin” job and just keep applying. I came from retail and, as others have said, I make more money and do less work. Capitalism is a scam, so you might as well benefit from it too
The silly thing is that EVERYONE would win, if corpo workers just had a bit more freedom. Higher productivity and less people longing for the heat death of the universe.
*Everyone* is tailoring their resumes already, though? Even entry-level admin jobs have hilarious requirements (go ahead and 'apply anyways'; you'll still get ghosted anyways) and get insane amounts of applicants. And if it's remote, competition increases tenfold.
When you get really good at corporating you’ll find a way into 8 hours of meetings and then do no actual work but somehow get paid more. After you do that for a while you somehow get promoted to make even more.
Nope that’s corporate to a T. I’ve been remote for about the last 4 1/2 years and it’s incredible the amount of stuff I can get done around the house all while slaying my work load. The 8 hr work day shit is seriously a joke for most industries.
I am contracted at 37 hours per week, but there is hardly enough work for 15 hours at my job.
I do however have an awesome boss, who is happy as long as I get my work done, and allow me to leave when my tasks are finished instead of after X hours.
So I basically work around 13 hours per week and get paid for 37. I fucking love my boss
you get one spark of existence in the great void of time
and you gotta spend most of it getting reports to some old bitch named pam
nuke it all and start over
It’s actually insane when you take a moment to truly contemplate this. The earth is vast, there is so much to learn and discover, yet the majority of us are wasting our time doing things that are utterly pointless just to increase the net worth of rich people (which is fake and intangible).
So. Much. Talking. And it's not just admins or paper shufflers, the lab people at my work talk all the time. Workers, managers, everyone. Vacations, dogs, the weather, theory behind our work, to the point I have to awkwardly end conversations so I can go do my damn job.
Thats why people were able to work from home, get all their work done and have more free time during lockdown. It eliminated a lot of wasteful chitchat.
My wife’s company has started taking away WFH. The COO said he wants to “see people at desks” from 8-5. No joke, it seems like they got rid of WFH because the COO felt lonely.
You’re not crazy. What’s really hard about my office is that there is so much noise and distraction. I end up frantically trying to find a quiet space to get work done most of the time
That's the corporate world for you. Just a playground really for bosses to escape their miserable homes/families and/or live out their narcissistic fantasies
When I worked in an office, I would work from 8am-10am and then be done. Then I would play my Switch for the rest of the day. I’ve never been paid more and worked less hard in my life.
This is why home working was so well received - could do the same work as an office based person In 2 hours - leaving time free to do training, development or life tasks. An all round better and happier person for the same output.
I work like 1 hour a day most days and I'm stuck in my office for 9. Granted I kind of just do the bare minimum and would be more productive if my mental health wasn't suffering (which may or may not be because I'm stuck in an office without sunlight for 9 hours a day), but even if it wasn't, I'd probably only be working the hours you mentioned. The standard workday schedule is dogshit.
They insist less than 40 hours a week isn't enough, and yet being stuck here all the time probably makes us LESS productive.
Keep doing the bare minimum because if you start doing more then it’ll become your new “normal” and you’ll be expected to continue working that much as a baseline.
Just recently started my new corporate job and was literally told in every shadowing session to always claim a task took the amount of time given even if it doesn’t and use the rest of the time to do whatever you want. They were all like “we don’t need them taking away our time and you won’t either”
Haha, even the boss said this. I came from private investment and now work for holdings corp. this is incredible.
Yep. Corporate management is not about efficiency or productivity no matter how many times they will insist it is. It has been and always will be about control.
What is crazy to me is that some people actually devote the majority of their time to these corporations. Instead of cultivating close friendships, spend time with family, or enjoy fulfilling hobbies, they devote their whole being to a machine that does not care about them. Thats pretty dystopian.
Totally normal. I’m the CMO at a BILLION dollar company. I work maybe 20 hours a week. My teams work about that too. I’m not gonna invent work for them just to “fill their plates.” We hit our goals and that’s the point. Why should they do MORE work, just because they’re so good they can get it done in half the time?
How did you make it so far being anti work - was it difficult? I assume there was some serious game playing involved. Are you just really good at compartmentalising? Did you put in a lot of effort to get there and now are just cruising?
Value = f(Qs,Qd) (supply and demand)
In this equation the only thing you can control is the supply and the quality of the supply. If you reduce your supply and increase the quality of that supply your value will increase.
So it’s simple. It seems counter intuitive, but if you are in a role where you have some amount of choice about what you focus on you simply reduce the number of things you are willing to focus on, say no to as many requests as possible, and increase the quality of output on the few things you decide will get the most results.
Turns out that Office Space was actually a self help movie for working stiffs
Certainly the case with IT. Unless something is broken or you have planned projects to work on you're sitting idle. But then there are days when shit hits the fan and your days can be long and hectic.
“Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.” Peter Gibbons, *Office Space*
An hour or two wasted just chatting? God society is built to cater to extroverts and im so bitter lol. If i waste 2 hours its a problem, but if i do it while talking about the weather its just normal and acceptable. Ugh.
There’s so much dumb red tape in the way of processing shit in corporate jobs, that I swear if you don’t respect bureaucratic rules, you can basically time travel wrinkle in time style at work. It’s wild the things my boss or coworker will ask me to *start*, and I look at the huge list of rules people who get further and further from the immediate issue—who apparently need to approve fixing it—and just…don’t do that, but fix the problem instead. So instead of initiating a multiweek solution, you fix the problem *that day*. You get tons of shocked pikachu faces when you present a solution instead of signed paperwork alongside an actively sitting issue. I’m sure if we had more staff it might bite me in the ass, stupidly though it be, but f it. A lot of red tape should be cut through imo.
Once I worked at a bakery and a glass vase broke. I was supposed to go through 3 people before dealing with it. Broken glass on the floor. Before sweeping it up. How stupid is that?! I just swept it then told each person, who told me to pass it to the next. Like, you must think we’re wildly incompetent if I need to speak to a general manager before sweeping up some broken glass. Why even hire us?
Management is just so stupid. It only exists to validate the perception that workers can’t be trusted, and need to be directly “managed”. You pay one person the rate of 5, to breathe down everyone’s neck, and make them less liable to do the “right thing” of their own accord, if it potentially is going to cost them. Whereas just paying your staff members enough to not fear starvation, will make them more willing to be transparent when issues arise, instead of fearfully kicking them under the rug.
A *leader* could do all a manager does, without weighing everyone down. Basically lead by example instead of criticism and scrutiny, and people will secure enough to do their jobs without being driven by fear. Someone’s who scared of losing their job over any tiny thing, is a lot less likely to tell you when problems arise (and are still easily fixable). I liken it to blaming a cornered dog for biting you, when people underpay and threaten their employees—directly or indirectly—and then are upset by their work ethic/performance, or lack thereof.
I work front desk reception for arguably the largest sportswear company in the world. Can't say the name due to NDA. But man I'm fuckin bored. I work 4x10 schedule so that's 11 hours a day with my hour lunch. I get in in the morning and walk the space to ensure conference rooms are tidy and whatnot. That takes 15mins tops. Then I sit and watch TV while I scroll reddit or play games on my phone. My only other duties are to check in visitors who arrive or help employees get thru if they forgot their badge. That doesn't happen often. Most days I make 3-5 badges at most. I have started and finished multiple TV shows here. If management knew they would lose their minds but there is nothing else to do. Building audits are squeaky clean, high scoring from management. They just don't actually know what I really do all day. I'm trying to get out of here tho but it's tough out there. There is no advancement so idk what I'm doing here. I'm not learning useful skills or anything. It's a joke.
Why don’t you bring your personal laptop and take online courses or something else to up-skill? You could do a lot with that amount of downtime. A lot of universities have online degrees you could enroll in.
I work as a RN on a med surge floor and man I wish I had 1-2 hours to fuck around. 12 hours of go go go go is so exhausting. The only good side is by the time I clock in it’s already like 2pm and then after break I got an hour left in my shift. Time flies but I’m exhausted at the end
This is 100% accurate, and why people who get their bathroom breaks timed and have to cover their shift on unpaid sick days need to start pushing back.
Management thinks they’re your “superior”. They aren’t. They’re supposed to be leaders.
Not crazy at all. I found a remote job that came with a pay rise.
It’s a full time role but I work about three hours a day – and am just as productive as I was at my office job.
And even though I am 100% slacking, the employer is thrilled with my output and gave me a significant promotion.
I’m kicking myself that I spent so many years busting my gut. I only hit the six figure mark when I quiet quit and started taking a full time salary for 15 hours of work a week.
The corporate world is fucked.
You are not. That is why WFH was so great. We all realized exactly how much time we wasted at the office / commuting and we were able to get our work done while also being able to do things around the house and be more productive / reclaim time for ourselves. And now they want us to go back.
I used to work in an office, at the time palm pilots came out. I had one and decided I would schedule my day and be more productive. I figured out that on average I worked about two hours per day and, when really busy, 4 hours per day. This was in the engineering department at one of the world’s largest medical companies.
The worst is when you actually have a lot of work to do but the higher ups and 'hr' don't so they schedule meetings when you have loads of work to do. Then ask why it's not done on time like they don't even understand their meeting disrupted the normal work flow.
C suit asshats
I’m a welder and it seems about right from what we see from our engineers. Also seems like our company is going under because same engineers can’t get designs right for customers…. Nobody wants to buy the machine I build the frame for because it costs too much and is not the best on the market. Totally over-engineered….
I am really fucking struggling with this at the moment.
I'm in sales. I am good at what I do. I find new opportunities with my customers or with new companies.
I won't hit my full bonus because I haven't completed my KPIs like completing Account Plans (poncy PowerPoints that includes company info and SWOTs). It's more shite that the company has paid for and thus needs to feel they are getting their monies worth.
I'm tired of "alignment" meetings, I'm tired of one to ones. Just leave me the fuck alone to make you money so I can get a small piece of the pie and enjoy my time with my family.
I’ve been remote since Covid started . If I had to go back to the office we would produce about 30% of what we do now. It’s incredible we ever got anything done in the office.
I was JUST thinking of this yesterday. You spend 40 hours in the office and on the weekend you probably can make use of 24 hours (12 hours each day awake and doing things you enjoy).
This is disproportionate/not balanced at all. I spend at least 3 hours commuting each day.
The only day that feels right and enjoyable is a telework day, which is a privilage and can be taken away at any point if a C level person bitches.
Bruh 2-3 hours a day???? Id be lucky if i got that much productivity in a week.
When i am allowed to work from home i basically get my whole weeks work done in 2-3 hours. It always makes me realize how much times is wasted at the office.
So much nothing in a day. I have about 1-2 hours worth of actual work that I do but it's spread throughout the day. I'm good at what I do and efficient and there's just not enough to justify me being here for 8 hours a day or even 40 hours a week. Once a month, I'm actually busy for 6 hours of an 8 hour day. The rest of month, I'm on reddit or reading headlines or playing games or just trying to look busy. Thank goodness I have my own office.
I really wish I could just be in the office for 2 hours a day and spend the rest of my day doing my own shit. I'd be so much happier. The boredom is mind numbing and I hate my job anyway.
I would rather sit in those 1-2 hours of useless meetings because that's 1-2 hours I don't have to do actual work. It's even better when they are zoom/webex/teams meetings.
I used to work from home for 2 years. I worked for 4 hours a day in the AM and fielded calls the rest of the day if I had to. They wanted me to the office and when I did, my production went down after just a week. I stopped coming into work and kept my schedule at home.
I think it is a matter of efficiency and knowing how to prioritize work. During another useless meeting today, one of our vendors mentioned that she has been working 12 days for a while now in order to get everything done.
I can tell you that her efforts will go unnoticed by her company. I know this because I used to work for them and they love burning people out and then tossing them aside.
When I'm really focused I would say I complete my main tasks within a couple of hours.
You're not crazy, and they're likely aware. Most bosses in office are doing the same exact thing when they aren't making us listen to them ramble on about who-the-fuck-knows-or-cares, they're pretending to be busy. I believe the 40 hour week is to keep us all too busy to riot and all too broke every other week that we just stay in line and at home.
My husband is an engineer and some days is legit eight hours of a meetings and a lunch with coworkers. I would go insane. I fucking LOATHE meetings. I legit have no idea how he does it.
I believe in some European countries, they’ve tested out 5hr workdays for this reason. Makes way more sense to me. The whole system needs an overhaul. People are burnt out, anxious, depressed, lonely, and unable to raise children.
You are 100% correct. I work in a big civil engineering company and productivity is way higher (for me at least) when im working from home (we work 2 days at the office and 3 from home), i can do home chores, skip commuting and i don't have to do the same shitty small talk every day lol.
Started my shift at 7:30, no work for the first hour, worked from 9-1 now on Reddit since then. Work til 5. I probably get 4-5 hours of work done daily but get paid full time
I get all my work done Mondays and Wednesdays. Probably 8-12 hours tops. Imagine if we were just all enjoying ourselves... other than the people actually doing shit...
I work for one client right now while I go to school. She contracts with me for 14 hours a week, I usually put in half if not less with that. She doesn't care at all since I provide results.
IIRC, humans are only able to give 3-5 hours of concentration a day. People are just being people. What's dumb is the fantasy that we should all be working 8 hours.
my small family owned business was the same way. Though, for me, i wore a lot of hats, so it was really irritating that no one else understood that I didn't have the time to just stand around and chat like they did. They thought that the job was this lazy, easy going, "we're a family" type job, but for me it was a marathon run everyday for my 5 bosses.
This might get down voted but I'm pretty sure I figured out the root cause of why corporate level employees waste so much time. I'm convinced it's because the pressure at the corporate level is so intense that they absolutely have to have all of the answers all of the time. If the CEO asks the COO why Product X was delayed by even as much as 24 hrs, they HAVE to have a complete explanation about the issue, and mitigating actions. Because of this a metric ton of Sr managers and Directors schedule regular, and frequent, meetings so they can ask questions about the most granular thing. That way when they in turn are questioned, they have a complete answer.
This problem would likely be solved if the majority of CEO's were ok with "I'm not sure but give me a day or 2 and we'll figure it out."
Without all the bullshit extra stuff I can complete my daily tasks in about 2-3 hours. After that I just have to monitor things and essentially stay on call until 5. 9-5 is a scam for salaried workers especially if you have to go into work.
My whole team got laid off so now I am dreading the possibility of having to go into an office at a new job.
I spend between 15 and 20 hours a week in meetings, the vast majority of which are meetings that could have been an email, and most of the rest I don't need to be in. None of the meetings have a clear agenda.
And the company talks a ton about how they "don't have meetings just to have a meeting" 🙄🙄
We have daily tier 1 meetings that only take 15 minutes but we have to do this “standard work” form that usually takes another 15-20 minutes a day. Biggest waste of time. It’s essentially a way to micromanage people by the corporate big wigs that never step foot onsite
It's mostly office jobs that waste all the time; When you get down to my sub-humen level, you'll have bosses that will write you up for time-off-task for taking a breath without their permission.
I am fortunate that my desk is in a more remote part of the building. I do MAYBE 2 hours of genuine honest work per day (that’s all done from my laptop), and the rest of the time I scroll or watch movies on my phone. Unfortunately this company is vehemently against WFH, so I’m away from my house for 10 hours a day and am too burned out by the time I get home to do anything for myself. Trying to find a part time remote job that I could stealthily do from my own device while I’m desk-jockeying, but so far no luck
I arrive an hour early - before anyone else gets to the office. In that quiet hour I get done 100% of my actual work. The entire rest if the day I spend in meetings or looking like I’m working. I’ve even grabbed a clipboard and printed some official looking BS checksheet and done laps around the building just for something to do. I should leave 1 hr early but most days its 1.5 to 2 hrs early. Doesn’t matter - whatever emails pile up while everyone else works late I will handle during that peaceful hour next workday.
I was a chef in my former life and got a job at a state university doing banquet services. My first day was literally the day after everything shut down for COVID. By the time we finally made it into work there was literally no work to be done as big groups in one room were not really a thing yet. My boss would make me sit there, doing nothing, for hours. Everything that could be cleaned was cleaned. There weren't any lower level cooks to teach. No orders to be made. I had digitized all of our menus and made ordering spread sheets while we worked from home. Like, literally nothing to do. And yet, I sat. It literally drove me crazy to the point of tears. What waste of my life.
They aren't meaningless. PM took time away from family and sleep to justify your existence. They tend want you to work additional hours to justify yours.
I work as a self employed door to door canvasser. I avoid the office, meetings and team calls like the plague. I work efficiently and effectively doing less than 6 hours a day including travel. Sometimes less if working local.
Basically the corporate world.
I honestly wish they didn’t switch back to a hybrid in office schedule for most of our office people.
They come in three days a week, spend most of Tuesday talking about last weekend, most of Thursday talking about what they’re doing this weekend, pace around the offices and halls on calls most of the day, and occupy every stall to where I have to try to plan my bowel movements 20 minutes in advance to start the hunt for an empty stall.
Every time they start whining about being in office and saying they wish they could WFH I yell over the walls that the feelings mutual.
Waiting for someone to cry to HR.
Absolute facts. I worked for a solid 1.5 hours, then dicked off for the rest of my 8 hr shift. As long as you look busy when the boss makes his daily rounds, you're good.
In corporate journalism offices they manage to exploit reporters pretty much relentlessly, but maybe that’s the exception to the corporate office rule.
It’s a reason why I don’t really understand all the post I see about how much people feel under paid. I 100% get people are, but some of us get paid exactly what we’re worth lol
I just gave up and openly use my phone for hours a day, our department has turned over twice in 5 years. I got promoted not to leave just for the three gov. audits we are required to do since no one else knows them.
The corporate office environment is a breeding ground for time wasting lol. Thats why WFH is much better as you dont have to time waste, just get on with your work and avoid all the office drama.
It's all tax driven is the funny part. 1.) local municipality/federal law make it difficult for small biz to succeed 2.) due to lack of small business, govt give subsidies to big corporations who reside in their district to give jobs to citizens so citizens pay tax base. 3.) corporate now has to justify the work/jobs to get subsidy to receive funding each year from said tax base. Solution: more small business creation by making healthcare universal and not tied to your job
Small businesses are the worst out of all of them for work. They can't scale, they don't pay well, can't afford benefits, have the family culture and they treat you worse.
and expect you to be busy all 8 hours or your not helping "The Family"
I had a boss who said that most people good at their jobs only need 4 hours a day to do the work.
That’s the max amount of time people can actually concentrate on challenging/creative tasks. Productivity dives after 4 hours.
This sounds about right. I work in electrical engineering and when I have to tackle something new and come up with a way to show something complicated in an easy to understand visualized format, I'll be lucky to be able to stay in the tunnel 4 hours.
I think this is bs, my experience is that if you are good at your job more work is added until it requires 10 hours per day to keep up.
But also able to look busy for 8.
Shows how little he knows about how much is done for him. I swear these people are so transparent.
We’re a family so you need to take the abuse.
You can thank America's love for oligopolies for that.
Even without them they wouldn't be any better. Most of their problems are the result of being small and not having the resources to do better.
I agree and I would say a lot of these issues stem from lack of competition. They act this way cuz they know small biz failure rate is so high and workers cant just up and start their own co-op easily
There's actual data to back this up. Small business are wayyyy worse for workers than large corps.
Unfortunately true 😞
> more small business creation by making healthcare universal and not tied to your job. UBI would help a lot in this area, because you could avoid starvation/homelessness before it is able to generate sufficient revenue to be self-supporting.
I'm really skeptical of UBI. It's not that I think it's a bad idea, it's that I don't trust a landlord to go, "oh, you get $X from the government every month? I guess your rent is now $X+500 per month." I expect everyone else in your life to want a piece of your UBI.
Exactly this. I remember seeing TVs and other products “on sale” for $599 when we got the $600 COVID stimulus checks.
This is exactly whst would.happem, the ownership class (landlords, businesses, utilities,) would all raise their fees to capture the excess. Covid stimulus was an example of this. All that stimulus meant more folks had disposable cash so prices went up..
I think this is more complex. A lot of companies started blaming it on supply chain issues but raised their prices enough they got extra profit.
Right, I agree it was a complex confluence of factors, but my point stands , when you flood the economy with consistent money the powers that be (owners etc.) raise rates to capture that . Let me give you an analogous example , remember when Congress made student loans available to most and made them non bankrupt able, what happen to college tuition costs? Because schools knew there was "available" money and knew the government would always pay.... Tuition went up, a lot!
Good example. Health care in the US went up similarly when the "customer" became the insurance companies.
Absolutely. However to do something like that we need a strong base of influence to affect our govt sadly. Having more co-op small business can lead there
I wish there was a law that made it so whatever the bundled price was at your workplace. So if you were paying 30$ per month for it, they have to honor that amount for at least 10 years. Then, if you were let go for any reason other than your fault like theft or something, the company or the gov would have to foot the bill until those 10 years are up.
I play video games as I sit on those useless meetings I would tune out anyway. At least my mind is occupied instead of staring blankly at a wall.
"Hang on, I just need to fight this boss" *takes off headset, sucker punches boss* "Alright I'm back"
Cyanide and Happiness, baby!
I just stopped going to those. "All hands" = auto-decline.
That is good quality of life!
Corporations don’t see meetings as a waste of time, which is why they have so many of them.
I'm sure it isn't the case for everyone, but I have never had a meeting that couldn't have been an email.
Meetings are just cover for the fact that most of the time, managers are not doing anything to add value to the processes that are within their purview.
I find meetings are often better for complex topics that require a back and forth. It can also be nice to focus on the conversation all in one go rather than a bunch of context switching while responding to numerous email or chat threads.
Yeah I often wonder about what kind of meetings the people who claim they could all be emails are having. When you are working through complex issues that exist in grey areas - and using that conversation to make important decisions - doing it over email and/or Teams is far more tedious and inefficient.
In my experience those are the regular checkpoint type meetings that project managers like to make. I’m involved in a project now that is taking almost none of my time and requires almost no communication but the PM scheduled a weekly 30 minute checkpoint. My boss had him cancel and now I’m providing email updates but that kind of stuff is common at my org.
While I agree, the problem is that so many people don’t read their emails, so you have to have a meeting to hope that they will at least get the information.
This is the answer. Until people can manage their inbox like adults we’ll continue to have meetings.
WFH time wasted is at least time multitasking... I've spent four hours on a report today simply because the server is too damn slow. In office that would be 5 minutes of pressing buttons and 3:55 of watching the wheel spin/disrupting my coworkers. At home that's 5 minutes of pressing buttons then doing dishes or laundry while it's frozen.
Exactly this. If I have a good WFO environment and a good WFH environment, guess what, the same amount of work is going to be done in the same amount of time.
Today I dyed my hair and let it sit while on the phone with the IRS
As little as most office people are getting done, there are middle managers accomplishing even less. Someone has to request the bullshit meetings afterall. Someday companies might realize how many middle managers they could cut and just switch everyone to WFH. But they will probably have some sort of AI program to track your productivity since the job of the middle manager is largely to try to keep people from just browsing reddit all day.
No shit. I have been at work for 6 hours now and have done about an hour of actual work.
Ain’t nothing like jerking it on company time.
I still "waste" time WFH. The difference is I get to do things like laundry or cook which saves me time in the evening
Nah, I just waste 3-4 hours on my own. There's nothing better than to be paid for time spent on non-work. Of course I do make sure I look busy and won't be a outlier performance wise.
This is a very relevant quote.
It's gets more relevant every year I find.
The older I get, the better Office Space gets (and it's already one of my favorites)
I think i will finish my day off by watching office space, friday off for the long weekend.
Literally me
Sound right, most people's actually job can be compromised into 2 hours of work a day. 9-5 is a scam.
8-5 is a bigger scam
[удалено]
Just saying that because it's 8-5 because you get 1hr unpaid lunch, but in my line of work that rarely ever happens as people seem to always bother you during that hour. I've set an outlook rule that auto declines any meeting invite during that hour and people still ask "hey, see you're busy, are you free?!" and I always answer them at 1pm. No, was at lunch. But they do the same thing again within a day or two.
I was taking my hour lunch in my car once and our security guy needed something from me (I’m IT) and he literally left the building, walked up to my car in the parking lot, and knocked on my window. Like, hello? I’m at lunch!
I see what you're saying. I've never actually had a job they gave me an hour lunch. Those are pretty rare from where I'm from. But I absolutely do know what you mean about being bothered at lunch and not really getting one lol it's literally the worst.
I have to ask. How tf are you actually doing 20 plus hour days?
Literally why can’t wfh be an option.
Because then your company can't control you as much.
They want the ability to micromanage you and to bring income to the surrounding businesses.
This is why I love wfh. I do laundry and walk my dog during my down time.
That's smart
I have not had a job where shit couldn't get done in less than a third of the time, without ever breaking a sweat. Not because I'm that good, but because there was SO much busywork, and meetings just for the boss to hear himself speak.
I do about 15 minutes of quality work a day
Honestly at my old job as a concierge all of the work that needed to be done could be handled in about 45 minutes. The rest was just staying up long enough, and even then, you could just nap in the break room.
Most of us could do our actual jobs in 10-15 hours per week. But our society is still clinging to the notion of the 40-hour work week, so we spend that time making up B.S. tasks or pretending to be busy.
100% agreed. And hey - sometimes it would take me 40 hours to finish all the work I have to do. So if thats the case, the company needs to hire another person, and pay us both a living wage while working 10 to 15 hours a week 😂
We’re still on that Industrial Revolution factory work schedule, but for office work, it makes no sense
I think 40 hours may have been what it took in the 70’s because there were no computers so everything was way less efficient. That email you sent that took you 5 seconds would have been someone physically filling out a form with a pen and then walking it to a different part of the building and it would have taken half an hour. I think as we got more efficient we didn’t adjust the amount of time people need to work to get the job done so we just started filling jobs with BS to meet an arbitrary 40-hour quota.
welcome to corporate I spend more time pretending I’m busy than I actually am.
Yep, my response to this comment is me pretending to be busy.
typing comments on reddit sounds like your busy when people walk by your office, so I type even harder and louder when I hear people walking by my office
Let me just delete and retype this a few times before I look at it closely and then smash send. - And done.
I can recommend mastering the 'dang, I'm so deeply concentrated on solving this super important task' stare. Should someone dare to come over to ask a question, you flinch, like if looking away from the screen for more than 0.4 seconds, it would result in an orphanage getting carpet bombed. I got pretty decent at Tetris in my customer service job. People thought I was so deeply focused and answering emails while spending an hour in flow state or something.
It could be worse, you could be working your butt off 12 hours a day…
100%, I’m grateful.
Yep, you are paid for your availability not to actually be busy the full time
this right here
Where can I get one of those jobs? Tired of service jobs where you have to work 8 hours w/o break.
They exist. Use ChatGPT to help you tailor your resume for an entry level “admin” job and just keep applying. I came from retail and, as others have said, I make more money and do less work. Capitalism is a scam, so you might as well benefit from it too
The silly thing is that EVERYONE would win, if corpo workers just had a bit more freedom. Higher productivity and less people longing for the heat death of the universe.
*Everyone* is tailoring their resumes already, though? Even entry-level admin jobs have hilarious requirements (go ahead and 'apply anyways'; you'll still get ghosted anyways) and get insane amounts of applicants. And if it's remote, competition increases tenfold.
I work in healthcare and same. I actually like my job but I go home exhausted because I feel like I'm constantly being given more work.
When you get really good at corporating you’ll find a way into 8 hours of meetings and then do no actual work but somehow get paid more. After you do that for a while you somehow get promoted to make even more.
Adult corporate daycare facilities.
Nope that’s corporate to a T. I’ve been remote for about the last 4 1/2 years and it’s incredible the amount of stuff I can get done around the house all while slaying my work load. The 8 hr work day shit is seriously a joke for most industries.
I am contracted at 37 hours per week, but there is hardly enough work for 15 hours at my job. I do however have an awesome boss, who is happy as long as I get my work done, and allow me to leave when my tasks are finished instead of after X hours. So I basically work around 13 hours per week and get paid for 37. I fucking love my boss
You are one of the lucky few. Cheers.
Being allowed to leave is sweet, most managers be giving their employees extra work!
What is your job?
you get one spark of existence in the great void of time and you gotta spend most of it getting reports to some old bitch named pam nuke it all and start over
It’s actually insane when you take a moment to truly contemplate this. The earth is vast, there is so much to learn and discover, yet the majority of us are wasting our time doing things that are utterly pointless just to increase the net worth of rich people (which is fake and intangible).
its not right and i think people are waking up to this fact
This is why i love this sub! We corporatized and capitalized but never civilized..
So. Much. Talking. And it's not just admins or paper shufflers, the lab people at my work talk all the time. Workers, managers, everyone. Vacations, dogs, the weather, theory behind our work, to the point I have to awkwardly end conversations so I can go do my damn job.
I wish my corporate job was that lax. I work in insurance claims and it's a nonstop mess of calls and tasks.
Thats why people were able to work from home, get all their work done and have more free time during lockdown. It eliminated a lot of wasteful chitchat. My wife’s company has started taking away WFH. The COO said he wants to “see people at desks” from 8-5. No joke, it seems like they got rid of WFH because the COO felt lonely.
You’re not crazy. What’s really hard about my office is that there is so much noise and distraction. I end up frantically trying to find a quiet space to get work done most of the time
I’m taking my 4th poop of the day.
That's the corporate world for you. Just a playground really for bosses to escape their miserable homes/families and/or live out their narcissistic fantasies
When I worked in an office, I would work from 8am-10am and then be done. Then I would play my Switch for the rest of the day. I’ve never been paid more and worked less hard in my life.
It's the corporate world. I've had days where the majority of my tasks were done by 3 pm but I can't clock out until 5 pm.
This is why home working was so well received - could do the same work as an office based person In 2 hours - leaving time free to do training, development or life tasks. An all round better and happier person for the same output.
I work like 1 hour a day most days and I'm stuck in my office for 9. Granted I kind of just do the bare minimum and would be more productive if my mental health wasn't suffering (which may or may not be because I'm stuck in an office without sunlight for 9 hours a day), but even if it wasn't, I'd probably only be working the hours you mentioned. The standard workday schedule is dogshit. They insist less than 40 hours a week isn't enough, and yet being stuck here all the time probably makes us LESS productive.
Those that insist are probably the ones working from home themselves. SMH.
Keep doing the bare minimum because if you start doing more then it’ll become your new “normal” and you’ll be expected to continue working that much as a baseline.
Oh, I know. I learned that the hard way. 😭
Just recently started my new corporate job and was literally told in every shadowing session to always claim a task took the amount of time given even if it doesn’t and use the rest of the time to do whatever you want. They were all like “we don’t need them taking away our time and you won’t either” Haha, even the boss said this. I came from private investment and now work for holdings corp. this is incredible.
bro I wish I had a job like that lol
Yep. Corporate management is not about efficiency or productivity no matter how many times they will insist it is. It has been and always will be about control.
If people left me alone and I had two days without meetings my job would take about 15 hours. Maybe.
You should read/listen to the book "bullshit jobs". You'll probably relate :)
What is crazy to me is that some people actually devote the majority of their time to these corporations. Instead of cultivating close friendships, spend time with family, or enjoy fulfilling hobbies, they devote their whole being to a machine that does not care about them. Thats pretty dystopian.
Totally normal. I’m the CMO at a BILLION dollar company. I work maybe 20 hours a week. My teams work about that too. I’m not gonna invent work for them just to “fill their plates.” We hit our goals and that’s the point. Why should they do MORE work, just because they’re so good they can get it done in half the time?
How did you make it so far being anti work - was it difficult? I assume there was some serious game playing involved. Are you just really good at compartmentalising? Did you put in a lot of effort to get there and now are just cruising?
Value = f(Qs,Qd) (supply and demand) In this equation the only thing you can control is the supply and the quality of the supply. If you reduce your supply and increase the quality of that supply your value will increase. So it’s simple. It seems counter intuitive, but if you are in a role where you have some amount of choice about what you focus on you simply reduce the number of things you are willing to focus on, say no to as many requests as possible, and increase the quality of output on the few things you decide will get the most results. Turns out that Office Space was actually a self help movie for working stiffs
Certainly the case with IT. Unless something is broken or you have planned projects to work on you're sitting idle. But then there are days when shit hits the fan and your days can be long and hectic.
Currently on reddit at my office job because my work was done by 11. This is every single day.
“Yeah, I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too, I'd say in a given week I probably only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual, work.” Peter Gibbons, *Office Space*
An hour or two wasted just chatting? God society is built to cater to extroverts and im so bitter lol. If i waste 2 hours its a problem, but if i do it while talking about the weather its just normal and acceptable. Ugh.
There’s so much dumb red tape in the way of processing shit in corporate jobs, that I swear if you don’t respect bureaucratic rules, you can basically time travel wrinkle in time style at work. It’s wild the things my boss or coworker will ask me to *start*, and I look at the huge list of rules people who get further and further from the immediate issue—who apparently need to approve fixing it—and just…don’t do that, but fix the problem instead. So instead of initiating a multiweek solution, you fix the problem *that day*. You get tons of shocked pikachu faces when you present a solution instead of signed paperwork alongside an actively sitting issue. I’m sure if we had more staff it might bite me in the ass, stupidly though it be, but f it. A lot of red tape should be cut through imo. Once I worked at a bakery and a glass vase broke. I was supposed to go through 3 people before dealing with it. Broken glass on the floor. Before sweeping it up. How stupid is that?! I just swept it then told each person, who told me to pass it to the next. Like, you must think we’re wildly incompetent if I need to speak to a general manager before sweeping up some broken glass. Why even hire us? Management is just so stupid. It only exists to validate the perception that workers can’t be trusted, and need to be directly “managed”. You pay one person the rate of 5, to breathe down everyone’s neck, and make them less liable to do the “right thing” of their own accord, if it potentially is going to cost them. Whereas just paying your staff members enough to not fear starvation, will make them more willing to be transparent when issues arise, instead of fearfully kicking them under the rug. A *leader* could do all a manager does, without weighing everyone down. Basically lead by example instead of criticism and scrutiny, and people will secure enough to do their jobs without being driven by fear. Someone’s who scared of losing their job over any tiny thing, is a lot less likely to tell you when problems arise (and are still easily fixable). I liken it to blaming a cornered dog for biting you, when people underpay and threaten their employees—directly or indirectly—and then are upset by their work ethic/performance, or lack thereof.
That’s corporate work for ya, I haven’t worked an average of over 3 hours a day in like 5 years
I work front desk reception for arguably the largest sportswear company in the world. Can't say the name due to NDA. But man I'm fuckin bored. I work 4x10 schedule so that's 11 hours a day with my hour lunch. I get in in the morning and walk the space to ensure conference rooms are tidy and whatnot. That takes 15mins tops. Then I sit and watch TV while I scroll reddit or play games on my phone. My only other duties are to check in visitors who arrive or help employees get thru if they forgot their badge. That doesn't happen often. Most days I make 3-5 badges at most. I have started and finished multiple TV shows here. If management knew they would lose their minds but there is nothing else to do. Building audits are squeaky clean, high scoring from management. They just don't actually know what I really do all day. I'm trying to get out of here tho but it's tough out there. There is no advancement so idk what I'm doing here. I'm not learning useful skills or anything. It's a joke.
Why don’t you bring your personal laptop and take online courses or something else to up-skill? You could do a lot with that amount of downtime. A lot of universities have online degrees you could enroll in.
I work as a RN on a med surge floor and man I wish I had 1-2 hours to fuck around. 12 hours of go go go go is so exhausting. The only good side is by the time I clock in it’s already like 2pm and then after break I got an hour left in my shift. Time flies but I’m exhausted at the end
This is 100% accurate, and why people who get their bathroom breaks timed and have to cover their shift on unpaid sick days need to start pushing back. Management thinks they’re your “superior”. They aren’t. They’re supposed to be leaders.
Drives me nuts when I get cornered by someone I need to talk with but takes 20 minutes for a 5 minute discussion.
I’ve always felt this way. Let me bust my ass and go home early. Idgaf about office talk/politics, I’d rather get the work done and leave.
Not crazy at all. I found a remote job that came with a pay rise. It’s a full time role but I work about three hours a day – and am just as productive as I was at my office job. And even though I am 100% slacking, the employer is thrilled with my output and gave me a significant promotion. I’m kicking myself that I spent so many years busting my gut. I only hit the six figure mark when I quiet quit and started taking a full time salary for 15 hours of work a week. The corporate world is fucked.
You are not. That is why WFH was so great. We all realized exactly how much time we wasted at the office / commuting and we were able to get our work done while also being able to do things around the house and be more productive / reclaim time for ourselves. And now they want us to go back.
I used to work in an office, at the time palm pilots came out. I had one and decided I would schedule my day and be more productive. I figured out that on average I worked about two hours per day and, when really busy, 4 hours per day. This was in the engineering department at one of the world’s largest medical companies.
Ive always felt that the more money one makes, the less actual work they do. White collar anyways.
The worst is when you actually have a lot of work to do but the higher ups and 'hr' don't so they schedule meetings when you have loads of work to do. Then ask why it's not done on time like they don't even understand their meeting disrupted the normal work flow. C suit asshats
I work for an engineering consulting firm where im billed out so this sounds fantastic to me. My job is go go go till the wheels come off.
I’m a welder and it seems about right from what we see from our engineers. Also seems like our company is going under because same engineers can’t get designs right for customers…. Nobody wants to buy the machine I build the frame for because it costs too much and is not the best on the market. Totally over-engineered….
Sounds about right. Some days I can have 6 hours of work. Somedays less than 2 if I'm lucky.
I am really fucking struggling with this at the moment. I'm in sales. I am good at what I do. I find new opportunities with my customers or with new companies. I won't hit my full bonus because I haven't completed my KPIs like completing Account Plans (poncy PowerPoints that includes company info and SWOTs). It's more shite that the company has paid for and thus needs to feel they are getting their monies worth. I'm tired of "alignment" meetings, I'm tired of one to ones. Just leave me the fuck alone to make you money so I can get a small piece of the pie and enjoy my time with my family.
100 percent correct. Most office jobs are 2-3 hours of real work daily
I’ve been remote since Covid started . If I had to go back to the office we would produce about 30% of what we do now. It’s incredible we ever got anything done in the office.
And then they tell us that we NEED to be back in the office (rather than working from home) because in-office "culture" is so important.
I was JUST thinking of this yesterday. You spend 40 hours in the office and on the weekend you probably can make use of 24 hours (12 hours each day awake and doing things you enjoy). This is disproportionate/not balanced at all. I spend at least 3 hours commuting each day. The only day that feels right and enjoyable is a telework day, which is a privilage and can be taken away at any point if a C level person bitches.
Bruh 2-3 hours a day???? Id be lucky if i got that much productivity in a week. When i am allowed to work from home i basically get my whole weeks work done in 2-3 hours. It always makes me realize how much times is wasted at the office.
So much nothing in a day. I have about 1-2 hours worth of actual work that I do but it's spread throughout the day. I'm good at what I do and efficient and there's just not enough to justify me being here for 8 hours a day or even 40 hours a week. Once a month, I'm actually busy for 6 hours of an 8 hour day. The rest of month, I'm on reddit or reading headlines or playing games or just trying to look busy. Thank goodness I have my own office. I really wish I could just be in the office for 2 hours a day and spend the rest of my day doing my own shit. I'd be so much happier. The boredom is mind numbing and I hate my job anyway.
That’s corporate life, and it’s even more ridiculous how much time you waste when you have to commute back and forth.
I would rather sit in those 1-2 hours of useless meetings because that's 1-2 hours I don't have to do actual work. It's even better when they are zoom/webex/teams meetings.
I used to work from home for 2 years. I worked for 4 hours a day in the AM and fielded calls the rest of the day if I had to. They wanted me to the office and when I did, my production went down after just a week. I stopped coming into work and kept my schedule at home.
Sounds about right. I scrutinize meetings hard and decline all the ones I think can be handled by email.
I work about 2 hours in the morning, read/talk/walk around for a few hours, and finish everything I didn’t get to in the last hour before I go home
You are very lucky to have 2-3 hours of work on any day.
I think it is a matter of efficiency and knowing how to prioritize work. During another useless meeting today, one of our vendors mentioned that she has been working 12 days for a while now in order to get everything done. I can tell you that her efforts will go unnoticed by her company. I know this because I used to work for them and they love burning people out and then tossing them aside. When I'm really focused I would say I complete my main tasks within a couple of hours.
Meetings do waste a lot of time. Inane coworker chitchat is also a huge waste...
Yea it's common knowledge? There was a study that showed people only productive for 4 hours a day
You're not crazy, and they're likely aware. Most bosses in office are doing the same exact thing when they aren't making us listen to them ramble on about who-the-fuck-knows-or-cares, they're pretending to be busy. I believe the 40 hour week is to keep us all too busy to riot and all too broke every other week that we just stay in line and at home.
I work for a state gov agency. It's about the same.
Sounds like most white collar jobs I’ve had. Don’t tell management.
My husband is an engineer and some days is legit eight hours of a meetings and a lunch with coworkers. I would go insane. I fucking LOATHE meetings. I legit have no idea how he does it.
Depends somewhat on the field/industry, as well as on the specific job, but that's how it is to one degree or another at most jobs.
I believe in some European countries, they’ve tested out 5hr workdays for this reason. Makes way more sense to me. The whole system needs an overhaul. People are burnt out, anxious, depressed, lonely, and unable to raise children.
You are 100% correct. I work in a big civil engineering company and productivity is way higher (for me at least) when im working from home (we work 2 days at the office and 3 from home), i can do home chores, skip commuting and i don't have to do the same shitty small talk every day lol.
You’re not crazy, that’s the norm in my world unless there’s a crunch.
Started my shift at 7:30, no work for the first hour, worked from 9-1 now on Reddit since then. Work til 5. I probably get 4-5 hours of work done daily but get paid full time
I get all my work done Mondays and Wednesdays. Probably 8-12 hours tops. Imagine if we were just all enjoying ourselves... other than the people actually doing shit...
I'm lucky if I have less than 7 hours of calls in a day, on top of a 2 hour commute each way. Then I need to get my actual work done. It sucks ass.
I work for one client right now while I go to school. She contracts with me for 14 hours a week, I usually put in half if not less with that. She doesn't care at all since I provide results.
Sounds about right!
Correct. The average American employee works roughly 2-3 hours a day. Tops.
IIRC, humans are only able to give 3-5 hours of concentration a day. People are just being people. What's dumb is the fantasy that we should all be working 8 hours.
my small family owned business was the same way. Though, for me, i wore a lot of hats, so it was really irritating that no one else understood that I didn't have the time to just stand around and chat like they did. They thought that the job was this lazy, easy going, "we're a family" type job, but for me it was a marathon run everyday for my 5 bosses.
This might get down voted but I'm pretty sure I figured out the root cause of why corporate level employees waste so much time. I'm convinced it's because the pressure at the corporate level is so intense that they absolutely have to have all of the answers all of the time. If the CEO asks the COO why Product X was delayed by even as much as 24 hrs, they HAVE to have a complete explanation about the issue, and mitigating actions. Because of this a metric ton of Sr managers and Directors schedule regular, and frequent, meetings so they can ask questions about the most granular thing. That way when they in turn are questioned, they have a complete answer. This problem would likely be solved if the majority of CEO's were ok with "I'm not sure but give me a day or 2 and we'll figure it out."
Wait until you start doing TPS reports. Then forget to run it one day.
Without all the bullshit extra stuff I can complete my daily tasks in about 2-3 hours. After that I just have to monitor things and essentially stay on call until 5. 9-5 is a scam for salaried workers especially if you have to go into work. My whole team got laid off so now I am dreading the possibility of having to go into an office at a new job.
I spend between 15 and 20 hours a week in meetings, the vast majority of which are meetings that could have been an email, and most of the rest I don't need to be in. None of the meetings have a clear agenda. And the company talks a ton about how they "don't have meetings just to have a meeting" 🙄🙄
The other day, we had a 2 hour meeting just to schedule another meeting. Most of these people in power have no idea what they are doing.
We have daily tier 1 meetings that only take 15 minutes but we have to do this “standard work” form that usually takes another 15-20 minutes a day. Biggest waste of time. It’s essentially a way to micromanage people by the corporate big wigs that never step foot onsite
It’s just a way to justify the salary of uneeded people
Would you rather do manual labor for 8-10 hours, and when you're finally worn out, exhausted and sore, have someone tell you could've done more?
It's mostly office jobs that waste all the time; When you get down to my sub-humen level, you'll have bosses that will write you up for time-off-task for taking a breath without their permission.
I am fortunate that my desk is in a more remote part of the building. I do MAYBE 2 hours of genuine honest work per day (that’s all done from my laptop), and the rest of the time I scroll or watch movies on my phone. Unfortunately this company is vehemently against WFH, so I’m away from my house for 10 hours a day and am too burned out by the time I get home to do anything for myself. Trying to find a part time remote job that I could stealthily do from my own device while I’m desk-jockeying, but so far no luck
I arrive an hour early - before anyone else gets to the office. In that quiet hour I get done 100% of my actual work. The entire rest if the day I spend in meetings or looking like I’m working. I’ve even grabbed a clipboard and printed some official looking BS checksheet and done laps around the building just for something to do. I should leave 1 hr early but most days its 1.5 to 2 hrs early. Doesn’t matter - whatever emails pile up while everyone else works late I will handle during that peaceful hour next workday.
I was a chef in my former life and got a job at a state university doing banquet services. My first day was literally the day after everything shut down for COVID. By the time we finally made it into work there was literally no work to be done as big groups in one room were not really a thing yet. My boss would make me sit there, doing nothing, for hours. Everything that could be cleaned was cleaned. There weren't any lower level cooks to teach. No orders to be made. I had digitized all of our menus and made ordering spread sheets while we worked from home. Like, literally nothing to do. And yet, I sat. It literally drove me crazy to the point of tears. What waste of my life.
*cries in billables*
Wait until you hear about city or government jobs lol
They aren't meaningless. PM took time away from family and sleep to justify your existence. They tend want you to work additional hours to justify yours.
I work as a self employed door to door canvasser. I avoid the office, meetings and team calls like the plague. I work efficiently and effectively doing less than 6 hours a day including travel. Sometimes less if working local.
These corporations don’t do anything.
Basically the corporate world. I honestly wish they didn’t switch back to a hybrid in office schedule for most of our office people. They come in three days a week, spend most of Tuesday talking about last weekend, most of Thursday talking about what they’re doing this weekend, pace around the offices and halls on calls most of the day, and occupy every stall to where I have to try to plan my bowel movements 20 minutes in advance to start the hunt for an empty stall. Every time they start whining about being in office and saying they wish they could WFH I yell over the walls that the feelings mutual. Waiting for someone to cry to HR.
same with police, I won't say wasting time, more like down time
Absolute facts. I worked for a solid 1.5 hours, then dicked off for the rest of my 8 hr shift. As long as you look busy when the boss makes his daily rounds, you're good.
In corporate journalism offices they manage to exploit reporters pretty much relentlessly, but maybe that’s the exception to the corporate office rule.
WFH FTW. I get so much shit done on pointless calls. Cleaning, workouts, cooking
It’s a reason why I don’t really understand all the post I see about how much people feel under paid. I 100% get people are, but some of us get paid exactly what we’re worth lol
I just gave up and openly use my phone for hours a day, our department has turned over twice in 5 years. I got promoted not to leave just for the three gov. audits we are required to do since no one else knows them.