All Play & No Work Makes For A Long Day

An interesting thought came to mind yesterday as I was sitting here at my desk at work, waiting for some actual work to do. What the hell did people do at work during lull times before the advent of the internet? I recently took a business analyst position in the company I’ve been working with for the last 9 years. I figured a career change of sorts would be good for me, as the position demanded a lot of new training & new roles/responsibilities for me. I figured I would be busy all day, with tickets coming in right & left, demanding my attention.

I was wrong. I’m lucky if I actually have 3 hours of work during most of my workdays. Sure, there are exceptions, but for the most part, I spend many hours of my day trying to look like I’m busy working. And this makes for long 9 hour days at the workplace.

There are a few college co-op students who work in my group, and they can usually keep themselves busy with schoolwork. Or getting together to bullshit about classes or extracurricular activities. Somehow, our manager doesn’t seem to mind this. However, my manager is usually extremely busy most of every day, so she can be away from the office for hours a day. As for me, well, I can only entertain myself on the internet for so long before it becomes a bore. Kicking my feet up on my desk & busting out a book would be far too obvious, I’m now taking advantage of the opportunity by allowing these moments to provide me time to get some thoughts down for the ‘ole blog.

Seriously, though—I would imagine that many are in the same boat as me. Maybe that’s part of the problem. We have way too many people being paid too much money to do less than a half day’s work during a full day’s shift. Don’t get me wrong—I’m not about to hand of my comfortable salary because of the principle here. It just amazes me that during my 9 years in Corporate America, I can say that a majority of the people who I have worked with were not keeping busy with work most days. After years of this, you get pretty good at looking busy, but it still sucks that the days drag.

I wonder if folks actually worked all day in the past. It seems there would have been far fewer technological distractions like cell phones, internet, instant messenger, electronic solitaire, Blackberry’s…what did these poor lackeys do when they had lull times in the past? Oh yeah….

They drank & smoked.