Your most boring job?

[soolazy]

Sitting in online training and it's taken an hour for someone to read through the how to make an appointment procedure.

Please share your stories of extreme work boredom to save me from falling asleep.

Doing online training courses for my last academic job. One featured a vaguely dominatrixy woman in heels telling you how to lift things. (‘BEND YOUR KNEES, NOT YOUR BACK!’)

Another (on diversity) featured actors who clearly failed their RADA auditions standing by a photocopier in suits and saying, ‘Look at that new guy!’ — cut to BAME man in a suit holding a sheet of paper and looking like he was considering a new career — ‘He’s black!’

We have regular 'town halls' and updates from the board/exec team. Delivered via webex with anything up to 250 people sat listening while they blather on in corporate speak for an hour at a time. They somehow manage to talk non stop while actually saying nothing of substance and because there are so many people on the call there's not really the opportunity to ask questions or make it interactive.

I tend to open another browser window and shop or pull up the kindle reader website and read for a bit.

In a management training seminar (pre Covid), consisted of a man at the front talking at us for ages and ages. Then for an alternative he put on a video... of a man stood at the front of a lecture room talking... for another hour.

Every day I have to submit a report to the DFE called the daily setting status. How many kids in school, how many free school meals, how many of the kids in school have EHCP or a social worker, how many are self isolating for various reasons.
It literally makes me want to cry with boredom. It only takes 2 minutes, I pull the numbers directly off our database , I don't know why I hate it so much, but it it the driest, dullest thing and I despise it.

Not work related - but at home I hate putting away laundry. With a passion. I have no problem washing / drying. But sorting out the dried clothes and putting away I hate. I normally end up with a mountain of clothes that takes me hours to sort!

@thenewaveragebear1983

Every day I have to submit a report to the DFE called the daily setting status. How many kids in school, how many free school meals, how many of the kids in school have EHCP or a social worker, how many are self isolating for various reasons. It literally makes me want to cry with boredom. It only takes 2 minutes, I pull the numbers directly off our database , I don't know why I hate it so much, but it it the driest, dullest thing and I despise it.

Oh I sympathise, I've done this too!! Except all too often the electronic registers haven't updated to sims so I have to phone round classrooms to check who's in, especially the children with social workers. It's very tedious!

I once had a job directing people from building A to building B. All I had to do was stand there and tell people to walk up the road to a certain point, and turn right. All day. I cracked on day 3.

It was years ago now. Working in a factory. I was at a conveyor belt taking 4 bread rolls from a trolley and placing them on a piece of cardboard, over and over and over! I stuck out the first day and never went back!

This week, I had to sit through an hour long training session on climate change. It is not remotely relevant to my job working in a bank. I left it running in the background and cracked on with my work.

I also started an admin apprenticeship role in the civil service a few years ago, after I'd been made redundant and struggled to find anything else. I photocopied and bound court documents together. The most exciting thing that happened was being allowed to tidy the stationary cupboard. When the photocopier broke, I was not allowed to call the engineer to get it fixed because I hadn't been trained to do that yet . I lasted 7 weeks.

Any training ever that involved IT systems. I don’t work in IT but did some programming and writing web pages for fun.

I’m quick so complete the training following the handouts in about an hour whereas the course would be a half day.

If there was a presentation and you had to do the handout at the same time I would just sit and fantasise about something else.

An entire day of shredding

Documentation audit

I was a PA to a senior member of staff at a university. They were making staff cut backs, so when the person I was PA to left they didn't replace her. This meant I was PA to...nobody. I had literally nothing to do. When I spoke up about it I was given really shit jobs like tidying the cupboard.

I used to skive off and go for huge walks during the day around the campus as there was just nothing to do at my desk. I finally found a new job and it was such a relief.

Factory job just after leaving school.

It was for one of those Xmas catalogue companies, they had some promotion where buyers had to take a stamp of a letter and put it on different paper.

Two Weeks of sticking a stamp on a piece of paper, but making sure it can be torn off.

After that I was allowed to stuff envelopes.

@riverrunner

Doing online training courses for my last academic job. One featured a vaguely dominatrixy woman in heels telling you how to lift things. (‘BEND YOUR KNEES, NOT YOUR BACK!’)

Another (on diversity) featured actors who clearly failed their RADA auditions standing by a photocopier in suits and saying, ‘Look at that new guy!’ — cut to BAME man in a suit holding a sheet of paper and looking like he was considering a new career — ‘He’s black!’

I passed the time in the mandatory online training last time I was made to do it by noting that every single time there was a white example, they were doing the right thing. But anyone else was doing the wrong thing. Every single time.

Even better it was equality and diversity training. 😂

Obviously I fed my observations back.

That wasn’t clear a white person example. Anyone else was in the wrong. Every time. Another colleague noticed it too.

I suggested that the company who provided it might invest in some unconscious bias training.

I attended a 2 hour mandatory lecture on how to wash my hands.

I had a job as a teenager that was to pull staples out of paper before passing them to someone else who put them in a scanner.

Sat for an hour listening to someone talk about health & safety in the office - don't get me wrong, its an important topic, but it was so boring & much of it was common sense 'Do not lift heavy boxes' 'Do not run in the office with hot drinks'
Complete with diagrams.

Once worked for a food distributor one summer. Supermarkets would phone up and order pallets/boxes of eg Hellman’s. I would fill in an order slip and every 2 hours would walk them to another office.
Lasted 2 weeks. I’ve done other pretty boring jobs and actually my current career has unbelievable boring times. Between full on stress/exhilaration etc.

I did a temp holiday job as a student folding gas bills and putting them in envelopes with the leaflets that everyone puts straight in the recycling. All because some f*ckw!t had changed the layout of the bills so they no longer fitted on one page and the machine that normally automatically folded and envelope stuffed wasn't clever enough to know which pages went together. About 5 of us sat in this previously disused office with the radio on and hoped we folded quicker than the printer printed so we could go home early. The paper cuts and dry hands were unreal!

Many years ago I had a summer job as a lifeguard, which involved sitting in a chair for hours at a time watching the pool in case anyone got into difficulties. No-one ever did. Once every hour I was allowed to walk around a bit, but NOT stop and chat to my friend who worked there at the same time. Did that for six long weeks.

Stacking biscuits in a supermarket when I was 16...I used to dream about them.

Also, I spent very many school holidays working for my Dad, who owned a small printing firm and often needed extra hands for print finishing: folding leaflets, stuffing envelopes etc..... by the thousand. Very dull work, but Dad paid well

@Dee1975

Not work related - but at home I hate putting away laundry. With a passion. I have no problem washing / drying. But sorting out the dried clothes and putting away I hate. I normally end up with a mountain of clothes that takes me hours to sort!

Ahh thats a shame, I find it very therapeutic.