If you want an easy Friday and get paid doing nothing work at a university!

[Whitesoftunderbelly]

Just had a conversation with a lady at the gym. She works at our local university in an admin position.
I said ‘thank god it’s Friday tomorrow’…

She laughed and said, ‘ah I won’t be doing much tomorrow - we aren’t allowed to book meetings on Fridays, we cannot make outgoing phone calls and are expected to only answer to any emails that pop up’. Friday is accepted in her department as an ‘admin day’ where you just finish up your tasks. She works from home every Friday and basically said that Fridays are ‘do fuck all’ day.

She gets most of her housework done, just waggling her mouse and checking her emails every now and again.

So it appears that’s what your kids student loans and our taxes are paying for folks!

Ok, go and get a job at a university if you think it’s so great. Go on. Do it, instead of doing ill informed, dog whistling, snark.

This seems like a great system. Why aren’t more jobs like this? Where there is a built in day to catch up with yourself. So many jobs seem to be understaffed. People burnt out. Struggling to keep a balance with work and family.

People have almost. Got used to competitive overwork and the only winners are the companies. I speak as a victim of “doing all the work” and I would love the place I work to build in a way of taking the pressure off us.

No, academics teach on Fridays as well.

I work as an administrator at a University and we have also designated Fridays as meeting free. I do a full time job in part time hours and will have to log on tomorrow to complete some tasks despite it being my non working day. This is massive over generalisation.

She is presumably required to produce a minimum number of publications from that sabbatical so I rather doubt she is doing nothing.

That’s the same for my husband in his many private sector roles! I think it’s pretty standard for lots of jobs especially when you’re higher up.
My dad was a university professor and often worked from home on a Friday way back in the 80s, doing prep and non-contact things. But his salary reflected this so 🤷‍♀️
I’m a teacher and I go home “early” on a Friday… ie after only 8 hours non stop work and not 10. Surely you can’t begrudge someone an easier Friday after a most likely manic week.

That would be apart from the research outputs without which she would have been sacked pretty quickly.

How do people get jobs like this? Why did I never have one? Burnt out at 50 🤦‍♀️

A visiting professor does not mean you get a ‘random holiday’. It means you go and do significant work at other institutions. It means she is very senior and very successful. She has clearly achieved a great deal in her field of study and has an international reputation. Professorships are incredibly hard to get so either she is downplaying her achievements to you, or you are downplaying them for some reason known only to yourself. You should be very proud of her.

Oh come on. Why bother. Truth is loads of places are now work from home Fri-Mon .

Oh come off it. You can't seriously believe one person's experience means all uni staff are slackers? A majority of them are overworked and underpaid. This reeks of jealousy on your part. I work in a completely different field and have a fully remote contract. My Fridays are also pretty quiet and I would probably also joke its a do fuck all Friday and just "waiting for emails" is what I tend to do that day. Doesn't mean I ignore work that has to be done. It gets done. It's just far more relaxed that every other frantic day.

I meant in this particular department at the university this admin works at.

What do you do for a living OP?

What an ignorant post.

Most university staff work considerably over their contracted hours, and it’s not just academics. I’m admin and work 50hrs a week min. There are some piss takers like in any industry but it’s extremely insulting to tar everyone with the same brush because you met one skiver

Not to mention that if she's on research leave, at the end of the year she's going to have to produce that research, and for it to be of the quality that the funding requires.

I don't know why that poster is downplaying her sister's role either, but I can guess.

I think their intention was to simply light the touch paper and walk away from this one!

I really don’t give a shit about what other people do at work, why do you care so much OP?

@namechanged221 Sounds like you're jealous of your sister to be honest. The sort of work she's doing is clearly beyond your comprehension.

That's not my experience of working at a university.
Last Friday I worked a 12 hour day and I worked an open day on Saturday morning. I was an international event so online so I guess you could say I was lazy as I worked it from home. Although I'll probably never get that time back.

It's not unusual for me to deliver online workshops in the middle of the night so that students at partner schools and universities in China, Korea and Taiwan can attend. I rarely get that time back either.

Oh and we're all waiting to see if we still have jobs as there's a round of compulsory redundancies at my institution.

But yeah, it's dead easy and we're all sat around doing nothing 🙄

I know someone who works at a university, and not only was she working full-time, she was also dealing with emails & urgent stuff at evenings and weekends. She was completely burnt out and on the verge of having to go off sick with stress, and in the end had to say enough was enough.

So it appears that’s what your kids student loans and our taxes are paying for folks!

Ha! If you think that's a poor show, I assume you don't know anyone in the police admin side of things - inbound call centres and the like? Your head would explode. The utter utter waste of time and resources is absolutely sickening.

you think what she saying is the whole truth ? I take it witn a pinch of salt
we suppse to have meeting free Friday in our place too - doesn't always happen but it is a quite day if am in the office I wl go for a nice tea or my boss orders in. i use it tk xkear my in box and do some things have been putting off as rheh take tune but it my work is done I finish early ( we have flexi time ) but there are Fridays have worked till 7 in eve. I work with people in countries across the world abd their Fridays are simular. useless you have actually experienced her job I take it with a pinch of salt

Oh Come On - first post, keyboard warrior and now sits back with the popcorn 😉

I work in a university. What "her department" is allegedly doing would not be tolerated in my university. Admin throughout the whole place is so understaffed that people are working flat out and very often work way more hours than they're paid for. People are often still in the office late in the evening. Stress is sky high. There are many meetings every day including Fridays.

My bet is that she's just a lazy woman with a lazy, useless manager. I bet this "policy" isn't official and they eventually get found out.

🤣 peak open day season is not a great time of year to take a pop at uni admin, OP…clearing coming up too and lots of my colleagues can’t take leave for a fair portion of August.

I’ve got loads to do tomorrow because I took a day’s annual leave today because my DD had a music exam. Hopefully you’re okay with us taking annual leave?