to take my 'downtime' during work hours?

[wishfortime]

By 'downtime' I mean nice easy things, like online shopping, coffee breaks, and a bit of random internet surfing.

I work full time and have a 90 minute standing/rushed commute.

Mornings are a rush with early start and nursery drop off etc, My DH picks up DC from nursery between 6 and 6.30 pm, and i reach home about 7pm, spend an hour doing bath, bedtime routine with DC while my husband cooks, we eat at 8.30 then its cleaning kitchen, laundry and general housework, and getting sorted for next day while my DH catches up on work emails. Weekends are also quite jam packed as both our families live far away, so more often than not we either are travelling 300 miles (at least once/twice a month), or family/friends are staying with us.

So I don't get any 'free time' at home, hence i feel i need to take some 'down time' at work. My workload isn't always 100% capacity, but its the type of job where i need to be there and available or it impacts the team. Its paid well and often things kick off i do need to work late into the evening, and sometimes at weekends from home. (I don't get paid for this 'overtime', which is how i justify to myself that the downtime at quieter times during the day is ok).

Depends on the internet policy
I would be careful not to be in breach of it as I have seen that used as an excuse to get rid of people in a downturn

Trust me - if they wanted to get rid in a downturn (or for any other reason) they wouldn’t waste time trawling though my internet history to find an excuse. They would just pay me off.

OP- not read past the first few pages but I worked in a few different offices before I went self employed and in every single job/ office the bosses ALWAYS used their senior position to do personal stuff during work time. My last boss used to ‘work from home’ 3 days a week and when we’d call his mobile and get no answer, we’d ring his landline, his wife would pickup and say ‘oh he’s just popped to the family farm to help his poor 80 year old Dad with something’ or ‘oh he’s just out walking the dog’ etc etc.

All around me in said offices people were surfing the net, having 45 min convos about social subjects, on their phone all the time, taking 35 mins to make a cup of tea etc. I was included in this, some days I really had nothing to do, would offer my colleagues help and if they declined would surf the net etc.

It happens all the time, so long as your work is getting done I wouldn’t worry.

IMO if you are getting as much work done as you are expected to, and people think you are doing a good job, you can faff about on the internet as much as you like.

You've described your regular working day as 9:30 til 5:50, with an hour for lunch and then 1 extra hour faffing.

I expect plenty of people spend up to 1/7 of their working time chatting with coworkers and making coffee and asking who wants coffee and making unnecessary trips to the photocopier to walk past Steve who you're having a little flirtation with and going to that stationery cupboard because this diagram would look much better if you had a green pen and discussing where you're going to get lunch from and wondering whether Christmas sandwiches are really all that and even if they are should one eat them before December.

If you were a headhunter in professional services then surely you should know that people aren't paid to work certain hours, they are paid to do a job, and within limits it doesn't matter when as long as it gets done. Also, surely you are aware that it is in neither party's interest to stick to the letter of contracts - it is the office culture that is the bottom line. I can assure you that if I was on the phone to the dentist in the office one day or surfing Facebook after a long morning, my boss would not have batted an eyelid.

IMO if you are getting as much work done as you are expected to, and people think you are doing a good job, you can faff about on the internet as much as you like.

I've only read the first and last pages so apologies for duplication but I agree with this. I've had similar jobs (law) where "bum on seat" matters and leaving early is frowned upon, but as long as the work gets done no-one minds if you faff around reading the Fail Guardian all day.

I also massively agree with the (multiple) people who have said that if you treat your employees like adults who can make decisions, you get happier employees who do better work, and they'll be more happy to step up when there is something that needs doing urgently.

Daily two hour long breaks isn't normal

It isn't two hour long breakS, and it's not even one two-hour-long break. It's 2 hours in total, one of which is the lunch hour.

That other hour, spread over the 7 hours of work, could be two half-hours, or could be less than 10 minutes per hour.

The two hours are not sold ‘hour long’ breaks. It’s 15-20 minutes here and there. Adding up to a total of one to two hours across the day (no lunch break), so basically up to an hour unproductive time if you think I should take an hour lunch

Pengggwn - I have to say I don’t completely disagree with you. I had a feeling IWBU which is why I posted in the first place.

@Pengggwn 40% of most peoples working day (office workers) can be classed as downtime if they're doing their job efficiently.

I've known people who do fuck all 2 days but work like mad the other 3 to make sure their work is done for the week. As a manager I didn't give much of a toss because performance was where we wanted it, staff were happy and targets/deadlines were met.

A job doesn't have to be 8hrs of productivity every day. In an office environment that would make the entire workforce physically sick, run down and unhappy within only a few weeks.

To be fair, I agree with you that if the OP is posting then maybe it's an indication that she thinks actually it isn't ok - but that might be because she's just a conscientious person by nature! I agree that if you are only working 5 hours a day then that probably isn't quite on. But if you do a 12-hour day in the office, then clearly not all of that is going to be productive time - which is partly why I think long hours cultures are a bit of a joke in productivity terms.

"Saturday night so i worked 10pm-1.30am"

really? 3.5 hours?
my closest friend is a partner of a law firm. And she regularly chooses to work most nights till 1 am or 2am.

But why were you? As a finance manager?
It takes 2 minutes to check the current costs on any case/any client.

Doing YE is different. If this is happening regularly, then something is wrong.

I don't understand why you are doing so many extra hours.

Back to the original Opening Post.
yes, you do need downtime. During the week and at weekends. More fool you if you don't make this happen. Most people need to sit down, relax, read, knit, veg, watch some nonsense on tv like I'm a celeb etc. Why don't you do this?
I have loads. I insist of it. I can't cope, without it.

If no one is complaining, and you're not relying on others in the team to prop you up during your "downtime", then I can't see a problem with it. When it comes time to downsize the team, it may be more of a problem.

If the company has an issue with it, then someone should say something to you.

*Saturday night so i worked 10pm-1.30am"

really? 3.5 hours?*

Yes really, I wouldn’t lie. The partner wanted a fairly extensive report/spreadsheet on the costs of a case which involved pulling information from lots of different sources. It needs to be accurate and I wanted to give as much info as possible to avoid the follow up questions on Sunday. As we had guests staying.

I almost always took my lunch break. That was my actual break, I actually detested people taking the P and not doing their actual job and you are at genuine risk of getting in to trouble. I used to lock my office door, put my phone on msg and have a sleep in my lunch hour sometimes but that's fine it was my official break.

A woman where I used to work used to make a lot of private calls during work hours, this was another dept so I didn't know her. We were allowed to make calls within reason. They brought a case against her, the records showed huge amounts of time and she was basically sacked.

If your looking at the web they will be ale to track what sites you have visited. If you mess up big time at any point they can for sure use this as evidence. Someone again in another'dept was caught running a business from her desk, again sacked. She had all her business records on her pc.

Turns out that a 20 minute mumsnet break every hour is pretty close to the golden ratio for productivity!

www.themuse.com/advice/the-rule-of-52-and-17-its-random-but-it-ups-your-productivity

coconut, who on earth do you think you are talking to the OP like that? Her family visits are her business.

OP, Pengggwn is in a minority on this thread and I wouldn't – I don't – take her/his comments too much to heart. As long as you and your team function well and your employer is happy with your work then there is no issue.