To do almost nothing at work

[TooInvested]

I finished uni a couple of years ago and am going back in September to do a further course relevant to the industry I want to work in. I have done an admin temp job for a year and a bit and just started a new one. In both, but especially the one I’ve just started, there seems to be almost nothing for me to do-the first role was office based so I helped other colleagues and managed to find just about enough stuff to do to fill the time, but I did spend quite a lot of time pretending to look busy. I told my boss regularly I could do with more work and he would give me a task that would take maybe 30 mins. I didn’t want to mention I wasn’t busy too much though so I didn’t lose the job. When I started wfh due to covid I did less and less and spent a lot of time watching tv with my laptop.
The job I’ve just started is a mix of office and home work and I honestly don’t know why they’ve hired me. I was in the office for the last 2 weeks and was fairly busy but I’m fairly sure I completed the task they hired me to do which was supposed to take at least 3 months. It seems my job now is just to email 3 people occasionally to remind them to do part of their job/fill in some forms that I can’t fill in. I’ve been working from home this week and have done embarrassingly little-but there seems to be almost nothing for me to do. I’ve messaged my manager and another colleague saying “I’m doing this at the moment and nearly done is there anything else you’d like me to do” and they either haven’t replied or have told me to do something that they must know takes about 10 mins. I have to go into the office for the rest of the week and I have no clue what I’ll do-I’m saving a small task I could do today so I can do it there slowly and look busy. I’m sat in my garden in the lovely sun now and feel quite guilty-but also isn’t it my manager’s responsibility to give me work to do (especially if I specifically ask for more work) and to check I’m being productive? I’m not interested in this industry and I doubt I’ll need a reference from them and am leaving in August-I wouldn’t mind that much if the contract was cut short as I’m just here for some extra money. So is it unreasonable to avoid mentioning to them how little I have to do and coast along till August? I would actually prefer to be busier but I’m worried if I keep pointing out that there’s not much to do they’ll just get rid of me.
Since I’ve found both temp office jobs I’ve done to have a very light workload-I was wondering-is it normal for office juniors/admin people to have very little to do and is there actually tons of people in offices everywhere all pretending to be busy? (Genuine question and no offence meant to any people who do work in admin and have busy roles). At my last company, there seemed to be far too many admin people all not doing a great deal.

We live in a disgustingly nasty form of capitalism built by and for the very richest in society.

Bosses job is to screw you as much as possible, ideally by breaking the law and not getting caught. Your job is to try to maximize wages whilst minimizing the amount of work you do.

@TooInvested I think it is quite common (ahem, it's 1:45pm on Tuesday and here we all are!) As long as you're doing your work promptly and well, then it's their problem, not yours.

This thread is so interesting. I’m an nhs nurse and have transitioned from a manic busy to normal busy unit but still have 12 hours of work a day to do, but I remember having a placement in a discharge lounge as a student where we drank tea and had banter with the very few patients all day. I was unpaid but there were band 2 and band 5 nursing staff paid to be there. Enjoy it i reckon x

[quote MarisPiper92]@TooInvested I think it is quite common (ahem, it's 1:45pm on Tuesday and here we all are!) As long as you're doing your work promptly and well, then it's their problem, not yours.[/quote]
Hahaha very true mumsnet is always very active during working hours. Yet I saw another thread recently that was something like “what hours do you work” and a lot of people seemed to say they did 7-5 then a couple of hours in the evening with no time for lunch or to go to the toilet so some jobs must be busy!

I am 2 years into a job where I've probably worked at 30% capacity at the most.
And we have to say / appear busy otherwise we get given things to do which are far above our paygrade and technical knowledge.

it's absolutely soul destroying.

If any managers see this, do you suspect that some of your team do very little all day? If so, do you mind/do you try to give them more to do/do you ever consider making them redundant? It seems so ridiculous that people get paid a salary to do almost nothing for years

I had a holiday job like that once in a fruit canning factory. I was put on one end of a line and my job was to load empty cans on to the belt. I loaded on as many as I could and waited for them to move along to the canning bit. And waited, and waited, and waited. Eventually I got bored so followed the line through the factory to its other end where I expected to see colleagues sorting through boxes of strawberries. But there was no one there. The belt was empty.

So I went back to my pallets of shiny new cans.

It was a dull job, but the smell of strawberries put me off eating them for years, so I was paid back in kind by the Gods of the Universe who hate idle hands.

Many years ago I worked in the dark satanic mills of the Edinburgh life insurance industry. It was crap and I hated it. One of the jobs I got was on a new call centre which was vv busy. Management refused to dish out our shifts at the last minute, telling us that they wanted us all in from 8am - 8pm until they told us otherwise, due to demand. I don't recall us getting overtime or TOIL for this. Some people told them to stuff their job then and there, including some people with children. I was young and childless and only lived around the corner, but I really resented being treated in such a high-handed way, like my time didn't matter at all.

ANYWAY, I still remember a fat slug from senior management oiling his way around my pod of low-paid, stressed staff shortly after we opened. He caught my eye, and doubtless seeing the commingled fury and exhaustion therein, said "Aye well, it's better to be too busy than not busy enough!" Guys like him spent most of their time on the golf course.

DH and I have long escaped the hell of Auld Reekie and its smug, entitled stuffed-suit dickheads, but we still regularly remind each other: "It's better to be not busy enough than too busy!"

Don't feel guilty, OP, just enjoy yourself. You're doing nothing wrong, and hard work is generally its own reward, you don't get a medal!

My job used to be like this in Admin and as a PA, i used to be on top of all life admin, wfh and do the housework etc as well as exceeding in my daily work as it was done in good time. I used to drag stuff out to keep me busy or finish everything early and have the afternoons to myself.

I am in a management position now and I struggle to keep on top of everything - even when wfh the dishwasher doesnt get emptied until the afternoon or evening most of the time. Same company!

It’s weird how not having work can end up tiring you out more if you have to pretend to look busy.

I had a job where I kept asking for things to do but they didn’t have anything for me. I was supposed to be training to be an accountant and had to complete so many hours of work.

@TooInvested

If any managers see this, do you suspect that some of your team do very little all day? If so, do you mind/do you try to give them more to do/do you ever consider making them redundant? It seems so ridiculous that people get paid a salary to do almost nothing for years

I am not a manager, but in my experience line managers/middle managers generally just want a quiet life. They don't want to rock the boat and call attention to underperformance by their team, as it reflects badly on them and could threaten their own position. If someone is doing the job they are being paid to do and not skiving/taking the piss, why make a fuss? I actually know a management consultant-type guy who kept suggesting efficiences and cutbacks in his workplace, and ended up being laid off himself, how we laughed

I had a job once where I had to press a buzzer to let people into an office and check who they were. I was told to bring a book and surf the web by the person who hired me! I’ve no idea why they didn’t get a pass system or something. I was so bored I left after 2 weeks.
I would enjoy relaxing tbh. You’ve made them aware you don’t have enough work so it’s up to them

I've just finished a job like this WFH. As the months dragged on, the workload dropped dramatically, to the point that I literally had 15mins of work to every 2 weeks!!!

I had to keep checking my laptop, so used to take it outside whilst I'd garden, read a book, DIY etc.

Whilst at home, can you do things around the house? Repaint some rooms? Redecorate? Take up a hobby or do online courses? Coursera offer many free ones.

Whilst in the office, could you continue an online course, read a book, organise your emails into folders? Its only 2 more months, so I'd enjoy it whilst you can.

Enjoy it 🍷

My job has been like this for periods of time til my caseload finally creeped up and kept me busy. The first few months of my job were like this, then so were the first few months returning from mat leave. I just appreciate that my manager never wanted to throw me into the deep end and eased me in gradually both times. Once I had a proper caseload the work was properly busy again so it wasnt long term. In a temp job I'd just continue as you are, if you ask for work and you're not given any well what can you do. I sympathise with the 'given a task that takes 10 mins' thing, people always did that to me and I'd be thinking what now?!

I have long suspected that most office jobs are actually like this. I work for a well-known international non-profit and get paid a lot to do very, very little, despite asking for more to do. I think everyone just complains about being busy to avoid taking on too much work so they just get to enjoy the salary. Mind-numbingly boring though.

I can relate to this. Admin job at the council. I could do the work I was set in less than an hour, yet had to sit there pretending to look busy for 7.5 hours per day. I started off in a small office with 2 other admin workers. No one kept tabs on us, and I actually wrote a novel during the 3 years I had to sit there with no work to do!! I lost count of the number of different jobs I interviewed for and didn't get - but then how was I supposed to move up the ladder when the job I was in was gave me no valuable experience?!

After a restructure we got moved into a huge office with a new manager. Over the next 2 years, I repeatedly raised with him that I could take on more work and was thrown scraps here and there, which filled a few hours at most. Many colleagues made noise about how "busy" they were. I frequently offered to help but everyone was protective of their workloads. I came to the conclusion that either a) they were hugely inefficient or b) they had very little to do either but were afraid of making themselves look dispensible in light of looming redundancies.

By this point the job wasn't just unfulfilling, it was soul-destroying. The new manager monitored the minutiae of our office movements and then tried to bring a disciplinary against me for personal use of the internet in work's time. I asked him how he expected me to use my time if he refused to give me enough work to fill the day?! He just couldn't comprehend that they were cause and effect of the same issue. I told him I was worth so much more, walked out of the office and never went back. I subsequently got signed off work, negotiated a voluntary redundancy payout with HR, and started a full-time Masters degree.

That was around 15 years ago. Since completing my Masters I've been self-employed, doing creative, fulfilling work that I love. I wouldn't change my job for the world, but bloody hell, I earn every penny of it and then some!

OP, I'm actually surprised that jobs like yours still exist. My understanding (in the public sector at least) was that cost-cutting exercises had got rid of most of these redundant roles.

I wouldn't say you're unreasonable to do almost nothing at work - it's not like you're actively avoiding tasks, or letting anyone down, is it? There's an end in sight, so use that time to learn a skill online, as long as you don't have a horrendous manager like mine breathing down your neck!

I had a job like this. I took over temping as someone was off sick with stress. It was working for the housing dept.
I don’t think they were off with stress because of anything other than the mind numbing repetition and boredom and nothing to do half the time.

It’s actually really stressful trying to look busy, I would prefer to be busy

Now I think this is what it’s like for my assistant, we are so dead atm. Usually we are manically busy then a bit quiet, but the quiet is nice to recover from the busy.

But currently we are dead. I don’t care if she spends all her time on the net.

Sometimes they know they won't have much work for the post holder but, they want them in place to keep the funding for the role or it may be taken out their budget

Yes. My Mum used to work for a City Council. If they didn't spend their allocated budget for the year, then the following year their budget would be reduced accordingly. This meant that near to the end of the financial year, they would burn through the remaining money just to get it spent - often on things not needed. It's madness, but I also kind of see what drove that behaviour.

I did temp jobs like this at one time. There was one - with American Express I think - where there was literally nothing for me to do. I realised I was only there to massage the ego of the boss who had to have his team of office people around him. I walked out mid-morning, saying I did not want to waste my time or theirs any longer.

Coast along. 💯

@TooInvested Hahaha very true mumsnet is always very active during working hours. Yet I saw another thread recently that was something like “what hours do you work” and a lot of people seemed to say they did 7-5 then a couple of hours in the evening with no time for lunch or to go to the toilet so some jobs must be busy!

Sounds like teachers! Quite a few of them on here!

@TooInvested

If any managers see this, do you suspect that some of your team do very little all day? If so, do you mind/do you try to give them more to do/do you ever consider making them redundant? It seems so ridiculous that people get paid a salary to do almost nothing for years

For me, it's important to have the flexible capacity to cope in the really busy times. So I know that sometimes people in my team don't have a lot to do, but that's OK because at other points in the year they'll be working flat out, and it's not the sort of job where you could just have short term contracts to cover periods of peak work. The only time I'd have a problem with a team member is if they were repeatedly refusing to take on tasks without being able to explain what they were doing instead.

@Bluedeblue
Yes that makes total sense. It’s so inefficient though.
You’ve got one dept struggling and desperate and another with a “temp administration” budget with too much money in it.

I definitely think local councils and civil service are the worst for this. And the other problem is, anyone with ambition or drive just wants to leave. So you end up with a bit of a less than enthusiastic bunch waiting for their half decent pension

@laurenlodge

I'd use the time to do some sort of online course or training or something for some of the time - language or computer skills or something. Would be brilliant to be getting paid for that!

That's what I was going to suggest too. Make use of the time to learn something new. You can drop out of the onscreen training or whatever at any time when some work comes your way, so it's win win.

I was once in a situation where a team was being wound down, and I found it soul destroying not having very much to do, while I waited to move on.