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.

It’s obvious you can do courses, learn new skills. Do an Open Uni course. Listen to books. Just don’t waste this opportunity. Many many slog all day for minimum wages. Some can’t find any work. Think of this as a golden opportunity. If you’re doing nothing you will regret this in time.
I can’t actually believe your asking advice.
May your good luck continue.

(If you can read this tank a teacher)

You've never worked for a council have you? The one I worked for frowned on people being efficient and working all day. Ok it may have just been the office I was in.
I lasted three months before I was sick of watching them waste time.
Flexitime meant doing nothing after four including phone answering.
Disgraceful really.

Things were beginning to go that way when I left - restructures and changes to job titles meant that library staff were becoming more like customer service staff. At first I thought, it was maybe just one of the departments I worked in (or I worried I was lazy without realising) but I worked in several over 3 different council areas and in further education as a senior library assistant and it was all the same. Front facing library assistants had busy periods though and I was often busy when when I worked at this level too. The academic library I worked for was the worst, we had to be open over summer and literally no one came in. The big jobs saved for summer could be done in like week or 2 max as I wasn’t the only staff member in. One qualified librarian’s job was to compile a list of books/articles referenced in the media that week and email to all other staff in case they felt like reading them - helpful yes, essential - no, and probably an automatic delete for most people. Aside from a few line managing duties like holidays etc for 2 staff, this was their only duty, and answering a few emails. They would just sit there waiting for something to come in. A meeting about once a month to discuss staffing levels and what to display. They were on about 34k a year at the time. I’m sure there are busy librarians out there though but that wasn’t my experience.

They probably cant be bothered to train you in the more complicated stuff if you're a temp. In my job I'm always busy but its stuff I've had to take time to learn.

"She didn't know how to copy from one document to another....

SHES A FUCKING OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR."

I didn't know how to do copy and paste when I first started actually. I learnt on the job.
When did this lady start as a 'fucking' office administrator? Maybe it was typewriters when she started?
I can do mail merge and all the usual things now, but might choose to manually personalise each email if there's time and not much else to do.

I'm a council housing officer and have found my workload has doubled since covid. The first month or so working from home was slow and I spent a fair portion of it on my personal laptop playing games. Now the workload is unmanageable. Neighbour disputes are through the roof as everyone at home and finding people so much more intolerant to noise. Also chasing rent from people who just don't have the money. Bored kids terrorising the community too. I could send you some work to keep you busy :D

[quote Dyrne]@Gwenhwyfar but surely you could say that about the posters that say they’d “Rather be too busy than too quiet”. Being “too busy” is soul destroying as well - that feeling of never being quite good enough, lying awake at night thinking about all of the outstanding things you have left to do, that oppressive cloud of tasks hanging over your head, limiting career progression because you become known as that person that always takes ages to do anything… that’s demotivating as well because you can end up feeling not good enough for anything or anyone so end up stuck.

Sounds like what we need to do is create a network of contacts where we can funnel work from the overworked to the people sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Everyone’s a winner [/quote]
Well, yes, obviously the right amount of work is better than being too busy or not busy enough. That stands to reason.
I just wanted to let people know that having a quiet job is not the holiday they may think it is, obviously depending on how much supervision there is, whether you can go online, do other things, etc.
As I've mentioned, I wouldn't try 'funnelling work' to a person who's been in a quiet job for a while. It makes you slow down and get quite demotivated. As the saying goes 'if you want something done, ask a busy person'.

I had a job like this last year.

I was 21, freshly graduated and secured an admin office job. All of my colleagues were older than me and less proficient as they hated computers and insisted on writing everything down on paper then slowly upload it into the system.

They would regularly have to finish their tasks the next day and would feel stressed and overwhelmed. Whereas it would take me say an hour max to do ALL the tasks that they had also been set, because I had been using the same software all throughout my education

I was left sitting around like a lemon with nothing to do. Colleagues thought I wasn’t doing my job properly (other way around surely!) and I couldn’t even use my phone or read a book once I was done.

I was literally being paid to do nothing.

I’ve been in this position and it is demoralising, I began to think the person I was working for (NHS consultant) did not give me much to do because she thought I couldn’t do it! I left because of it.

My present job, still NHS is the opposite. I am so, so busy I can barely take a breath, let alone a lunch break!

I think the advice to do some online courses is a good one. You’ve told them you need more to do (as I did), so you can’t do anything else. You are leaving fairly soon. Good luck and try not to let affect your confidence.

I am on maternity leave at the moment but prior to being on maternity leave I was office administrator in a manufacturing factory there were days that I couldn't get all my jobs done I was that busy but I am also a safety health and environmental rep, site employee forum rep and fire warden (appointed by the staff who wanted me to represent them or appointed by my manager as a way to improve my skills). I occasionally when I first started I would get reprimanded for not completing all the tasks and I told them that if they want me to do the extra unpaid roles on top of my paid role then I need covering when I do the unpaid stuff. Obviously office administrator in manufacturing might be completely different to the industry you work in is so might have different requirements. When I first started the role I made a task list as a reference so that I could show the managers if they asked and eventually used it to show my stand in what was needed. If I ever leave the role I will pass on the task list to my successor. I would ask if there is a task list for your role then you can plan your work days to ensure that you are completion all tasks efficiently and effectively

Where can I get one of these jobs, please??

Mine's too busy.

@Gwenhwyfar

"She didn't know how to copy from one document to another....

SHES A FUCKING OFFICE ADMINISTRATOR."

I didn't know how to do copy and paste when I first started actually. I learnt on the job.
When did this lady start as a 'fucking' office administrator? Maybe it was typewriters when she started?
I can do mail merge and all the usual things now, but might choose to manually personalise each email if there's time and not much else to do.

Its irrelevant how she got the job or when she got the job. She was being paid to be an office administrator and was supposed to be able to do simple tasks like copy and paste from a database to a word document...

And presumably you leaned how to do it pretty quickly?

She never leaned how to do it in years.

She could eventually copy something within a document.

@BrilliantBetty

Where can I get one of these jobs, please??

Mine's too busy.

Same. I'm busy from 8-5:30/6 every day! I can't imagine a job where I'm not!

@CandyLeBonBon @BrilliantBetty hr and government positions in my experience

I am self-employed now but for many years I worked as a manager in a technical area alongside lots of customer service teams. We were all part of the same management team so we used to work together to help figure out logistics, share resources etc.

Quite often certain teams would be overloaded with work, rushed off their feet. The problem was that the workload was only short-term so no need to recruit permanent staff for it. The other problem was that the bulk of the work was complex stuff that you needed quite a lot of knowledge and experience to do (various aspects of pensions administration, for example).

Senior management would see the rising volume of outstanding work, shriek and fling a few temps their way. The temps could stay on top of the easy stuff, but there wasn't actually that much of that so didn't make a huge amount of difference. Senior management would then demand to know why work volumes weren't dropping dramatically when they've "been given the staff". Temps were bored and had practically nothing to do, managers were harassed trying to find them stuff to keep them occupied while support the permanent staff who were still working their asses off.

Rinse and repeat.

My temp office job is like this. I feel guilty because I'm doing very little, but there really isn't much to do. I'm only there for four hours a day and time does drag.

@ExhaustedFlamingo - you have hit the nail on the head with your description:

"Quite often certain teams would be overloaded with work, rushed off their feet. The problem was that the workload was only short-term so no need to recruit permanent staff for it. The other problem was that the bulk of the work was complex stuff that you needed quite a lot of knowledge and experience to do (various aspects of pensions administration, for example).

Senior management would see the rising volume of outstanding work, shriek and fling a few temps their way. The temps could stay on top of the easy stuff, but there wasn't actually that much of that so didn't make a huge amount of difference. Senior management would then demand to know why work volumes weren't dropping dramatically when they've "been given the staff". Temps were bored and had practically nothing to do, managers were harassed trying to find them stuff to keep them occupied while support the permanent staff who were still working their asses off.

Rinse and repeat"

I would kill for a job like this. In 25 years of work I have never had a job where I wasn’t completely overwhelmed by the expanding at the speed of light to do list.

@CynsterBitch can you get me a job at your place too? Sounds ace 🤣👍

Wish I could make easy money. I’m rushed off my feet at work & get paid peanuts. No two days are the same & I’m never bored, but I’m knackered by the end of the day 😕

@Tallulah1972

Wish I could make easy money. I’m rushed off my feet at work & get paid peanuts. No two days are the same & I’m never bored, but I’m knackered by the end of the day 😕

There’s a flip side to it though. Feeling unfulfilled and undervalued at work can lower your self esteem. We all have goals and ambitions, and being stuck doing nothing all day won’t get you any closer to your goals. You don’t gain relevant experience and you’ll probably get passed over for promotion

Seriously enjoy it ! I have spent the last 18 months working harder than I have ever worked in my life and had buckets loads of pressure and was told yesterday that they are reducing temp staff and I will be going. Seriously sunbathe if you can !

Christ, I need a job like one of these!!!!

DM me now with details!

This is not a drill

I too am rushed off my feet. We are never ever quite and I work in the public sector.