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.