I read posts about people quitting jobs because they’re boring or there is not much to do and I don’t get it: what’s wrong with being paid for doing nothing or not much at all?
Examples I can think of: being paid to be present but only working 30 minutes to 2 hours every 8 hours, or a job where you have to work 5 minutes every 30 minutes.
What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone… and going home to enjoy your hobbies fully rested?
Am I missing something?
What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone
The jobs people complain about tend to penalize them for doing those things instead of pretending to be busy.
Exactly this. If I could occupy myself it would be great. Being paid to sit and stare at walls is a way to induce madness.
Truly I tell you, no matter what you were paid, you would scream to leave.
Exactly. I had a shitty call centre job and would attempt to read during downtime but would be told no.
I’m not one to take that so I would push back saying so you want me to sit here and possibly zone out, rather than remain alert by reading. They wanted the former.
The other reason we want to be busy is because times goes faster.
you can always do them in hiding
pretend you are writing some report
I used to have a job with a lot of downtime and if I wasn’t doing real work I had a permanent sense of anxiety and guilt because I knew there were people in the same building as me in manufacturing roles busting their asses for the same pay while I sat and watched YouTube videos, and it also made it seem like I wasn’t developing myself to move anywhere higher, just spinning my wheels making money.
That attitude did get me to ask for more work, but not more of the same work, new tasks, tasks that I then added to my resume and made me look much more appealing to jobs I later got instead.
Literally this for me. Also a lot of times I can get into a focus state with a problem for some hours, and with that time passes fast, compared to just doing nothing and faking being busy.
do these jobs you got later pay you better?
Technically they don’t pay me much more, though it is higher, but I did move from California to North Carolina, with a much lower cost of living and a much lower minimum wage. Comparatively in California I was living paycheck to paycheck, now I own a house.
More importantly the array of skills I could put on my resume was impressive to three or four different jobs I had afterward and showed that I had skills and versatility beyond my previous roles
It’s existentially dreadful.
Wasting your life commuting just to sit in a chair for 8 hours only to get paid barely enough to pay your bills for existing in the first place is a convoluted prison when you know that you have so much more potential, which again is also hindered by the same mechanisms that allowed you to turn on the TV and pretend that you lived today.
Sometimes you need to break out of the comfort zone and find another job or take some risks by stirring up trouble where you are. It usually pays off better to do so either way, instead of pretending that the comfortable job gives any kind of job security. There’s really no such thing as a stable job. You only work somewhere until you don’t.
A lack of responsibility and feeling like your work is pointless is pretty much the biggest drive of depression
There’s a big difference between like “working at a cash register with no customers, but you have to stand there looking attentive or management will yell at you” and “working from home, and I can read lemmy on downtime”
This is me. I want a different job because I’m always bored.
It feels meaningless. I’m pushing papers because someone needs papers pushed. Part of my job is actually incredibly useful, but 90% of it is it just me pretending to work by watching YouTube videos so my screen doesn’t go dark and I can make sure I’m not showing as Away in Teams.
It’s a government job too, so it’s unlikely I’ll be replaced by AI despite AI being perfect for replacing me and my colleagues.
I don’t know if you’re complaining but if you are, I don’t understand you. I want to be you.
earning money doing almost nothing is meaningless? You earn money for doing nothing! and you cannot be fired, so…
Yeah, but at that point it’s not your time. You’re essentially selling your life to someone else… and they’re not even using it.
You say you can spend your time writing poetry or reading books… but that doesn’t scratch an itch for everyone. Being stuck to a desk or other work station means your options are extremely limited. You can’t go out and work on your kit-car, or practice a golf swing, or practice monologues for a one person play… or many other things that require a little more activity than being stuck in a chair for nine hours allows.
Money can get you a lot of things in life… but as yet it can not give you time back in your life.
I’m still in the beginning of my programming career (maybe also the end, looking at how AI is going, lmao) and at my previous job I had fuckall to do. I spent nearly a year without a project, working basically 30 minutes a day. I quit mainly because I was afraid that when I change jobs I will have say 5 years experience on paper, but the knowledge for 1, because I’ve barely done anything.
Work isn’t always about money, you also want to learn stuff so you can make even more money in the future. You can’t really do that if you get paid to watch Youtube all day.
I had a job that was kind of like this. I spent pretty much all of my down time writing a web game that later got me a software job.
I wasn’t bored, though. I miss working on that thing.
This book speaks to it better than I can: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs/
Specifically take a look at
Chapter 3: Why Do Those in Bullshit Jobs Regularly Report Themselves Unhappy? (On Spiritual Violence, Part 1)
The problem is that I feel like the higher ups might some day look at who is bringing in money and who doesn’t and then think „Do we even need this guy?“. I feel useless. My previous job was very toxic about this stuff. They would punish me for not having any tasks even though it’s not my fault. Which is why I always make sure to tell people when I’m not busy and even suggest things I could do. Still, I get lots of downtime between projects in my current job. I kinda got used to it but it’s always nagging on me.
But bored? No. I always find activities to do. Play with my dog, do housework, read a book, play games, take a nap,… Even days with full downtime go by very fast. But I’m at home. It would be different if I had to be in the office and look busy all the time.
Companies are not stupid and will rarely ever pay you to do nothing, so if you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do at work and not being handed any new projects, they are probably thinking of letting you go and it’s probably time to look for a new job.
Guess it depends where you work. All my jobs, once I got used to the environment were incredibly easy to slack off at. All my reviews and feedback were always overwhelmingly positive. And I’ve usually been given a counter offer when I resign.
Time moves slower when I’m sitting around doing nothing. I’d rather get stuff done and see things getting built; it’s satisfying. If I’m sitting around with no projects it just seems like a waste of time, and I personally don’t like being inefficient.
Other guys? They love just shooting the shit.
I work nights with 2 other guys. One of them is cool and seems to be a bit introverted, but we’re both into sports so we’ll watch games the first few hours and chat intermittently. The other guy openly hates sports, but loves “shooting the shit”, which he understands to mean him going on a fringe political rant or into way too much detail over some random shit he saw on YouTube… Luckily work gave us headsets with ANC, so me and the cool guy just headset up once the games are over and live in silence on the slow nights
Context switching is the reason why. There’s “downtime” where I work at because of the times I work (night time / I believe its called a “graveyard” shift). However, its never nothing for the whole shift, its intermittent. So lets say I decided to play a game (or work on a personal project, or any other number of things) I’d have to get into the mindset of whatever I’m doing, then see that a ticket has come in, switch my mindset back, answer the ticket and perform the work required for the ticket… and then switch back again.
As @toomanypancackes said in their reply, I honestly just either want to go back to bed, or not have to worry about work and do my own thing (uninterrupted). Those aren’t options unfortunately, so I’m just left to be in that weird purgatory of “There’s not a lot of work to be done, but there’s some every so often… so I can’t completely go away”. I prefer it over it being absolutely slammed with tickets because that’s just exhausting.
Every so often I’ll put on a rerun of a show since it doesn’t matter if I “get into” the show or not, but actually doing something significant isn’t usually an option unless its actually dead during my hours.
Had some student jobs where I had lots of downtime, but was forbidden from doing anything other than sit there, under threat of being fired.
Everyone found ways to be on their phone, sneak in an ear bud, or read something, but I was out of the door as soon as I had found something else.
For me I feel like I’m going stagnant in my field. I need a new place with a more advanced environment.
There is anxiety associated with feeling like you’re not working as hard as you think you out should be.