Most people are bored at work - playing solitaire!

[HawkeyeNFO]

https://wtop.com/business-finance/2024/02/new-survey-finds-that-most-people-are-bored-at-work/

The people that run solitaire on your work PC have confirmed what everyone knows already!

 

[Texas Proud]

Yea, I did that... and then was on this board for a few years...

 

[euro]

Very sad! People don't seem to have much of a problem ripping off their employers. If you are bored, find a way to make a productive contribution or change jobs.

 

[GenXguy]

I never knew of anyone playing solitaire, but I had seen plenty of other time wasting at work with people messaging on their smart phones, watching youtube videos, and general web browsing unrelated to work. And there's still a lot of non-work chit chat going on in person.

For people working remotely (from home), they can get away with even more screwing around.

One place I used to work, there was this guy that never seemed to be accomplishing anything. He would always try to get someone else to take care of things so he could wash his hands of it. I asked his office mate how much that guy actually works during his 8 hour shift. And he said "15 minutes".

 

[38Chevy454]

In my younger days pre-internet, we just talked to co-workers "hanging around the water cooler". Later, the internet was my main break from working, mostly on web forums or just reading stuff. Never have really been a card player on computer or in-person.

 

[aaronc879]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work. Every job I have ever had I was over worked. I did mostly blue collar work. I guess you have to have a higher paying office work in order to not be over worked. Screwed up system where the hardest workers get paid the least. I would never complain about being paid to do nothing or very little. Sounds like a dream job. One I will never have.

 

[CaptTom]

I admit to playing solitaire and such while on long conference calls or when waiting for a task to finish or whatever. It gave me something to do without having to fully disengage with whatever was going on. I didn't watch videos or check forums like this unless I was on lunch break or otherwise had nothing productive to do.

That said, I and virtually all of my colleagues had "down time" in between the usual hectic tasks. We'd certainly do non-work-related stuff. On the other hand, there were times when a few minutes worth of problem-solving by us saved the company our annual salary or more, so I don't see it as a net negative for the company.

This was especially true toward the end there. I didn't take on a lot of new tasks, but I'd often be called on to troubleshoot something no-one else understood. Unfortunately my company wasn't keen on the idea of a "phased retirement" but I can see the value. One organization I work with did this for our retiring facilities manager, who'd been there for decades. It worked out great for all involved.

 

[Sunset]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work. Every job I have ever had I was over worked. I did mostly blue collar work. I guess you have to have a higher paying office work in order to not be over worked. Screwed up system where the hardest workers get paid the least. I would never complain about being paid to do nothing or very little. Sounds like a dream job. One I will never have.

Maybe you just had the wrong blue collar jobs... I often see a team of 3->5 city workers on some job, 3 are watching and chatting and 1 is doing the work while another guy waits to take his turn to work. If the team is only 3 guys, then 1 does the work while the other two stand around holding up their shovels..

I saw certain folks at my work slacking a lot it was the person , not the work that drove the slacking. Same guy would always be looking at his phone instead of working.

Once on a job, there was no work. I literally expressed my concern to another person about having no work. She said at that place it happens occasionally, just look busy find something to do, and wait, within a week we were all back to 50 hour weeks

 

[CardsFan]

One place I used to work, there was this guy that never seemed to be accomplishing anything. He would always try to get someone else to take care of things so he could wash his hands of it. I asked his office mate how much that guy actually works during his 8 hour shift. And he said "15 minutes".

Was his name Wally?

 

[GenXguy]

Was his name Wally?

Ha! No. I thought his supervisor could see he was a big slacker, but they never canned him. He ended up quitting for another job after about 5 years. I always wondered if he kept up the slacking there, also.

 

[MC Rider]

I mostly had work where if you did not produce, you did not get paid.
So I was only slacking when there was no work. Otherwise go go go!


Addendum.


The office carpet made for a good putting surface. BYO putter and golf ball.

 

[jollystomper]

I was never bored enough to play games at work. If I had a slow period, there was always some hardware/software technology that I was curious about that I would use the time for .

My job also for the most part was about meeting objectives, if you did it in less time than was allocated no one cared how you spent the time. There were some fun times being on a team sent to a client site to solve an issue, where we solved it in a day or two instead of a week. Much of that "extra" time was used as a "vacation" . As long as our management knew how to reach us, they were fine with it.

 

[rk911]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work...

Agree. Managing the 9-1-1 call center (1000+ calls per day) and central dispatch (27-police and fire departments, 55-dispatchers and line supervisors), meetings with chiefs, street supervisors, vendors, calls from attorneys and complaints from citizens kept me pretty busy. I used to long for the day when the 'In' box on my desk was empty. But when that did happen one day I was actually bored. Thankfully that didn't happen too often.

 

[MarieIG]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work. Every job I have ever had I was over worked. I did mostly blue collar work. I guess you have to have a higher paying office work in order to not be over worked. Screwed up system where the hardest workers get paid the least. I would never complain about being paid to do nothing or very little. Sounds like a dream job. One I will never have.

I don't think the receptionists at my old offices were being paid overly much, and they used to play computer games and read at their desks between answering phones. This was permitted.

No, I never paid computer games at work, and I did not pursue this website at work. I was there to work. The one exception I can think of was when I was working on the Saturday before Easter shortly after we were connected to the internet, and I wanted to check mass schedules. The computer system was blocked/ limited at that time - and I sent an e-mail to IT and my boss that I I had come in to do extra work, but since I could not make my plans for the next day - I would be going home. (I was salaried.) The restrictions were removed from my computer.

My blue collar husband did not understand why I worked so many hours since I was not paid "overtime."

 

[Sojourner]

I will admit to spending a fair amount of time doing personal stuff (web browsing, primarily) towards the end of my full-time career. I was growing more and more bored with the work I was responsible for and could easily accomplish it all in about 20 hours/week, so I spent the rest of my "work" time pursuing personal interests. I never played solitaire or any other game during those hours, though.

 

[threeonesix]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work. Every job I have ever had I was over worked. I did mostly blue collar work. I guess you have to have a higher paying office work in order to not be over worked. Screwed up system where the hardest workers get paid the least. I would never complain about being paid to do nothing or very little. Sounds like a dream job. One I will never have.

Blue collar employees always think white collar employees do very little work comparatively. Until they get themselves a white collar job and figure things out. It's not usually long before they wish they were back on the factory floor turning bolts for a living. By the hour most blue collar workers earn higher pay than white collar workers, who often do not have overtime pay offered to them.

 

[audreyh1]

Only on flights or lunch break.

 

[yakers]

Are we oing to label this the 'red stapler' thread?

 

[old medic]

Very sad! People don't seem to have much of a problem ripping off their employers. If you are bored, find a way to make a productive contribution or change jobs.

Are you kidding.... I got paid to sleep.... Of course, had 60 seconds to be fully awake and responding.

 

[Lisa99]

I'm an avid gamer on Steam. The game I'm playing has an online chat feature where you can told to fellow gamers playing on the same server.

I was shocked to find out that a large number of them "work from home" and play games while on the clock. One of them is a call center manager and must play virtually all of the based on how much he's in chat during his shift.

 

[pacergal]

I don't understand the concept of being bored at work. Every job I have ever had I was over worked. I did mostly blue collar work. I guess you have to have a higher paying office work in order to not be over worked. Screwed up system where the hardest workers get paid the least. I would never complain about being paid to do nothing or very little. Sounds like a dream job. One I will never have.

Agree, was never bored, working as an RN, you rarely sit down--those darn patients keep you on your toes!

 

[jollystomper]

I will add that, as a white collar worker, the nature of the job may also impact the opportunities for boredom. For example, in my career I was was almost never more than one step removed for working with Megacorp clients, both internal and external. The one stretch when I did not have client responsibilities, Such a large component of it was politics - which perhaps I found boring - that after a few years I ran screaming back into a position that worked with clients. Part of my pay depended on both the revenue and satisfaction generated by my work. Any time I hit a "slow" period, my focus tended to be on "what can I do/learn to help improve the bonuses/commissions I can earn?" More than a few times something I decided to learn on my own during down times, though outside of my scope of responsibility, I was able to leverage into helping me gain increased bonus/commission opportunities.


My online game skills are lacking because of that .

 

[SecondAttempt]

Thirty+ years ago I had a student job in a shop at my university. It was not really a desk job but not blue collar either. I had some "free" time so I sat down at a computer and was playing solitaire. A welder, who I otherwise got along great with, saw me doing that and really lit into me, yelling at me about how disrespectful it was to him who had to work hard all day to get his work done. It really opened my eyes!

I can't say I never slacked off at work during my career since then. But I can say I have made much more of an effort to stay busy even when I had little to do because I had finished my assigned work. In most of my career I had too much to do so this was hardly an issue. But it has started to come up more recently as I wind down. I try to stay busy in the office but slack off when I work from home. I pay attention and respond to emails and keep everything I need to up to date and to not impede others who need information from me. But frankly, with just a couple of months to go and most of my responsibilities already handed off, I can't imagine management would be surprised that my productivity has plummeted.

 

[EastWest Gal]

Are you kidding.... I got paid to sleep.... Of course, had 60 seconds to be fully awake and responding.

My life exactly. I was paid to spend the night at the hospital. But I also had lots of times when I was seriously overworked and it was scary.