Ever work at a position where you do absolutely nothing?

I work as a electrician on movie, commercial, music video and television sets. Literally as long as the generator(s) are running well I only work maybe 2 hours of a 12-16 hour day. But if there's a generator that goes down then that is when the shit hits the fan and everyone is looking at me to get it going again. With some productions burning up to $250k/hour it does get stressful sometimes. So what I usually do is test the generators at my work place before the job on my own time to make sure everything is good so I have some peace of mind, I have a generator go down probably 1% of the time.

Oh and before anybody asks, I rarely do porn shoots. Porn production companies are cheap and almost never need any big power to do their projects, I have met a ton of celebs though and have pictures of them but due to my non disclosure contract with the production companies I can not release any of the photos.... besides you wouldn't want to see my ugly face anyways....

First of all, I hate you fucking people.

But I can relate in one way. I had this funny image of "how to sleep at work" that I shared with a coworker. One of the bits was the classic "lay head on desk with arm dangling towards a pen dropped on the ground." As a joke I was demonstrating said method when my manager walked by and gasped "OH MY ARE YOU OKAY!?" I explained I was just joking with my cubemate and went back to my "network admin" job (glorified data entry) for $12/hour and never-ending workload. My favorite was how the image ended with "fuck it" and had the guy laid out under his desk. When the guy would come to work on our copier he'd lay behind the thing and I swear the dude was just napping back there.

The job was so boring that at any given time, you could look around and see two people drifting off to sleep and then jerking back awake and looking around in confusion. I made frequent trips to get water, coffee, anything to just get up and walk around a bit to stay awake. But the work was always there and our output was measured, however said output was absolutely meaningless because the slowest, most error prone worthless fucks there were never let go because we were all third party hires for some Indian fucks that pocketed half our salary. As the top performer I had to actually argue to get a one dollar raise - at the end of my first year they offered me a whole $50 bonus in lieu of a raise. Our department was so selective and trusted that the department that went behind us to check our work had three managers to our one and almost twice as many workers. lol?

The entire time I was there (2 years, the maximum the contract allowed, because that's how they keep full time employees with no benefits at slave wages) I was sending out resumes, thinking that I was just doing that trivial bullshit so I could get a real job. During school I was fed stories of people who made 60k to reset passwords. Well that ship sure as shit has sailed. Five years later I just gave up on IT entirely. The only entry level IT jobs around here in no way qualify you for the "ten years of experience, top secret clearance and bachelor's required" positions that actually make more than poverty wages. There's no ladder - there's the floor, and then there's people who were lucky enough to get in when things were good who have the experience to get the real jobs. Granted, this is true basically everywhere in the corporate world.

I wish the fuck I hadn't been such a basket case when I went to school the first time. Then maybe I could have put a story here about how I made 80k to sleep and play video games at work. But the truth is, the great Kreugen has never made more than $30k in any given year. Hell, I think the most money I made was working in a restaurant and putting together PCs to sell on the side. Back then the profit margin was absurd, especially if you put together the equivalent of a $5000 alienware for $1500 and sold it to Quake nerds.

I have absolutely nothing to do at work and haven't since I started here in March. The upper/executive management at this company is abysmally unqualified.

Anyone have a need for an integration systems software developer specializing in Microsoft BizTalk with almost 8 years experience in the field? I'll move, I hate the northeastern US anyway (way too damn expensive). I really don't want to leave a job so soon after starting but this place is going nowhere fast and doesn't have even the most basic teams set up that a software centric company should. We don't even have any QA staff here. In fact, there isn't a dedicated DBA either (though they are finally planning on bringing one in... 17 years after the company was started)

A lot of intellectual jobs in this thread. Those tend to be "hurry up and wait" kinds of work. You have a lot of downtime, and then something relatively critical that has to be done on a deadline. That describes my own job fairly accurately as well.

If I ever just need a moment to myself, it's easy to shut the office door and get some peace and quiet, or just take a long lunch.

I'm being forced by HR to take time off this month because I have too much banked vacation. I'm something like 70 hours over the cap, so Friday is basically my last day of the year. I do have an off-site meeting Monday, but once it ends at 3:30 I'm done til 2014. It's pretty sweet.

I've been at my current job for about 3 years and I rarely have anything to do.

I haven't done a single work-related function in about 2 weeks other than attend my team meetings. I work as a Reporting Analyst.

Noodleface_sl said:

I have two jobs. One, my part time college job at a supermarket (been there 12 years, before school lol) and an intern at my future job. The part time job is the worst. There's an abysmal amount of work and we are severely underpaid. The last year my work ethic has gone from 90% to -15%. I am actively breaking products, facilities here, walls, pipes, you name it. I've even resorted to pissing all over the bathroom - no idea why I do this... probably some repressed feelings. But when I do work, I put in such low effort. It shows too, people don't even talk to me anymore and always have mad faces when they have to talk to me. They hate me, but it's union and I'm leaving in 2 weeks.

My other job I try pretty hard, but they've been having me come in on Saturdays and literally no one is in the office. It's really hard to be motivated to do anything when not a soul is in the office.

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What the other guy said, major changes needed man. I would step back and ask yourself what makes you happy because you are in a bad place.

While I was not at your level of repressed whatever I did this recently and it really worked out.

I work like a dog.The days go by fast,I make good money,I am never bored,and I have never been laid off.Busy is good.I wouldn't last a week at a do nothing job.

Noodleface_sl said:

The part time job is the worst. There's an abysmal amount of work and we are severely underpaid. The last year my work ethic has gone from 90% to -15%. I am actively breaking products, facilities here, walls, pipes, you name it. I've even resorted to pissing all over the bathroom - no idea why I do this... probably some repressed feelings.

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I guess i won't tell you something you dont already know, but by pissing all over the bathroom you're fucking over some poor bastard who is even worse off than you. so please stop that. piss in the managers office if you want to fuck with the people responsible for your low wages.

on topic: right now i am mostly underutilized at work too. the last few weeks i've done perhaps an hour work per day, and as other people said, i am not even the laziest asshole in the office. and even though it sucks to do nothing at work i am reeeeally not motivated to put in more effort because my asshole coworkers get paid more than me and work even less.

Noodleface_sl said:

I have two jobs. One, my part time college job at a supermarket (been there 12 years, before school lol) and an intern at my future job. The part time job is the worst. There's an abysmal amount of work and we are severely underpaid. The last year my work ethic has gone from 90% to -15%. I am actively breaking products, facilities here, walls, pipes, you name it. I've even resorted to pissing all over the bathroom - no idea why I do this... probably some repressed feelings. But when I do work, I put in such low effort. It shows too, people don't even talk to me anymore and always have mad faces when they have to talk to me. They hate me, but it's union and I'm leaving in 2 weeks.

My other job I try pretty hard, but they've been having me come in on Saturdays and literally no one is in the office. It's really hard to be motivated to do anything when not a soul is in the office.

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I want you to hit me as hard as you can.

I've currently taken over the jobs of two other people in our department and basically automated/improved or delegated out their responsibilities to people in the field. I still don't have enough to do. My company refuses to be proactive about anything; all my projects are reactionary and there is plenty of hurry up and wait and then crazy stupid almost impossible deadlines. Month long projects I usually wait until the last week to finish because they don't take me that long.

The leadership bureaucracy here is unbelievable and none of the Vice Presidents will let you touch their departments without their permission, yet all they do is claim that we have no internal collaboration or communication. Meanwhile my job is to basically be an internal consultant here and I can only do anything when a VP or Director says some process or procedure needs to be changed/optimized. I'm the youngest Director by at least 20 years and everyone above me is so resistant to change it's comical. We've been in a budget deficit for 3 years now and they refuse to close or shut down any programs/departments, they just let people retire or fire people and shift that work onto others and think that this will fix things.

I'm finally sick of it after I got a $5k raise to take over the job responsibilities of someone making $80k a year (way more than I make). Just not worth it anymore plus I hate the field I am in. The only positive is my boss is really nice and appreciative of what I do but she is too timid to fight for me much and she lets herself get bullied and talked down to all the time.

Feels good to get that all out of my system...

I am a poor boy like Krugen I did not do nothing but it was not a super hard job, It tech support for a college so it was quasi goverment- I kept on there because I did get decent salary for my no degree at the time and great retirement, time off, free school bla bla bla - I am now a system admin but still not on level of most of our other system admins because my system is a specific department position rather than one that is part of the enterprise wide tech group thing... but with that I am no longer in a place where I can do nothing on days I really do not want to do anything and I have to wear big boy cloathing nice shirt and tie etc... my friend however, we both did the same old job at various campus' he networked his way into a 60k do nothing job however...so they do still exist!

Edit: to go with Karjii's post- I have been with this employeer since 2001, I got steady raises until 2007ish then only recently we have started getting small SMALL raises- but with my position change I was able to jump up some...not as much or close to my friend but oh well. Part of why I kept on was because of the stability and good benifets even if the pay was always in the bottom 10-15% of the national average.

My brother recently offered me a job with his company for $17k/year more than I currently make. I turned it down because he would actually expect me to put a full 8 hours of work in every day, and I'd have to quit the shitty-pay-but-I-love-it part time job I have.

McCheese_sl said:

My brother recently offered me a job with his company for $17k/year more than I currently make. I turned it down because he would actually expect me to put a full 8 hours of work in every day, and I'd have to quit the shitty-pay-but-I-love-it part time job I have.

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t(''t)

When I worked at a pharmaceutical in their patient assistance program, there were many days (M-F) where I watched Lets Play walkthroughs on Youtube while working. Was amazeballs.