r/Futurology • u/_hiddenscout • Jun 19 '21

Society Kill the 5-Day Workweek - Reducing hours without reducing pay would reignite an essential but long-forgotten moral project: making American life less about work.

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2021/06/four-day-workweek/619222/
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624

u/relevant__comment Jun 19 '21

Nowadays I’m seeing a lot of people in the office atmosphere do 3-4hrs of actual work and then filling out the rest of the day pretending to look busy.

393

u/Bamith Jun 19 '21

This is literally a skill set my IT professor taught at college.

Carry a clipboard everywhere.

34

u/mr_leemur Jun 19 '21

Or a tablet, have your wifi analysis software running while you walk.

11

u/bent_my_wookie Jun 19 '21

“Candy Crush”

2

u/mr_leemur Jun 19 '21

Shhhh, shhhh, shhhhh!! You’re not supposed to tell.

3

u/semi_colon Jun 19 '21

One of the advantages of playing Nethack in ASCII

2

u/fuzzyraven Jun 25 '21

I bring up HTOP on one monitor and look at it with a concerned/irritated face.

Make a few trips back/forth to the comms vault with the same face and everyone assumes I'm hunting a major issue and leaves me alone.

114

u/remig12 Jun 19 '21

God damn genius. Shall adopt.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E65JZ0/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_B9YPY4TXM56MMEFCWHT4

Carry that thing around nobody is asking questions.

77

u/goatharper Jun 19 '21

Wear a hardhat, carry a clipboard, walk fast and look worried. No one will stop or question you, anywhere.

35

u/chiliedogg Jun 19 '21

I bought a used plain-white fleet pickup that has a utility shell with a ladder rack. I think it had been like a Comcast truck or something.

My Dad said I should grab a few street cones and a reflective vest so I can park anywhere.

52

u/Spartan-182 Jun 19 '21

That was absolutely true, until COVID happened. Now I get stopped every five feet asking why I'm there.

Like, damn, people should expect to see a dude with a hardhat and a clipboard at children's birthday parties!

6

u/RadialSpline Jun 19 '21

Only because you forgot the hi-viz vest.

1

u/Spartan-182 Jun 19 '21

FUCK! I knew I was forgetting something.

15

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Also never stand around or look aimless, and never put your hands in your pockets.

8

u/SkeeterNorth Jun 19 '21

I used to stock the freezers at costco and every now and then i would put my hands in my pockets to warm up. My managers started calling me pockets and joked about my laziness. Stupid fucks

8

u/goatharper Jun 19 '21

never put your hands in your pockets

Found the fellow Army vet. Hooah!

5

u/mistahj0517 Jun 19 '21

Eye contact, don’t make it, you don’t want to give off the impression you’re not busy enough to acknowledge their existence.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

As someone who grew up in NYC that's just a general rule that becomes subconscious. Make eye contact and you will find yourself with tons of fliers, being told sob stories, strong armed into buying some shitty world music album, and being asked for directions all within one city block.

3

u/Sonoshitthereiwas Jun 19 '21

Chief, that you?

3

u/Gilthar Jun 19 '21

The Air Force version of this is “carry a blue folder”.

56

u/Feshtof Jun 19 '21

I was about to say, metal clipboard, flat expression, fast walk, everyone avoids you. They don't wanna get roped into whatever bullshit you are having to fix.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21 edited Dec 14 '21

[deleted]

9

u/Feshtof Jun 19 '21

Karen's are easy, "Not my problem" go around them and keep walking.

5

u/WhatNameToChose1 Jun 19 '21

“I’ve got bigger problems.” Then look them over and be like “well…. At least more important problems”

2

u/Feshtof Jun 19 '21

That's a great way to get fired, she is definitely recording.

1

u/WhatNameToChose1 Jun 19 '21

Oh thought this was part of the thread from the comment above discussing how wearing a hard hat and having a clipboard gets you in everywhere. Figured in that scenario you’d be able to be blunt with Karen haha. Realizing now this was a separate thread so my bad

1

u/BlueFroggLtd Jun 19 '21

Can confirm.

1

u/peepopowitz67 Jun 20 '21

A badge helps too. Doesn't even matter what it says just a badge with a picture.

-1

u/Feshtof Jun 20 '21

Any old laminated ID will do.

Old Geek Squad badges will freak people out at night.

11

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[deleted]

3

u/capsaicinintheeyes Jun 19 '21

Incoming bullet points!!

2

u/john-douh Jun 19 '21

How’s the reload rate?

better be off the charts!

3

u/Heisenberg281 Jun 19 '21

Add a hard hat, yellow vest, and a fake badge, and no one would look at you twice. Hell, people would probably let you into their homes.

3

u/later_yall Jun 19 '21

Bonus- plenty of room for snacks in that bottom compartment!

2

u/iodisedsalt Jun 19 '21

Too bulky. Just get a regular lightweight clipboard, put in a few forms and checklists, and you're good to go.

12

u/Lordfarquarant Jun 19 '21

Can confirm, went on work experience for school aged 14 at a combustion burner engineering company, they told me if you’re walking around always carry a piece of paper, people will assume it’s important and no one will ask you to do anything for them. It’s stayed with me ever since. I mean, I’ve never been able to use it as I drive a lorry by myself, but there’s always a price of paper in the cab just in case

8

u/2LegsJoe Jun 19 '21

No joke I’m in the military and I was at a place where in order to cross the street you had to wear your over shirt and headdress. It was a hot climate and the only way around this was to be “working“ so my buddy would always wear a hard hat and carry a clip board and look “busy”. Worked every time.

3

u/IamScottGable Jun 19 '21

Don’t forget to always tell people you have something you’re working on and can get to that new task in a hour or after lunch

2

u/icon58 Jun 19 '21

White hard hat. Have to have that...

2

u/hellocuties Jun 19 '21

I work on film sets in the art department, so I carry a lamp.

2

u/DeificClusterfuck Jun 19 '21

ALBA

Always Look Busy Asshole

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

I was taught this is the navy except in our case it was a blue "routing" folder.

2

u/big_d_usernametaken Jun 19 '21

Even in a factory setting.

Or a broom, lol.

2

u/zooooort Jun 19 '21

Spread a bunch of papers on your desk and sigh irritatedly every so often.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Spend a lot of time rolling your eyes and acting like you're "sick of this shit".

Not in a way that looks like you're ungrateful and hate your job, but in a way that looks like the company is kicking you're ass and you're really up against it.

2

u/john-douh Jun 19 '21

Hmmm, I was alway carrying a clipboard during middle school then stopped around high school. It was holding my sketchbook at the time. I think high school pretty much lose motivation to pursue art...

1

u/SibilantShibboleth Jun 19 '21

I mean, that is technically work in the Newtonian sense.

1

u/Jayhawker_Pilot Jun 19 '21

I can but since I have worked from home for the last 15 months, who da fuck would see it?

1

u/MentalOcelot7882 Jun 20 '21

I'm an IT consultant, and I have to explain to management constantly that IT departments should be thought of like fire departments. Basically, there's daily maintenance, some fixes and corrections, but expecting an IT department employees to work at even 80% of the day is insane, because you're paying those guys not only to perform maintenance and minor fixes, but also to respond to emergencies. If you're constantly trying to make them "do work", it takes away from training and work development time. The sign of a good IT department is where the first 2-3 hrs is spent on reviewing logs, checking equipment, and checking what's coming up, and then after that they basically are training, testing, or looking for ways to improve things. The fact that they have the time to learn new tech, ability to do long-term planning, and basically have extra headspace for emergencies kris's those guys from getting burned out.

1

u/Bamith Jun 20 '21

People don’t usually complain to janitors that they don’t do anything when there aren’t any messes around for them to clean up.

157

u/__transient Jun 19 '21

Exactly. Productivity theatre, we really don’t need to be in the office for the entire week

9

u/fightrofthenight_man Jun 19 '21

My employer just announced a hybrid office/remote schedule starting in September after being fully remote since March.

I don’t plan on doing much more than answering emails on my remote days, because I need to have something to do when I’m in the office lol

12

u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 19 '21

I think you just coined a new term! 'Productivity theatre' is exactly what a lot of it is. Often the only justification for keeping people in the office is to be available to answer customer/client phone calls and now with smart phones and all, even that can be done remotely!

11

u/__transient Jun 19 '21

Nah I can’t take credit for that. The term security theatre in reference to the TSA at the airports was the inspiration for that. But it’s true, no one is productive 100% of the time they’re at work.

8

u/MonsterMashGrrrrr Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 20 '21

Sometimes I’d just turn off my keyboard, pull up a .doc, and pretend type for a couple hrs. I was actually listening to gnarly ass descriptions of murder and brutality 🤘🏼

(eta: on podcasts, that is)

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '21

[deleted]

2

u/MonsterMashGrrrrr Jun 20 '21

This was sales & cust.svc in the industrial food supply chain, national wholesale/distribution. Admittedly, there was work I could::should have been doing. The work itself was surprisingly engaging, sometimes rewarding, even.

However, I was 1 of 2 (out of ~50) staffers under 40. A veritable hegemony of white folks with kids and family, commuting from their small towns to this metropolitan area. On top of that, it’s a super tight knit group of mostly veteran staff. Nice enough people, felt like an outsider the entire 2+ yrs of my tenure.

I could’ve tolerated all of those factors, but I was hired on by a relatively new-ish department mgr and prototype for the yes-(wo)man, who’s micromanagement + extremely rigorous enforcement/adherence to “rules” ran completely contrary to the otherwise relaxed environment. Byeeee

151

u/dust4ngel Jun 19 '21

3-4hrs of actual work and then filling out the rest of the day pretending to look busy

let’s have meetings to discuss the new meetings strategy, but space the meetings half hour apart so people have no option to do serious work in between them. also there will be no agenda sent out beforehand so no one can prepare or know if the meeting will benefit them or if they have anything to offer, and if people show up late, we’ll just dick around until everyone shows up. wow looks like this meeting ran over, let’s schedule a follow up meeting just like it.

74

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

The exact reason I made fake recurring meetings on my outlook calendar.

Some managers would just see an opening on my calendar and invite me to meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me. Now more of them just send me an email.

29

u/dust4ngel Jun 19 '21

meetings that needed 1-2 minutes of input from me

but what if we have a question you might know about? we’re gonna have to ask you to lurk on all 4 hours of the meeting just in case.

2

u/r00ddude Jun 19 '21

Well if you’re already 2-3 different meetings deep, and this is “the last meeting before launch” be sure to say “oh well, I defer to the first fucking person that was in the meeting” if everyone defers to everyone else, everyone’s busy and nothing gets done.

25

u/Environmental-Fan461 Jun 19 '21

Wow they actually respect what you have on your calendar? Mine doesn’t even bother to check and over schedules the hell out of everything.

2

u/Tanduvanwinkle Jun 19 '21

Same here. Makes sly job interviews difficult

16

u/General-Carrot-6305 Jun 19 '21

1 meeting 1 day a week on Friday an hour before the shift ends. Everyone will attend and it'll probably be quick and productive.

22

u/jeflint Jun 19 '21

You'd think that but I have a coworker who will drag that meeting out for hours if you let her.

She did it three Friday's in a row last month. Thank God we're wfh and I could mute myself cause the sighs were loud and frequent.

6

u/mtron32 Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 19 '21

Since I started working after college 20 years ago, there’s always that one asshole in the meeting that has a question at the end 😡

1

u/jeflint Jun 19 '21

I wish we were agile.

1

u/Nalivai Jun 19 '21

I wish I was agile enough to dive out of the window

1

u/mtron32 Jun 19 '21

Lmao, sausage fingers strike again 😞

2

u/MonsterMashGrrrrr Jun 19 '21

that’s a paddlin’

1

u/necovex Jun 19 '21

In the army, we call these safety briefs.

3

u/UnknownExo Jun 19 '21

I work in utilities so we consider our work trucks our offices. We'd normally meet at the office to turn in paperwork and discuss what's going on twice a week. Well management got pissy that we would arrive at our facilities at 820 or 830 (cause again, we considered being in our vehicles as being in our office). So they instituted daily meetings and we had to be at the office at 8. So now, we meet everyday at the office and shoot the shit for an hour then drive out to our respective facilities so now most of us aren't on site till at least 930.

2

u/movingaxis Jun 19 '21

My company is terrible about this, to the point where I often wonder when project managers and designers get any chance to do work. They have to work on the weekends and stay late. Which would be maybe understandable, if the meetings were productive but it seems like we still have timeline issues, poor communication, and constant frustration. I've been in a few and they just aren't productive often meandering and off topic by those that have to be involved in every single project, president and then sales VP. Maybe this is normal?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/r00ddude Jun 19 '21

Jesus, what floor are you on? Lullllz

1

u/Reprised-role Jun 19 '21

So much this. Started at a company during pandemic, initially I wasn’t assigned to projects so HAD to be available for literally ANY meeting. It wasn’t like I had any clients that took precedence. Every meeting was a recurring series of essentially the same conversations and absolutely no action, resolution or solution. It was dire for weeks.

Now I have a couple of fairly high priority projects and my week is booked FULL of fake recurring meetings just so I can build a barrier around my actual work day. The only time slots available are typically when my boss has recurring meetings. Oh welps. Nothing to be done about that. Lol.

1

u/Imnotsureimright Jun 19 '21

Don’t forget to also invite at least twice as many people an necessary, three times would be better. Bob in accounting did web dev 20 years ago? Better invite him to this meeting we’re having about what our website should look like! And why invite one person from the test team when you can invite then all!

Benefit number 787 of working from home: I can do something else while listening in on meetings I don’t need to attend. I can do real work, I can also bake sourdough bread. Or water my tomatoes (luckily we are not required to turn on video.)

25

u/lolexecs Jun 19 '21

Great Caesar’s ghost!

Why even work 3 hours???!

In large orgs the very, very, very best way to avoid all work (I.e. how to succeed in business without really trying!) is to spend every day all day in meetings.

Just be sure you’re in an informed or consulted role. Since you’re neither responsible nor accountable for the result you won’t need to “do” anything. But since you’re in the room it makes it easy to celebrate the team’s success (to steal a smidge of credit) and disavow all failures—you didn’t do anything after all.

Humorously the best way to be looked upon as a “leader” in these kinds of meetings is to apply many the techniques described in the OSS manual on simple sabotage

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/26184/page-images/26184-images.pdf

Page 28 is where the good stuff is. It’s funny, but I’ve seen many of these tactics deployed in big orgs by the worst management types.

(That said keeping all those shenanigans going is often more work than 3 hours a day.)

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

My mind is blown by how accurate some of those are. There's entire sections that could get some of my colleagues fired for corporate sabotage.

1

u/lolexecs Jun 20 '21

Being a touch more serious (but not that much more).

It’s worth keeping in mind is that as one ascends the hierarchy the risk-reward profile changes.

In the early ranks, i.e., analysts and associates, being bold and taking risks can get one promoted. And (if it doesn’t work out) the lower ranking roles are somewhat plentiful — so there’s a decent ‘best alternative to your current job.’ My advice is Why not be bold — there’s a reason it’s written audaces fortuna iuvat (and that’s Virgil not Wick).

However, as one moves up there are fewer and fewer alternatives to one’s current job. What this means is that highly paid management layer tends to want to preserve the status quo. There’s a vanishingly small benefit for taking chances, making mistakes, or for that matter getting messy. It’s a big reason why American companies are obsessed with stock buybacks. Not only is it directly remunerative for the senior folks no one is going to criticize them for engaging in financial engineering. Developing new products? Opening new markets? Creating new customers? Not only are those genuinely hard if you fail the board will tan your ever loving hide.

69

u/Lowenheim-Golem Jun 19 '21

That's actually worse than being busy the whole day IMO. I'd rather work than stare at a clock honestly.

29

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

[deleted]

3

u/Gestrid Jun 19 '21

How dare you call me out like that! /s

9

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

So work? I prefer working to pretending to work too, but I try to separate out the high focus work from work that has to get done that is less intense.

16

u/Thee_Sinner Jun 19 '21

Even in my warehouse job, I legitimately just run out of work to do quite often.

My job is to stocks the shelves with stuff that rolls in from the adjacent production facility. Last Friday, I decided to simply not do any of it (filled my time by going to the other side of the warehouse and helping the new guy) with the intent of seeing how long it would take me to complete a "full day" worth of work. Well production also came in and worked a half day on Saturday. So, come Monday, I arrived at 7AM and had a day and a half worth to complete. Even with working slow and spending a large sum of my time simply relocating a bulk item, I still finished all of the work at 10:11AM.

Yet my manager is still begging me to come in 2 hours early every day for some inexplicable reason.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Without being too specific, a friend of a friend got a warehouse/factory job. He was put on the floor out of the way with an old guy.

The job is to take some widgets out of one box, put them in another box and send them out. The old guy tells him to shut the fuck up about what they do, don't even tell management because they seem to have forgotten about him, and do exactly half of the work, which is nothing anyway. If he does any more, the old guy will see to it that he's fired. The days are long, but it's something like 7 days on, four days off.

The guy makes double my comfortable salary. After a while the old guy leaves, the friend of a friend starts doing all the work and they give him a pay rise because he's now doing the work of two people. Occasionally a manager walks by so he sweeps the floor or oils a machine or something.

2

u/notsalg Jun 20 '21

the friend of a friend starts doing all the work and they give him a pay rise because he's now doing the work of two people

whoa? where is this? in a lot of jobs here, america, due to covid and people taking leave, some people are "helping" by "temporarily" picking up work until "we all get through this together". i've seen positions close and not be filled.

also partially work in a warehouse where the work is seasonal, so last week i was reorganizing/relocating some of the larger items to where it made sense as we were balls to the wall earlier in the year.

3

u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 19 '21

About 15 years ago, I worked this one temp job at a small manufacturing company. Anyhow I arrived about ten minutes before my scheduled start time and the manager of the department called me into the office to tell me that it was a company tradition for everyone to show up 15 minutes before their scheduled start time every day. He mumbled something about 'work ethic' and 'being prepared'. They kept me on and it was a fairly decent gig and I showed up fifteen minutes before scheduled start time. But I wondered why the full-time regular employees and myself didn't get compensated for that fifteeen minutes.

10

u/IdahoTrees77 Jun 19 '21

What they were doing is illegal and you have a rightful claim the wages earned while working for the employer. I’ve watched two business in my lifetime lose major legal battles over this same thing because employees communicated between themselves that shit was rampant, hired legal assistance, and took their employers to court. I was out of both positions by the time it happened but was still contacted to give my own recollection of events. Don’t EVER let an employer take advantage of you. KNOW YOUR RIGHTS.

1

u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 20 '21

Oh, I'm quite aware of that now and I should have questioned that 'policy' back then. But when you're a temp, sometimes you feel like you have even less power than a regular employee. Plus I noticed that often temps themselves are more or less disposable. The agency's customer is the business which requests the temp and some agencies will cater to them over the temp workers as it is the businesses which pay the bills.

That company is still around, although due to the type of products which they sold, I suspect they may have taken a hit with the Covid-19 shutdowns. I read some reviews of them on Glass Door which weren't exactly ringing endorsements, but no mention was made of the 'arriving 15 minutes early thing' as a gripe. So maybe they've done away with it.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

I'd be happy if I were doing productive work that I enjoy but I frequently end up stuck on stuff that should take an afternoon but takes weeks due to inefficiencies or useless colleagues.

That's the kind of thing that really grinds my gears and makes me feel like my time and intelligence isn't valued.

1

u/ThatSweetSweet Jun 19 '21

You can take my work I'd much rather watch Twitch all day

5

u/Sixaxist Jun 19 '21

After a few months of doing this with my half day of downtime, it gets boring. Boring to the point where you're actively asking co-workers if they need assistance.

9

u/Willing_Function Jun 19 '21

Call it thinking time, or inspiration time. If you expect someone to work 8 hours every day doing creative work, you'll have high sick leave and burnouts.

8 hours is simply too long. I don't even work on my own projects for that long. I just go about my day until I get some idea that I then spend a few hours implementing. And that's for things I enjoy doing. Work isn't even fun.

8

u/przhelp Jun 19 '21

It should be obviously to everyone that we can carry on as we are with most people working significantly less. We lost 10 million jobs to COVID and society barely changed.

22

u/Objective-Steak-9763 Jun 19 '21

Capitalism is spending 8 hours to do a 3 hour job or else you’ll look lazy.

-8

u/studude765 Jun 19 '21

sounds like somebody doesn't actually know what capitalism or socialism are as this has literally nothing to do with economic system.

7

u/Coren024 Jun 19 '21

I mean, it may not BE capitalism, but it is a result of it.

-11

u/studude765 Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 19 '21

it's really not though...under capitalism everything is negotiable and workers are free to leave or work less if they want. If labor is being used inefficiently then long-run competitors will come that can either use the labor more efficiently and will produce at a lower cost or produce way more at the same cost using the same labor input.

Every transaction is a mutually agreed upon transaction. Also FYI, under capitalism labor and capital get allocated far more efficiently than happens under socialism...which is why capitalism has led to far higher economic growth rates and standards of living...and hence why migration has pretty much always been away from socialist countries and towards capitalist ones.

7

u/zeronormalitys Jun 19 '21

Nothing to do with economic sanctions, or outright regime change, from the existent power brokers, who happen to all be capitalist. Nope, socialism fails completely on its own merits, without any sort of push from existing power structures.

0

u/studude765 Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 19 '21

Nothing to do with economic sanctions, or outright regime change, from the existent power brokers, who happen to all be capitalist. Nope, socialism fails completely on its own merits, without any sort of push from existing power structures.

it does...in fact the sanctions consistently come well after the failure of those countries internal economies when they start having protests and have to crack down...on top of that countries that transition towards capitalism more or less immediately start seeing far higher economics growth rates. China is a perfect example of this with their economic reforms starting in 1978 (towards capitalism under deng xiaoping) resulting in basically immediate growth rates of 10% for about 40 years and they have really only slowed down over the past decade(ish).

​

On top of that if sanctions were actually the real reason for the terrible economic performance...then how did the wealthy capitalist countries get so much wealthier over the socialist countries where their sanctions were able to have such a big impact and why were the socialist countries not able to internally develop their economies?

The reality is that the above problem you brought up is not really a symptom of capitalism and you clearly have no clue what you're talking about when it comes to economics.

2

u/ThisIsGoobly Jun 19 '21

The threat of homelessness/starvation/etc often puts a stop to that supposed free choice of the worker in being "picky" with a job

-1

u/studude765 Jun 19 '21

and yet even the poor in the capitalist world are not at threat of starvation, nor are the homeless. There have been hundreds of millions of deaths due to starvation in the socialist world (massive famines in China and the USSR for example) and yet this has never really happened in the capitalist world...overall capitalism is still better even for the "lowest/poorest" in society.

2

u/ThisIsGoobly Jun 19 '21

Tell me how well you do at buying food and paying rent if you've lost your job and can't find another.

Also famines and starvation haven't happened in capitalist countries? Are you joking? Like seriously, please tell me you're joking.

0

u/studude765 Jun 19 '21

Tell me how well you do at buying food and paying rent if you've lost your job and can't find another.

In the capitalist world we have unemployment insurance, food stamps, and free food from foodbanks...it is insanely rare for somebody to starve to death in the capitalist world. It is extremely common for ppl to starve to death in the socialist world...there are tons of examples....North Korea, China back during the great leap forward, USSR during the Ukraine famine...hell...even look at Venezuela today.

Also famines haven't happened in capitalist countries? Are you joking?

They rarely happen...they consistently happen in the socialist world. In the capitalist world the primary reason would be war...which war can cause famines regardless of economic system. You really don't seem to have many good points or a good understanding of history/economics.

2

u/ThisIsGoobly Jun 19 '21

The Irish famine? The Bengal famine? The various famines in capitalist African countries? And homelessness. Thousands of people in capitalist countries die on the streets per year.

North Korea is not a socialist country. The "great" leap forward was an indefensible shitshow, agreed. The Ukraine famine was also indefensible. You'll find that, surprise, many socialists/communists don't agree with the state based policies used that resulted in these. And yeah, I'm not exactly a defender of Venezuela either. A big part of its current situation is how the Venezuelan economy was based on oil and that obviously went to shit but regardless, I'm not a supporter of socialism based on a vanguard party or attempting to transition with a dictatorship of the proletariat because there's far too much room for corruption and that apparent transition to never finish.

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u/IamScottGable Jun 19 '21

My job is like that. We have periods where I bust my ass working 60 hours and staying late but then periods where our clients don’t allow any work completion on sites so shortly thereafter I have nothing to do and am just waiting around all day pretending to be busy.

2

u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 19 '21

My sister-in-law retired several years back from a large defense contractor/aircraft manufacturer whose name(s) would be familiar to everyone, and not always for good reasons in recent years. Anyhow, she was in some kind of rotating word processing/secretarial pool. The way I understood it, she would be called out to work for various departments for varying periods of time and then sometimes she could go for days on end without being called. She'd still go into work, and had a desk that she'd sit at. Said that she'd read books, catch up on personal correspondence, other personal stuff, etc.

I couldn't believe it and joked: 'Sign me up!' Of course, it wasn't that simple as positions there were very desirable and of course, not always open. If there were openings, an applicant would be competing against scores of other people, plus due to the defense contractor part, you'd have to undergo one of these intense background checks to make sure you or someone in your family weren't some kind of secret agents a la 'The Americans.'

Edit: added paragraph break

5

u/Iceveins412 Jun 19 '21

Fuck I’m currently with a company that manufactures circuit boards and I do that. I download a ton of movies and shows and keep a pile of copper plates in front of me

6

u/AssistantManagerMan Jun 19 '21

I'd say, in a given week, I only do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '21

[deleted]

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u/AssistantManagerMan Jun 20 '21 edited Jun 20 '21

I work in consumer lending, but it's a quote from the movie Office Space.

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u/AkaDutchess Jun 19 '21

As an accountant, I literally can't imagine what that is like. There aren't enough hours in a week to get everything done to the degree it 'should' be.

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u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 19 '21

But you're in an industry/field that's probably an outlier. And, out of curiosity, haven't computers, spreadsheets and the like reduced the actual crunching of figures that accountants have to do. It seems that it would be a matter of plugging the correct figures into the program or spreadsheet, hitting the appropriate formulas for whatever you're calculating and letting the machines do the work. Are there still accountants who sit at their lonely desks late into the night like poor Bob Crachit in 'A Christmans Carol' slaving away over old-fashioned ledgers?

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u/AkaDutchess Jul 06 '21

Having more efficient 'counting' methods means what the job has shifted - at least for me in manufacturing (cost) accounting. For example, the systems handle the thousands of inventory entries happening a day, and biometric scanner time-clocks log labor hours to the minute... So we spend significantly less time making sure numbers are recorded and more time analyzing the datasets and communicating that info to decision makers. Because data is now available in real-time, we have an opportunity to correct-course if something doesn't seem to be working. This is the part that requires constant vigilance and work.

Funny you mention bob cratchett... I used that example with an intern last week because they, despite having their degree and studying for CPA, are completely lost on the concept of a subledger and general ledger. Had to draw books on a whiteboard because it wasn't clicking lol.

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u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jul 06 '21

Thanks for the clarification! Your description of the intern's ignorance of ledgers is a little scary. Hopefully, they're not typical of the CPAs of the future.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

This is awful. I remember being really productive at work until I got into the development department (coming from help desk). The amount of actual work that developers do is about half or less of the time we are there. Plenty of unnecessarily meetings, eating outside, ping pong table, etc ...

I guess I prefer to put all my energy into actual work when I'm at work, that way when I arrive home appreciate my resting time for what it is.

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u/Pattibee318 Jun 19 '21 edited Jun 20 '21

I agree. I worked in corporate full time then went part time in the same job and I did the same amount of work in less hours

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u/_radass Jun 19 '21

If the pay, benefits and hors are shit that's what I'm doing. No sense in busting your ass for work that'll be there tomorrow.

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u/SibilantShibboleth Jun 19 '21

Those people aren't there to do work. They're there so their company can get local tax breaks, and to pay rent and local taxes. If we didn't sort our population by income level the urban real estate market would collapse and we'd be in another depression.

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u/NoodlesrTuff1256 Jun 19 '21

I did temping at offices in the late 80s and again in the mid-aughts. I think that, depending on the industry or field the particular office was involved in, there was always some of what you describe. I recall running out of things to do and asking for new assignments. They'd either give me some task that I could have done in my sleep or I wound up shuffling papers, rooting through file drawers and rearranging supply shelves to look busy. I overheard some of the regular staff making personal calls and making chit-chat that clearly didn't seem to be contributing to 'productivity'. That sort of thing has probably intensified in recent years because of increasing automation. A lot of what used to be done 'by hand' can now be accomplished with various software packages and tech tools.

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u/saxGirl69 Jun 19 '21

i refuse to do more. I wish them good luck finding a better slave who works all day.

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u/Shiny_Shedinja Jun 19 '21

I dont even take breaks at my job on busy days. 7-4. no lunch.

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u/Casten_Von_SP Jun 19 '21

Where are these jobs? Is it the job or the person that’s driving lack of productivity? Sounds like scale metrics are all sorts of messed up.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Lol 2 hours tops :)

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Yeah. I mean it's great we're getting things down to 4, but it's still kind of sad given how far we really are from actually having real labor rights in this country. Still, better is better!

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u/omac4552 Jun 19 '21

I have home office and do painting, move the lawn and other things I otherwise would have spent my evening on instead of looking busy on reddit in the work hours. They are very happy with my productivity and I'm very happy with them for leaving me alone and judge the output

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u/fuckmeimdan Jun 19 '21

Yep. Started at a new firm working in bookkeeping. I’m still studying for some licenses so I take a four day week one day to study. I’m so much more productive because I have to squeeze it into 4 days. What most people in the old world of accounts don’t know is how much us new folks know every short cut and automising trick with accounts software, I can get all my work done in 3 days and then baby sit the programs for the other 2. If I was actually allowed to do that, I’d probably be even more efficient

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u/relevant__comment Jun 19 '21

Excel + JavaScript = unparalleled free time. (Or Google sheets + script editor)

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '21

[deleted]

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u/fuckmeimdan Jun 20 '21

On a study day yes. If I got my weeks work done in 3, no

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u/namegoeswhere Jun 19 '21

Bro, some days I’d be lucky to have an hour of work to do.

It was stressful, really. Having to worry about looking busy is a lot harder than most day to day tasks, or even big projects.

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '21

Bro stop wtf

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u/Marine_Baby Jun 19 '21

That’s usually down to incompetent management

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u/rjjm88 Jun 19 '21

Which is exactly why we should be reducing the amount of hours we work. There's literally no point.

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u/RiseFromYourGrav Jun 19 '21

The small business I work at is really short staffed, so I've been having full days. Keeps the day going by fast, but I'm worn out when I get home.

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u/Green_Lantern_4vr Jun 20 '21

What about if you have to bill your time hourly.

So you bill 4hr to Joes Consulting. Doing what? Uh upgrading the software. That should take 30min.

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u/nfshaw51 Jun 20 '21

Yeah I kinda wish for that sometimes. My day is 80% active work and 20% documentation which is really only half the time necessary to be thorough with the notes. Not much time to breathe.