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
In the late 1980s, I had a roommate who graduated with a business degree and got recruited for a government contractor right out of college. She packed up her life and moved to the DC area. A month into her new job, the contract was pulled. But because she had a clause in the recruitment contract, they couldn’t fire her. But they had no work for her, either. So she had to come to work every weekday, 9-5. She’d sit at her desk with nothing to do. They didn’t ask her to look busy, just present.
She read about 3-5 novels a week. Over the next few months, we watched her get more and more depressed. She’d complain about her situation, but it fell on deaf ears. “Must be nice,” people said in jealousy. “Get paid to do nothing.” She became despondent in the lack of people’s sympathy. “Nobody understands how much this sucks!”
Eventually, she got a new job. Her mood vastly improved.
I’ll never forget that lesson. People need to feel useful, productive. Sitting at a desk with nothing to do, no purpose, no validation. It will destroy you.
I was in a similar situation. A few weeks after I got hired, the project I was hired for was cancelled, so they “benched” me.
I spent three months being paid to do whatever I wanted, didn’t even need to go to the office. It was nice at first, but I felt useless and miserable after a couple of months.
This made me understand why some people keep working long after they have enough to retire.
Called boreout syndrom.
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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
There’s more to life than just wanting more money or time to consume the content and products of others (obviously with the major caveat that we need some amount of money to live)
Most people gain existential joy from making some form of impact on the world, and for many that comes in the form of their work.
Being able to look at something, whether it’s a building you helped build, a website you made, or a contract that you helped get signed and having the knowledge that it wouldn’t exist in the way it does without your effort is a feeling I think is critical for most people to be happy.
Obviously this fulfillment doesn’t have to come from work, and if you can find enough satisfaction in writing poetry or a hobby like that to fill that need then you’re lucky for it, and maybe can look into pursuing a career in that.
I personally have unfortunately never been able to feel like I’m making enough of a mark on this world with my hobbies alone and have pursued work that makes me feel like I’m contributing to society or improving myself
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”
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.
As long as you can keep busy that way it is fine to have those jobs with downtime! The challenge arises when, for example, the workplace doesn’t allow personal cellphones on site or in the work area. Or perhaps there is an expectation to look busy all the time so you don’t have the leisure to read or write. I’ve had the luxury to have a job where I can relax a fair bit and have some enjoyable free time with your pastimes listed above.
My previous job was at a workplace with no useable internet, poor cellular signal, and no phones allowed while working policy. Very strict to always be doing something to look busy but when there is nothing to do it gets dreadful.
Looking forward to others experiences on this!
I would agree with this, but I would add something. If you ever get to a point in your work where you have ownership over your tasks and production and aren’t just a tiny cog in a big machine, it can be really fulfilling (at least as much as any paid job can be). I speak with experience only coming from the non-profit side though, so I’m sure a lot of people may not feel that way about corporate jobs. So if you have experienced that kind of fulfillment, and something changes (either your role or your workplace or your manager or whatever) and it’s not fulfilling in the same way anymore, it can be really frustrating, even if you could feasibly fill your time with personal stuff.
Also, sometimes being forced to be somewhere chafes when you’d rather be out in the world or at home. Napping, hiking, checking out a book at the library — hard to do when you’re stuck in a specific place.
A lack of responsibility and feeling like your work is pointless is pretty much the biggest drive of depression
The problem was that they didn’t want us doing those fun things. They wanted us to be working even when there is no work. So we all ended up pretending to work and if you’ve never done that before, it’s unbearably boring.
Imagine you’re only working ten minutes out of every hour, but it’s in the form of one minute out of every six. You can’t read, you can’t study, you can’t watch youtube and having to switch gears every few minutes leaves you exhausted at the end of the day.
Sounds like a law office. That’s the only place I’ve ever heard of six minute chunks.
My work indicates that anything we do should be logged to the tenth of an hour accuracy. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t mostly round to the quarter hour at best.
I’m fine with an afternoon with nothing to do, but I’d really rather be at home. The day progresses slower without something to do. Four hours can feel like six if all I’m doing is checking my email every half hour. It feels like two hours when I’m in full flow mode.
Totally this. My work day flies when I’m busy.
OP… for thousands, millions of years, our ancestors lived outside or in caves but spent much of their time actively doing stuff. Hunting, gathering, fishing, tending and harvesting crops, playing etc. What they didnt do is sit still in a gray cubicle with sycophantic motivational posters stapled to the cubicle walls under florescent lighting for 9 hours a day 5 days a week. The only thing that maintains sanity is having something to do to distract yourself from the completely artificial work environment you are basically forced to live in for 40+ years because if you dont, you cant pay for what you need to survive.
And you wonder why people dont want that?
The only thing that maintains sanity is having something to do to distract yourself
I don’t see why reading or writing poetry don’t accomplish that
You cant do that in a secured environment. You are not allowed writing instruments, paper or anything that can carry information out of the room. You get a rubix cube and a stress ball. Thats your entertainment. That was my job OP. I worked in IT, insurance and a credit card company at different points and thats what there was. The only thing you were allowed to do in your down time was to read from the internal wiki about something no one and I mean no one thinks is interesting.
No one works in a place like that because they want to. They do it because financially speaking theres a gun to their head. And anyone that has the opportunity to leave is going to leave.
On the flip side, I have a job where there are a number of roles where all you have to do is be ready until idle time stops. There are no restrictions outside of safety. When I’ve covered those jobs, I take it as a break from my regular job and enjoy some music or an ebook. I’ve seen others studying when it was their regular job. And I’ve seen some experience emotional distress, not from the boredom of their job but because it doesn’t allow them to be distracted from their personal lives.
Sidenote: thats also why so many „accidents“ happen on the job and why a lot of company property lands on second had shops…
Making people do something and keeping half of their owed money is cruel.
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.
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.
Get a hardware mouse jiggler! I bought one for my partner as a gag gift during the start of the Pandemic, but it’s seriously improved their mental health. Taking naps, reading books, and writing all became possible with next to zero risk. Just get Teams to ping your phone when you get a new message.
Because 90% of jobs don’t just let you do leisure activities on the clock and doing literally anything makes time go faster than sitting around doing literally nothing.
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
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)
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