I frequently have all of my work completed, and I am unfortunately not allowed to work from home. This means I spend a lot of time sitting at my desk scrolling social media, because there’s nothing that needs done. I feel like I’m wasting my time, even more than work already wasted the best hours of the day. How do you fill that downtime with something that is personally valuable, but not disruptive or noticeable enough that you’d get in trouble?

  • Victor@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 days ago

    What kind of work do you do that it is so easy to see what and how much someone actually does?

    Pick any freaking job lol.

    1. Carpenter — you’re not delivering anything… carpented. Carpened. I dunno.
    2. Nurse — you’re not pulling your weight; the other nurses will notice immediately (I know second hand).
    3. Software engineering in a team — people will notice you’re not creating any pull requests, e.g. Or saying the same bullshit every single morning at standup.
    4. Cleaning — the clients you’re supposed to be cleaning for will complain to your manager somehow that the shit ain’t cleaned properly.
    5. Fishing — coming home with empty buckets: “wtf you doing out there, son?”

    Like, pick a profession. If you’re not producing or providing the service, people should notice. Otherwise it’s poorly run, IMO.

    What do you do for work? That’s really starting to intrigue me.

    • Eheran@lemmy.world
      1·
      8 days ago

      Chemical engineer. But the same applies to any job where you need to come up with some sort of solution that is not already known or readily available. Anything creative really.

        • Eheran@lemmy.world
          1·
          8 days ago

          No. That is not my point. I said that the most important thing is making the boss think you are productive/busy, regardless of that actually being the case. A boss can’t and/or does not use objective data to assess productivity. At least I have never seen that anywhere.

          That does not mean that you do nothing. It just means that you can appear far more productive/busy/important/… when that is far from the truth.

          • Victor@lemmy.world
            1·
            8 days ago

            I don’t know what to tell you. In my experience, in my line of work, if you show what you can do, you become valuable. If you slack off, you don’t. Showing what you can do will get you ahead. That’s my point based on empirical evidence I’ve seen and done first hand, and that’s the original point you were challenging. I’ve answered it now, so there. 👍