How much work do you actually do... at work?
 

So I'm a freelance web designer, working out of my own home, and some days I'm just spot on and doing my thing for eight hours. Making websites, updating information- I'm a design powerhouse. Then, there's days like today. I think I've done maybe... an hour and a half of actual physical work since 9am. It's just a "blah" kinda day. I'm curious because I didn't think there'd be so much goofing off involved in this job. I am sitting around a lot today because there's one particular thing I'm working on that's requring a lot of back and forth between me, my boss, and the client, and so I have to send something, wait for a reply, change it, re-send it, etc. It gets old!

So for all you guys out there- how much work do you do in a day at work? How much of your time is actually spent doing something that directly benifits the company?

Considering I eat, sleep, et al. at work for months at a time, I didn't feel I could technically click "100% of the time." But yeah, for a while now unless I've been actively engaged in the routine functions of maintaining life, it seems like I've been working.

Don't join the military, kids.

I'm a mechanical Designer for a small engineering firm. I do HVAC and Plumbing blueprints, kind of like an architect does. I am really quick at what I do, and spend 80% of my time in front of my pooter. I would have to guess that I only actually do 1-1/2 hours worth of work in my 8 hour day. Rest of the time fuckin' off. Games...Porn... You know the fun stuff.

Since I work supervising teenagers in rehab, as well as teaching them English, I rarely get an opportunity to goof off. So yeah, I work most of the time. I have, however, mastered the art of supervising while seemingly reading. It allows me to observe the kids covertly while they think I'm doing something else.

I work while I fuck off, the good thing about assembly line work I guess-the only good thing, if it is even a good thing.

ok, so here is the break down:

8 hours. 1 hour for lunch = 7 hours of work

7 hours. 2 hours or so for bathroom/random breaks = 5 work hours

5 hours. 2(ish) hours surfing the internet and e-mailing shoegirl = 3 hours of work

3 hours. 1.5 hours talking to the people that work here, which is usually about nothing 'job' related 8 times out of 10. = 1.5 hours of actual work

1.5 hours. unlocking accounts and deleting quarantine e-mails (spam) adds up to about an hour a day here and there which is really me just sitting here and clicking a computer screen, so I don't really consider that work, since I would probably be sitting here surfing the internet anyways (see above). = .5 hours of work

So... 30 mins out of every 8 hour day, I am actually "Working"
I hope I have this job for-ev-er.

I'm in sales so I'm either wide open or staring into space. But with all the free time we have built a solid table tennis team. I like to think of myself as a professional table tennis player. I get paid and I play table tennis at work- thus the pro status. :D

I multi-task like a mo-fo, and I typically type and talk on the phone at the same time.

My job is usually described as "hours of boredom, minutes of panic" The rest of it is usually training or paperwork. Some days are slow, other days I never look up. They get their moneys worth!

you actually go in at 8 and get off at 5. That's 9 hours, with 1 for lunch. You've got an extra hour unaccounted for - what do you do all day? :lol:

obviously I am on here all day... :thumbsup:

I am astonishingly busy most of the time.

Every now and then we have a quiet day, but it's rare.

I earn my pay, but I enjoy my job.

It depends on what is going on...yesterday I didn't do very much work, today I was probably productive for 75% of the day. Sometimes I'm productive 150% (seriously!) of the day, sometimes it barely gets past 0%. I figure it all evens out...especially since I've had to come in to work my last two Fridays off. :(

I'm a barista at Starbucks- I am not allowed to goof off really, because "if there's time to lean, there's time to clean."

I get one ten minute break if I work 4 hours. If I work 5+ hours, I get one ten minute break and a thirty minute break. I get pee breaks as long as there is time.

I don't get a mealtime, I get a 30 minute unpaid break between shifts, and I have to plan ahead or catch one of the 5 of the 200 people in my building that can do my job well enough to cover while I go to the bathroom. During hour 9 of hard physical labor after you've had 3 liters of water is when you find out just how long you can hold it, lol.

I'm voting for 100%.

I'm busier than jumper cable at a redneck wedding. I went with 100%.

I'm a full-time college student, so I doubt that what I do really counts as "work." But I consider it work since I have a number of obligations each day and since engineering is a hard major for me to perform well in.

I don't cut classes, and I don't like to sleep or play on my laptop during class. The only way I can learn is to pay attention while the prof talks. I'm pretty good about doing my homework on time. So I give myself a "most of the time" vote, since I sometimes daydream about the girl across the room ;) .

I have a useless co-manager at a bank that does nothing, so for the past 6 months I have been doing his job, my job and the job of the supervisor that left. Ahhh must be nice for him to be able to sit on his duff all day and do nothing while a woman does everything for him because the regional manager thinks hes god.

I guess you could say 100% since i'm actually there supervising the students. But I don't feel like i'm actually doing much other than waiting for the clock to say it's time to go home.

I'm paid very well, to think. So actual physical labor at the most only 50%.

I'm a designer/maker and, well I AM the company ...so if I don't work I don't make any money. Some days are full out and I'm completely focused and its 16 hours later and I'm still into it.
Other days, when its sunny and gorgeous (we don't have much of a summer here so its a sin to stay indoors) I just sit out on the back deck and watch the nieghborhood cats do their thing. Mostly its at least 7 hours.
Does the time spent thinking about work and ideas for work count?

Does the fact that you have a vagina matter somehow in that equation? I'm not trolling, I'm just trying to figure out why you said it that way...

i work at a pizza place, and im the cook, so i really dont do shit.

i mostly just sneak drinks from the kegs in the back.

I am a vice president at a .com that deals in reselling goods and services. My job totle is "Vice President in charge of Marketing", but most of my job is cleaning up after the CEO or playing middleman between upper managment and the grunts. I also work closely with our lawyers, tech support, and marketing firms. It's high stress, compounded with the strange office quirks. My boss brings his kids to work most of the time; a 2 year old girl and a 7 year old boy. They change what wold be a normal office into a rather odd place.

I work my ass off 90% of the time. the other 10% is spent on TFP or talking to my own 2 year old daughter on iChat from home. She's the best part of my work day.

I go part time at my job as of next week in order to get my masters degree...BUT at themoment I work 7 hours day with a lunch break 1hour..and 2 fifteen min breaks.and sunday 4hours for double time with a fiteen min break..also half the time I am not doing much at all.I like my job a lot and enjoy the actual work most of the time,but I do goof off! so I went with half

When I was a manager in a cell phone store, we had a lot of downtime when there weren't any customers in the store... and when there were customers in the store, I only ever had to do anything if there were more customers than I had employees...

So if I had 3 employees all day, and no more than 3 customers were ever in the store at the same time during the day, I pretty much sat in the back with the tech (a very nice slightly-older woman) and just bullshitted. To be fair, if I was back there and she got a phone or phones to work on, I'd do that with her while we chatted- I wouldn't sit there and watch her work. I'd have to get up and go out on occasion to use my code for a return, or deal with an issue, or authorize some credit on a bill or something... but most of the time, I did little or nothing. I also had at least 1 conference call, almost every day- either 30 minutes or an hour long... and when those are going on, you mute your phone and sit back and enjoy a soda or something. Play solitaire as you listen, etc.

Now i'm a student, and that's a 100%-of-the-time deal, and I love it passionately.

Work is where I go, not what I do.

I voted half the time because i really need to be in the right mood to just work and work; if i don't enjoy my job that is. I'm really bi-polar when it comes to working steady.

I work constantly, usually with no breaks, occasionally I do find the time to pull an office prank or 2.

I'm retired now but the best jobs are those where you get paid for what you know and not so much what you do.

At my job I am in direct contact with my boss(s) all day, so my effort is totally dependant upon his(their) effort. On a normal day, I probably work full steam for four and a half or five hours a day, then spread my remaining work out over the rest of the day so it looks like I'm working. Having said that, I have days that range from working my ass off for 8 hours at a time to falling asleep in the office or reading a book.

I hardly get a break at work... but I love my job and would go for extra work anyways.

I'm a student worker doing 35-hour weeks for the summer. I rarely do anything productive, and tend to do a maximum of 20 minutes of actual work per day, plus crisis control as needed. I work for two bosses, one of who seems to do something (I'm not sure what,) and the other of who points at his work and tells me to do it while he browses personal ads for foreign women (he's currently in Colombia meeting one of them.) In the administration, a few people do actual work, most do somethign (I assume,) and one in particular does nothing. She did two jobs, one of which was given to another person earlier in the summer, and one of which was taken by a part-timer last week. Nobody I've asked knows what she does, nobody even knows what her job title is, and she's there with a nicely-paying union job (the new director wanted to get rid of her when he started because he couldn't figure out why she was needed, but the union wouldn't let him.)

Long story short, nobody does anything around here. It's truly a Dilbert meets Office Space environment.

I get 2 scheduled 15 minute breaks and a 45 minute lunch. My shift is 8 hours and starts early. Before the crack of dawn early. I work at a nice corporate job. The pay is good and I'm damn good at my job. Sometimes a little too good because I keep getting more and more responsibility thrown on me. I'm in training for one thing or another almost every other week now. Plus, I somewhat stupidly volunteered to be lackey to this guy on our team who helps out some of the other departments by designing databases in MS Access. So now I'm learning Access and Visual Basic. My job actually started out as pretty easy with a lot of time on my hands. Now that is no longer the case, as I barely have time to socialize while at work. But, I try when I can.

How much 'downtime' I have is directly related to the number of calls I have to respond to. So while I'm relatively busy all of the time, there are times when I can take 5 mins for myself. That time will usually be spent on the phone with mandy or TFP.

I am the only I.T. Technician for a nursing home where I take care of 94 workstations, 35 printers and 20 access points. Something always breaks or needs to be repaired on a daily basis and if I get 10 minutes of down time, I update the software or hardware inventory list, read several computer related articles or attempt to purchase computer hardware that might replace 5-8 year old devices within the facility.

I have been working at this nursing home for about one year and the computer account had about $60,000 and now it is down to $5,000 from all of the upgrades I had to do.

I've been working as a line cook at one of the busiest, if not the busiest restaurant in my city. During my 10-12 hour workday I have one half hour unpaid break that i usually don't have time to take. There are few times where there are not bills to be made, and those times are used to frantically restock the line before the next rush hits. I basically work 95% of the time i'm there, 2% i'm sneaking a bite to eat and 3% i'm talking to the hot waitresses when they come to run the food.

I have days when I run like a dog, and days when I can chat with the other employees a bit, or take a longer coffee break. I used to work straight through without breaks on busy days, but I won't do that anymore.
I guess, all in all, I work about 85-90% of the time

It's summertime and half the people are on holiday. I'm doing a conversion project and have to wait for others to do their thing between my tasks.
It's more frustrating and the time goes soo slow like this. I'd prefer to be working harder. At least I get to surf the 'net while goofing off.

I'm self-employed, so I bust my ass more than 8 hours a day.