Bored at work? How do you pass the time?
 

I often get bored out of my mine at work, and i'm looking for some new creative or innovative ways to pass the time. Currently i've been jumping online and checking out this site as often as I can in attempts to keep my sanity, put that fix only works for so long. Not to mention but it seems like the man is catching on to me and my whole internet escape idea. So what do you do in your spair time at the office?

I read techie magazines or talk to coworkers, but there isn't much i can do to pass the time at my job. It depends on the kind of job you have, and the amount of supervision you get.

I dont know your working situation but theres a good chance that they can track what sites your visiting on the computer.

waddaya think I'm doin' now? ;)

I post on several forums. Like this one. Occasionaly, read a book. Talk with coworkers. Work on any particular IS certification I am going for.

I work for the state attorney, i know that they don't trace me, but I'm not sure about the boys down stairs, I think they do that... Blah, whatever. I can't read books, because they don't like that, so that option's out.

I talk to chicks all day. Hot co-workers, hot customers, I sell shoes at Sears.

It's jawesome.

Luckily, my supervision is rather lax, it's a call center, and as long as my attention when I'm on call is on that call they do not seem to mind whatever else I do.

So, I troll here, plan my weekends, talk to co-workers and read books in between calls.

Oh, and I've started growing some plants at my desk, so that gives me a little distraction there too.

I work my ass off and have no free time for bs. I work 'till I'm done then I go home.

take a bin...scrunch up lots scrap paper and play basket ball...

I have a question for you all.
What do I have to do to get your jobs?

I check out slashdot, any other site that looks work-related (unfortunately TFP isn't on that list :( ).

Otherwise I connect to my machine at home and set stuff up on it / clean up directories / misc stuff like that.

And I space out (from Office Space):

Surf the web, tool with a bit of code... Thats about it really. Sometimes Ill head to the company's tech library and grab something that looks interesting.

In my old job in Marketing I had an office at the end of a long hallway, so I could hear if anyone was coming long before they got there. I finished quite a few Game Boy games entirely at work.

Fortunately, I got a new job in the same company's IT department. I have much less free time, but love what I'm doing. When I have had some time, I have read tech books to get certifications (which looks like real work), played with code (which looks like real code for work), or just read something for fun (not on the Internet, they trace all of that big time).

stupidvideos.com

I prepare the my DnD campains.

I'm a bartender.


I drink.

listen to music, organize the supply room..... I work maintence at Ohio State University... *sigh*

Visit various forums. Snooze for a bit. Pretend I'm a sloth ... and see how slow I can move.

A three-toed sloth, not the two-toed sloth.

Bored? I'm lucky if I get enough free time to scratch my balls.

Surf the net, including this site.

I work from home most of the time, so I work in my basement. I am at the drywall phase, and it is a b1tch!

Way too busy at work. I barely get time to breathe. The money is good, but it is getting old.

For a while I was writing poetry, since we have tons of scrap paper around. No online surfing is allowed, or reading at your station. So either writing or talking to the people around me are my options.

Ditto the finishing gameboy games.

Not much time to space out, but I BS with coworkers or get ready for the next job that is coming up...

Sucks, but what can you do???
\

This right 'cheer! Check TFP, back to work....rinse and repeat.

Not fair... I wish I could pull that one off at work.

I work at home and waste enormous amounts of time on message boards. I intentionally deactivated my account on one board that was consuming a lot of my time last night by submitting a fictitious e-mail address so that I wouldn't be able to go back there. :lol:

I work in a lab on campus, so I typically surf the net and chill out in the lounge upstairs when work is low. TFP is another favorite.

I work on a boat-dock...and since I'm mainly in charge of the gasdock, most days besides the weekends go pretty slow, so I have to just sit...and sit...and sit, waiting for people. I'd get a Gameboy or something just because of this job alone, but there's a camera directly pointed to where I'm at...so I'm stuck with being bored. Damn.

I work during work time.
I think that's the best way to fill one's time.
I do other things occasionally during sensible break time.
I'm never bored.

I wish I had enough work to keep me busy or at least some entertaining work to do. I'm a student and my main jobs include filing, mail, moving stuff around, and doing a run around the office. I'm mainly the office bitch, do this do that. But I still have long periods of down time, because I do everything pretty efficiently and get it out of the way quick. I can't stand doing something slow when I know I can do it in half the time.

I work the front desk at one of the hotels at our Ski/Summer resort. We have Elderhostel programs going on all summer long and they do little lectures for them and so I watch those..answer phones, make sandwiches, wash a few dishes..dust and vaccuum. I talk to the guests and get to know where they are from and what they do for a living. Usually its the older crowd who go to these programs and they are lonely so they talk a lot.

After everyone goes to bed I surf the interent, but our computer guy has just about every site blocked. And i read A LOT!!

i post here for the most part when i need a break from work.

my job is to sit down...all I do is read and doodle...I love my job (security guard) lol

I don't have a PC at my job, so I take a sports magazine along and read that when it gets slow/boring.

I clean. Store gets dirty easily, and I can talk to my co-workers while doing it. Time passes a lot quicker when my hands are busy.

Sometimes I take a walk around the office building, or outside the office building. My butt gets sore after sitting for several hours straight anyway.

Also, during boring meetings or conferences where I don't have to pay attention (I'm an intern) I try to tap out seconds with my finger and see how consistent I am (I'm also trying to learn how to drum).

www.yetisports.org

they even have a hot key for the games when the boss comes about

I people-watch. Or I stare into space if there are no people to watch. I sell cellular service on commission, so sometimes there just aren't any customers there. I can look out into nothing and shut my brain off, it's great.

seeing that my summer job is in a factory.. ok a warehouse/plant... I work.. and I work... and I work. I bring my radio to prevent my mind from getting bored. I'll take the occasional Bathroom break (when I'm near the air-conditioned one as there is no air conditioning in warehouses), and every now and then go wander off and talk to someone. There are two different job sets that I do... one that they can gauge how fast I'm working and one that they can't. I usually do the latter, and that reason alone is one of my fav. reasons to do the latter. :D I work hard still, but I can slack and talk to people and not have my super yell (even though she does jack shit.. I dunno how my super got into said position). The first set? I have to scan something every 5 minutes MINIMUM or else my super will easily notice my slack. The second though.. everyone does it differently and thus you cannot see that I've been idle for 45 minutes..... because 2 minutes later I could then "magically" have 200 parts pulled.. I merely spent the last 44 minutes pulling all the parts. SO yeah, Music, occasional bathroom.. I usually save it until after last break and call it my "Obligatory Bathroom Break" :D, and the occasional 2 minute chit chat.

I read a book most of the time or do a little web surfing. Sure makes the day go slow when you got shit to do and are bored as hell

well right now im a dish pig, it sucks, but i wille eventually move to the kitchen i guess, only been there about a month, when im bored i go to the bar and get a drink or get some food from the restaurant..

my last job, i worked till i was done, though if i was bored while in the warehouse i would go to the back and do nothing (our warehouse was rather cool due to cement floors and shade)

and when i was driving out in the trucks if i would be bored i would stop somewhere and grab a snack... on one occasion i stopped at a mall and exchanged an OCC hat of mine... theres not alot of trucks parking in mall parking lots... i kinda parked across like 8 spots on a major angle.. ohwell... if i wanted to waste time, i would either go where i knew thered be traffic backups, or just take a back road.

music while driving was always great... and a/c... and food... i miss that part of my lst job .. oh and the money... bah... stupid ass boss bieng an ass and making me quit.. bah humbug

Bored? Rarely. When I have nothing to do (as I said, rarely), I will usually go home. See, in the public service we have this amazing thing called flex time, and I currently have about 30 hours up my sleeve. So I figure I'm owed a couple of early minutes.

Plus I can only access government web sites, which is probably a good thing.

I surf here, slashdot, fark, my local news station's website and cnn. After that, it's try to look busy. Everyone that passes by COULD see my monitor, so I can't play flash games or anything.

But, I also work my ass off when needed. Generally, if Im not busting ass, Ill go thru those sites for 15 mins every 1-1.5 hours and see whats new.

I email and IM throughout my day. Kind of fit my work around it :D

Fortunately my job gives me free time a lot...I run two forum boards of my own and come here when I want to actually read intelligent posting :)

I browse message boards and play freecell. :thumbsup:

Short brakes for TFP and Fark.

This is what I don't understand. I'm not a professional and I've never worked in an office. How do you manage to spend a half hour a day on forums, looking at porn, reading a magazine... and not get fired? Don't you have some kind of quota or monitoring?

We're on flex time too, I love it. Plus, it ups the worker morale ten-fold rather than everyone having to clock in/clock out at a certain time.

This thread scares me. Why do so many of you get bored at work. I would love to find out what that is like. No I would not because my pay is tied to my productivity.

Where do you work at???

I am a physician. My pay is what I collect minus what I pay out.

ah, well different fields are going to have different levels of work and free time mixed in them. I hope to one day be at the point that I don't really have free time to get bored at work, but as a student that time still hasn't come.

My job sucks since I have lots of free time, but have to look like I'm working the whole time.

I make lists of things I want or thing I want to do when I get off work.
I walk around the store and practice towel snaping and knife flipping.
I used to bring my SP and play it in the back room but that got me in trouble.
I sometimes listen to my mp3 player, but then I can't hear the ould speaker.

They definately DO NOT track my usage so I cruise the internet all day, some days I am hellishly busy, some days not. There is also this really hot blonde that works right next to me for the summer who I have become super cool with so that ABSOLUTELY helps the time go by!

I browse the web, play battlefield 1942, watch movies, research anything I dont know but I'm currious about. Pretty much whatever as long as I dont get bored. A day at work with nothing to do is the worst.

-HGClown

Well, I work next to a liquor store, so my 2/3 co-workers make bets on what beer or any other drink they are going to get and we see what they have when they come out.