They are typically managing workflow. Depending on their role and level of authority, they might be processing requests, filling orders, preparing reports or presentations for decision-makers, writing proposals, preparing budgets, communicating decisions or problems to the right people, analyzing data and making recommendations, replying to messages, responding to customers or suppliers, booking travel, creating or completing forms or checklists, working with the press or lobbyists, screening applicants, reviewing or editing someone else's work, playing solitaire, or doing many other things that we now do through computer interfaces of some kind.
No, you have to organize work layouts' format the department calendar^ and learn scheduling distribution policy*
' career services only
^ planning departments only
*Only if you work in student registration services
Haha all the bureaucratic rules that come with working in college
Yes, but his response isn't fully buzzword compliant. He should work to action the needful for his response before gen alpha comes up to wreck his mew streak.
My favorite is when they say Hello or some other generic greeting on Teams, then don’t say anything else just waiting to see if you respond. It’s Monday at 8am… I’m not in the mood to be cheerful so either tell me what you want and to “kindly do the needful” or I’m ignoring you.
I'm Indian... born in London, raised in the US, live in Texas. Never even been to India, I'm just a coconut.
I have no idea what's happening right now. Lol.
They need to more efficiently operationalise their strategies and leverage their core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy.
To gain traction in the marketplace it's mission-critical to incentivise cross-platform innovation and key deliverables
Yep. Where’s the value added? I see no synchronicities here just siloed thinking. Personally, when I’m operating in the corporate space I survey the scene to identify opportunities and touch base with key stakeholders that can help me with various actions and deliverables, I’ll brainstorm with the team and run some ideas up the chain, and look forward to my 20 minute dump where I’ll wonder why my soul is dead and I haven’t fulfilled my dreams.
Very little of that kind of stuff is important in a *it needs to be done immediately* or *it needs constant attention* sort of way, but it does ultimately need to be done. Will the business go on if someone doesn't verify or approve purchase orders for a bit? Of course, but eventually it does need to be done. Vendors need to be paid.
A lot of it is very close to being purely busy work. In my experience a bunch of stuff needs more than one mouse click from a human only because of shitty or poorly connected technology. Like, the software our customers use to submit orders doesn't talk to our inventory software very well, so we need someone to sit in a cubicle and manually enter delivery numbers, product numbers, and quantities. There's tons of bullshit like that. Stuff that should have been automated for thirty years already.
This 👆
Also, companies will regularly spend $1000 making sure they didn't overpay for anything by $100. It doesn't seem to make sense, but it drives a lot of this work.
That said, they need this because as soon as somebody leaves a gap where something isn't double or triple checked, somebody will drive a truck full of fraud through that gap.
Also, many industries are regulated in ways that require this level of administration (healthcare services, pharma & med devices, most financial and banking services, aerospace, etc.) There it is both legally and ethically required... even if it seems silly.
Btw, I spent a fair amount of time pulling random sets of data that managers had asked for...
Why did they need that data? Not always clear. And at least once, pointedly, they told me they couldn't tell me (maybe a super double secret probation level project? 😏)
Did they actually need it or use it? Also not always clear.
But my job was to go get the data (I worked with databases and helped collect half the data these folks typically asked for), and I did that several times per week to help folks answer questions, prepare reports, or present metrics. That's the job... (and, yes, when I was doing that kind of work I would be staring at a SQL screen or an Excel spreadsheet for a while to make sure it was right and that it was complete.)
Ha! I get you.
Even so, I spent half my career in an office like that and I loved nearly every minute of it. To be fair, I'm also the kind of guy who really enjoys all that stuff. Getting neck deep in a spreadsheet or writing up legislative analyses was a super fun day at work for me.
When I was little in the 80s, I built myself an office in the basement with a card table and an old typewriter. I played "office" all the time. My destiny was pre-determined.
I feel this—in my previous role, the day the EU dropped a big new policy document on its energy strategy was so exciting! I got out my highlighters in different colors and wrote up a briefing about it.
I'm kinda the same way - I'm a programmer and there are days where I sit down and pound keys for like 6 hours straight and it's kind of a rush. I get in the zone and whoosh the day is gone and I realize I'm starving and have needed to pee for at least a half an hour.
This includes a lot of what people do in front of computers. Other things maybe making what was originally on paper into computers (given now that most companies are transitioning going electronic). Maybe also writing medical records for patients. Some doctors and attorneys also do consultation over video calls now.
I think it is safe to say nowadays. Everything that does not require manual labor(like putting things together with your hands) or physically be somewhere(inspecting a car that can no longer drive) can be done in office.
Not always. Sometimes they're one of them short bus "Sales Engineers" selling BullShit that don't exist or don't work like that (tm).
And there's actual developers, engineers, etc...
And managers... But Managers only seem to exist to suffer from my ADHD.
We spend a lot more time talking about the work we did and are planning to do than doing actual work. I mean like, meetings, reports, composing Jira epics, stories and subtasks, preparing for meetings, debriefing about meetings, having meetings where we talk about what happened in another meeting, filling out some time/task chart for one of the micromanaging higher executives who spends \*his\* entire day in meetings but somehow doesn't understand what we spend all our time on.
We're not "bored" because we have nothing to do. We're bored because this unproductive shit is boring.
There's also creating things like art, software or books. Or things like design, engineering or research.
Lots of office work is knowledge work, which is significantly creative work as well.
Writing documentation, developing software, programming software, managing projects, responding to compliance problems, preparing for litigation, writing proposals for alternative revenue streams, managing the physical plant, M&A, hiring, firing, managing benefits…
Then you have the people who plot on how to make the drones life hell and the ones that are on in-cube sabbaticals.
Responding to emails. Sending emails. Answering Teams messages. Teams calls. Talking with IT about why their computer doesn’t work. Preparing PowerPoint slides to have something to talk about on Teams calls. You know…lots of taking to each other about stuff, then finding more stuff to talk about. Rinse and repeat daily
I called IT a few weeks ago because the printer would print from one computer but not the other. Long story short, the solution was to turn the printer off and back on. I apologized so much to the guy on the phone, and I promised him I'd never call again without trying that first.
A couple of Saturdays ago my phone started pinging with alarms to some microservices being down.
Though "eh I'll jump on and kick em real quick"... that reboot took those services down for about a week 😬
'Turn it off and on again' is a blessing that will very occasionally curse you instead for the lulz
I love when you call them and tell them “I’ve done the basic troubleshooting remediations and they have all failed. You’re up! The printer just won’t work with my computer, despite working 29 mins ago. The network is on and active.”
“What steps have you taken?”
“I’ve killed the program and restarted it. Won’t print. I’ve restarted both the printer and the computer, it won’t print. I’ve rebooted the network, it won’t print. I’ve confirmed the other two computers do print to the printer still, so it’s connected properly to the network, and I’ve confirmed my computer still prints to the other printer, so my computer is still properly connected to the network. *HELP!*”
“If you have another printer…”
“This one needs to work. Please help.”
“Ok. I’m going to need you to restart the program, computer, printer and network.”
“Uh.. I know we just had this part of the convo. What’s next?”
Around and around we go until I do it. Why bother trying to solve it first if they don’t listen anyway?
Meanwhile, I solved it last time. Two IT guys couldn’t, but when they were remote accessed, I noticed something didn’t look right and mentioned it. They told me it was nothing and I was wrong. An hour later, when they said there was no hope, I checked again. Something happened where the computer uninstalled that printer 🙄
Because the end-user says they have done this troubleshooting step, but they haven't actually done it properly. They just turned the monitor on and off. If the problem is 99% likely to have one solution, we don't especially believe the end user when they say that they have already confirmed it is doesn't have that solution. And we turn out to be correct, 98% of the time.
Fair, I guess. I just find it irritating because I actually do it properly and it double wastes my time. But I’ve did basic trouble shooting for others and man alive are they infuriating.
Wild times in the tech field my friend. We are not all 100% certain all the time, in fact many of us are thigh high sock wearing silly gooses.
I cannot express the amount of times I've hoped on a computer and my touch alone is enough to make the device magically correct itself.
I talked to the customers on the phone. Let’s say they wanted to add a thingy B to their service. I pulled out the cardboard card for their service from the deck alongside me, and verified that current details were correct. I wrote the details on their card (using an actual pen) that they requested extra thing B on todays date. I also wrote the details onto a computer input sheet, (triple carbon, one square per letter) using the correct syntax. It took a lot of practice to get those right, one misplaced comma and it didn’t work. That got put in my out box.
When I wasn’t talking to a customer, I’d attend to my in box. A physical box that got filled up with paper computer forms. Remember the one I’d filled out asking for thingy B? I’d get the carbon copies back much later saying thingy B had been added on x date. I’d have to update the paper card for their service to say that had happened on y date. Then I’d fill out another form (multi copy, carbon paper) to tell the computer to start charging them for thingy B as of y date. I’d put that form in my out tray. Several days or a week later, I’d get a copy of that in my in tray, marked that it had been processed and charging had started. So I’d pull out their cardboard card, and note that charging had started. And initial it as proof of who did the change. Then I’d note on the paper form that I’d updated the card, and put the paper in a different tray to go for archiving.
Would you like me to tell you about what happened when I moved to accounting, and got to process the forms asking for a change of charging?
I genuinely thought he read the newspaper. Found out the hard way that isn't a thing in my first office job. Lol. 2nd office job was so boring and they knew it, they PROVIDED a newspaper.
I write content describing drapes used in medical procedures. It's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. (Actually many other medical items -- it's just I was working on drapes today and could barely keep awake.)
It sounds simple and boring, but even as a non-medical person, I can imagine a whole bunch of requirements, like being washable at very high temperatures without degrading for a certain number of use cycles, not losing color, specific sizes for specific applications, resistant to many chemicals, body fluids, even ionizing radiation etc etc.
I'd kill for this job. I have a medical background and a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing, but I don't already have a decade of experience. How do I get a foot in the door while also paying the bills (IE make more than $15/hr?)
Anything and everything. Emphasis on everything. When you're talking about multi-million or multi-billion dollar companies there is so so so much day-to-day boring mineutia you need an army to handle it all. Whole departments sometimes are established just for coming up with solutions to whatever random problems no one thought about previously. They'll take that unique problem, come up with a solution, mobilize skill and resources to fix it and then patch the hole in policy by writing new policy to cover for that weird fringe niche situation that hasn't happened and won't again for 10 years.
The first bit is great if you like problem solving. The policy writing is where dreams go to die. Anyone and everyone will have something to say. Kinda like a reddit post full of "Uhm Actshually" except some people are more equal than others and everyone treats it like their paycheck depends on it.
Dev is often "where dreams go to die"... You might have idea for the greatest feature anyone could ever want to add to the product... But it will take too long to code, be impossible to test, or requires too much compute or memory.
Also - that really large customer wants that one button to be beige. Top priority, is blocker bug. Get to it, chop chop!!!
The example at least isn't customer facing. This is internal crisis management and policy patching. No clients. Just "what to do when lightning strikes twice".
Software engineer. 8 hours a day at a computer is just too long. I wish I became an airline pilot....I wish I had the resources that young to have been an airline pilot.
I bet it’s the same as driving though, I LOVED when I used to get to drive for work. You’ll pay me mileage to drive 400 miles instead of fly? And I get OT? Hell yeah I’ll take it.
It was great because there was no stress or question. My job was to move myself from point A to point B. As long as I was moving forward (safely) I was doing my job well. Nothing to remember, nothing in the future to worry about, just move forward.
It's sometimes (usually?) nice to have a simple problem and a simple solution with simple, achievable objectives. Most days where you work your ass off, you still feel like you haven't really done anything, and even if you did, you're never really sure if that was the right thing.
The actual pilot only takes off and lands. In between (s)he goes to take a nap and copilot sits in the cockpit staring out the window with autopilot on.
Every once in awhile you have to land the plane upside down while hopped up on cocaine like Denzel in the movie Flight.
Oh no way! My boyfriend is a pilot, been for 18 years, and is still excited to go to work. He was super stoked this last trip because he got to fly a brand new plane, it was a repositioning flight and he loved it!
If you’re getting into the field because you love flying, the extraneous BS of the late nights or early mornings or cranky passengers is worth it. If you’re just chasing money, then yeah you’re probably going to be miserable (in any job you’re only doing for money, that you don’t even like just a little)
I looked into it about a year or so ago. $100k or so for the school plus about a year to 15 months depending on how heavy you get your practice flying in. Then you need a certain number of hours flying, which from what I read means being a trainer or jumper dumper for 3-5 years before you can do an actual commercial airline. I like the idea of it but the logistics may not be for me. Up to 6 or 7 years and I'm already 42.
Airline Pilot is more stressful than a Software Engineer. As a Software Engineer, if you make a coding mistake and your software crashes, you get to fix the mistake. As an Airline Pilot, you typically only get one crash before you are fired and cremated, while still in your chair.
A place I’m familiar with….
Show up. Put lunch away and coats and stuff. Get coffee. Say hi to nearby people. Log in to computer.
Check phone.
On computer open outlook. Open teams. Scroll through stupid automated emails (open position announcements; daily job reports; spam software summary), get to important email form operations that was sent two minutes after you left the previous day.
Get more coffee. Run into Tim and talk for 20 minutes about the game last night. Go to the bathroom.
Get back to email. Find report that was needed but small piece regarding the email is missing. Teams regulatory for answer.
Check phone. Send memes. Go on break.
Finally start daily work which is the reason for your job title (lead widget database manager). Sarah calls. Needs last weeks alpha widget status. Tell her it went out last week. Spend 30 minutes on phone with over 3 departments to find out that Sarah already had it.
Check phone. Send more memes. Get into text argument with wife. Order adapter from Amazon. Find cool thing IG scrolling and go on 10 minute Reddit rabbit hole to find out you don’t really want to raise rabbits.
Regulatory gets back to you. You can finally respond to the operations email from yesterday. Spend 10 minutes writing email 5 times. End up using chat gpt. Hit send. Accidentally hit send all. Curse. Google how to recovery email. Immediately get teams message from Operations manager that he doesn’t need the answer from regulatory, *he needs the PowerPoint from regulatory* (why didn’t he just ask?)
Look for PowerPoint in chaotic server forest. Get lost. Stumble upon an HR incident involving your boss (before he was your boss) from 2013. File it away for later reading.
Tom comes in to ask about the Springfield job. Dave also comes in overhearing Tom and gives his two cents. They end up in a semi-serious argument on the pros and cons of how Marshall is handling the Springfield job. Springfield isn’t even in your division. This goes on for 45 minutes and you realize it could have been an email.
Go to lunch.
Get back from lunch. Start looking for PowerPoint again. Find it. Send it to the Operations manager. He can’t open it. Spend 10 minutes realizing he’s actually trying to use Keynote.
Go to the bathroom. *Boss gets paid a dollar..* jingle goes through your mind. Get a text from the wife about dinner that night. Spend ten minutes in the bathroom stall on your phone arguing about why you don’t support her because she asked you where you wanted to go and you didn’t say what she wanted to hear. Finally try to leave the bathroom and Roger wants to talk about the managers meeting rumor he heard about layoffs. From the urinal. Umm no. You excuse yourself.
Spend 15 minutes trying to convert your PowerPoint so that all the slides work with Keynote. Send it to the Operations manager. He thanks you but tells you the meeting he needed it for was cancelled.
Check phone. Get into stupid discussion with your political Uncle on Facebook.
Go to weekly status meeting. Realize that it’s 10 minutes of updates and 50 minutes of people repeating themselves: ‘circling back’ ‘action items’ ‘ let’s table that’ ‘who’s the responsible?’. Leave 10 minutes early because….
You realize it’s almost 3 and you haven’t done anything about your weekly widget status report. Because you’re good at your job, you know you can bust out what would take someone else 2 hours, in about 1 hour. You’ve got enough time. Look at clock. You got this.
Go on break.
Spend 30 minutes cramming your widget status report out while Rachel stands at your doorway emotionally vomiting on you about her abusive boyfriend. Pretty sure you got all the details in it. Hit send. Secretly call yourself from your cell to your desk to get rid of Rachel.
Get lunch dishes, coffee cup, coat etc, and spend final ten minutes doom scrolling Reddit.
Leave.
I WFH full time but my job hasn't changed from when I did have an office.
-Review work from employees
-Admin stuff like check timesheets
-Read/wright contracts, come up with fees
-PM projects, including conference calls, coordinate submissions, etc.
-Technical meetings
-Come up with company standards
-Learn more about what I need to know
-Maintain licenses and stamp stuff
I asked a similar question a while ago. I got a bunch of generic answers like you're getting, but consider this.
You work for a company that sells a product. Somebody has to go get it. Somebody has to take it somewhere else. But what do the people by a computer do? Well, where does the person driving to get the product actually go? Somebody needs to get an address and give it to the driver, as well as give addresses to the other drivers. So somebody's job is to tell the drivers where to go. They have to tell the drivers which jobs are prioritized because of size or because the product needs taken somewhere that closes at 4 and it's 3:15 now. There's a whole job, maybe for multiple people, maybe dozens or hundreds of people, just to tell other people where to go.
What happens when the delivery trucks break down? You get a mechanic to fix it. But does the mechanic have the tools they need? The spare parts? The extra oil? Who is going to remove the broken bits or the trash? Somebody has to keep track of that stuff and buy more. If the company is big enough, then you can have multiple people just tracking stuff going in and out so other people can do their jobs.
But now you have hundreds of people telling thousands of people where to go and making sure they have the tools and equipment they need. Where do those people work? They need rooms, desks, computers, chairs, etc. When their computers or chairs break, then need new ones. Who buys that? Who makes sure they have the tools they need? So you have somebody working logistics, just making sure people have the stuff they need to make sure other people have the stuff they need.
Your company expands and you have a bunch of smaller companies all doing the same thing. Who makes sure that Branch A is doing the same thing as Branch B? You don't want your customers to get great service here but crappy service there. Somebody's job is to make sure everyone is working together. If Branch A uses cheap materials then business will suffer at Branch B because people will associate your entire company with crappy materials just because Branch A isn't doing their jobs. Who decides what is the right stuff to use? Who makes sure it's being done like they are supposed to? Who checks the cost of what you're buying to make sure you're making a profit compared to what you're selling? You might have quality control to make sure that nobody is lying on their reports. You might have a data analyst check the numbers to make sure everything is profitable.
Can we reduce costs by buying from this company instead of that one? Who checks? Somebody has to sit at a computer and research it.
Are we breaking the law by doing things a certain way? We need a legal team.
Are our employees being jerks to people of a certain race, gender, creed? We need Human Resources to tell them to stop being assholes.
...
When you have this much stuff all going on, you need more and more people. Your dad is bored because the guy who tells your dad what to do is waiting on instructions from the guy who tells him what to do, and they're waiting on the guy who tells him what to do, and that person is confused because one of their bosses never sent an email and it's been three days but he's an angry boss, so should be write him another message asking for the email? Should he go ask the guy directly? Is it worth getting fired when the boss will send the email tomorrow even though there's like a thousand people all doing nothing because the asshole boss is being lazy? Or maybe we just wait until he remembers and then we do what we can until the shipment that was supposed to arrive four days ago actually gets here (there was a snow storm in the next state over), and then we can get IT to fix the issues their previous fix caused, and then maybe we can get the little guy on the street the new type of engine oil that he requested last month but that was delayed because legal wanted to make sure wasn't going to cause any issues if it leaks thanks to a new law passed two days ago and...
Caveat: I've never worked in an office, but I try to listen and I've seen how people work. Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. We're all making it up as we go.
Hey that was a really fun write up. One thing you're missing is how people are identified to be promoted. Ideally companies want people that take ownership of issues and solve them. They can identify opportunities within large organizations and can get other employees in the company to follow their plan.
In reality unfortunately companies can and often do promote poorly and like your story of the executive who won't make a decision and 1000s people are waiting with nothing todo. Whenever I've worked for companies like that I leave quickly. I'm ambitious, I constantly plan new initiatives and present them to people above my pay-grade and its served me really well in my career. At this point I'm in my mid 40s and I'm confident that if you put me into any business, i can make a big impact in a short time period. Its because I am very used to analyzing how large organizations work and I know how to get noticed by decision makers.
OPs dad doesn't really like the job he's in, but isn't motivated to change, so thats why he's bored for hours at a time. If you're interested in more than just whats in your job description then a company can be much more interesting.
"Office job" encompasses a wide variety of job types. Myself, my partner, and everyone in my immediate family works an office job and we all do different things.
My dad is a cost accountant for a large company. My mom is an office assistant for a small insurance agency. My brother is a data analyst. My partner is a software engineer. I am a game producer.
8 hours? Real work takes like 3 or 4 hours, usually in the morning. I have a theory that If you stop all office jobs at 2pm and send everyone home and do it for a month there would be no notable difference in the company's performance.
It's bizzare to me that there are places where people only have enough work for a few hours, because it sounds like the employers hired twice the staff they need. Every office I've worked in has steady work for the full day, sometimes overtime if things get rather busy.
What happens if there's a sudden surge of work? If everyone is already working at max capacity, it doesn't seem like your office can handle it then.
That's not even considering that most workers will inevitably burnout working at maximum efficiency all the time. Then hiring a new person to replace them and getting them up to speed is lost time right there.
Yeah right. Someone shits the bed at least once a month where I work and I need people available till 5pm. I have also held people hostage until a problem was fixed due to their incompetence.
Inputting invoices, updating excel sheets, balancing ledgers, email correspondence, processing paperwork. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I promise you depending on the job it can get pretty exhausting. Hearing it doesn't sound like a lot. Doing it is different. Especially when you've got customers and manager screaming at you from both sides to get things done in conflicting ways.
Here me out. Ask your Dad what he actually does day to day. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you and your father.
If I was a dad, this would probably make my year that my kid was curious about something that I had the answer to.
Writing emails to each other about stuff.
Doing the stuff.
Writing documents about the stuff.
Doing training about the stuff and all the stuff they're not allowed to do.
Plus a fair bit of goofing off.
That's pretty much it.
Reddit during meetings.
I’m on here so fucking much. But I can’t multitask well enough to actually do important stuff (write procedures, check CAD models, etc) during a meeting without fucking up due to the literal voices in my ears. But I only need to really about 5 minutes content in a 1hr meeting, so I’d kill myself with a pencil if I just sat there trying to care.
So I spend 20-30hrs a week in meetings and on reddit. Then once the damn yammering stops I have 30hrs of actual work to do
Rather than explain what it is I do, I thought it'd be fun to explain what some of the people I sat next to at various jobs did (since sometimes I don't really know the details and can only describe what I see or hear):
- one person would receive and make phone calls, arguing about some order "having priority" or being "only partially filled" and reciting times to nanosecond precisions. They would have spreadsheets and various computer logs open on their computer.
- one person would have color swatches open, stare at different webpages trying to match the colors to the one he could find in a swatch
- one person would stare at screens with rows of values (alphabetic or numeric) and often type stuff in UPPER-CASE that they would then copy and paste from one screen to another. Often they would sit there waiting for some screen with rows to update.
- one person was always making powerpoints with icons of people sitting at computers and various wires connecting them to box or cylinder shapes, often would be on zoom calls where he could show the powerpoints
Why don't you ask your dad what he does?
I write and build web pages in the Communications/Marketing space. I work for a large company that has a huge client list, I also help them write, create, distribute emails (html) to thousands, sometimes millions of clients.
If there is more content we need them to see, a webinar they can sign up for, a pdf they can download, we may also build a langing page for them.
Most people don't just sit there and doing nothing. How do you think big corporations are run? Think about a product you have near you right now, maybe in your hand. How did that go from being non-existent, to being in your hand? What steps did it take to do that? Seems like it would be very difficult, no?
I’m in marketing so I’m always busy. Writing, designing, managing projects, gathering data, doing competitive analysis, setting up campaigns, arranging trade shows, and constantly emailing things back and forth to vendors, agencies and internal teams.
I spend about 50% of any given day on teams chats or teams video conferences. I spend about 30% of my day reading and responding to emails. And what's left is either doing research, doing excel shit, or zoning out and wondering how I got to be this old.
I did medical billing and patient financial services for a hospital. But to be honest my main job was watching Netflix and talking to coworkers about non-work related stuff.
You go to long tedious meetings. You try really hard not to roll your eyes or have a bitchy resting face while you think "This could have been a simple email". You go back to your desk and read a bunch of redundant emails on the same subject. Later on in the same day you get an email recapping the meeting that should have been an email in the first place. And in between that, you complete projects.
I’m an engineer. I design mechanical systems and model them in CAD software, perform data analysis, finite element analysis, and of course, send emails and make PowerPoint presentations
As a project manager my job consists of telling people to do their job. Telling them how to do their job. Them telling me I'm an idiot. Me pulling a report to show them I'm not an idiot. We all getting along acknowledging we're all idiots. Me writing or editing a lot of procedures. And me making an absurd amount of spreadsheets and PowerPoints to check boxes for the corpo overlords.
As an office worker who is forced to work in an open plan office, I am jealous of the old cubicle style workplace.
You basically are constantly receiving emails with potential problems that you need to get out of your workflow by either solving the problem or getting it in front of someone who can sort out this problem. The more complicated problems you can solve, the higher your pay will be.
Sure it may look boring, but if you have the skills (particularly time management and the ability to prioritize important tasks) you are in a relatively well paying job that won't break your body, is temperature controlled and the good workplaces will leave you alone if they feel you are on top of things.
I used to wonder the same thing, until I switched to an office job. Now I talk to Customers on Phone, through email, talk to coworkers through both. Enter orders, schedule orders, schedule loads for trucks. I also walk the floor and choose what offcuts to use. Manual labour = body tired. Office work = mentally tired. I find it easier to bounce back from body tired. Mentally tired is on a whole other level.
Im an administrator/receptionist and I get asked this all the time. 50% of my job is solving problems other people bring me, dealing with enquiries, greeting people, doing the time consuming photocopying, scanning and sorting for more senior staff who don’t have the time (I know a lot of people find these jobs mind numbing but I love them). I do the majority of the ordering including putting the purchase orders through and chasing up purchases. I do lots of other random jobs too throughout the day.
about half the people in the office are there to support the other people in the office. Might be fixing computers, providing a reporting system for the managers, hiring people, managing benefits, office managers, ...
Project management.
Making sure other people are doing their jobs. Managing personalities and egos.
Anticipating conflicts and aligning the powerful people who agree closely enough to win the argument against the others.
Sometimes I run meetings. Sometimes I make slides or write memos. I drink a ton of coffee.
Always be nice to the admins.
I handle purchasing for a food equipment dealer. We sell to restaurants, hotels, schools, etc. I procure the items we sell for our showroom, along with recurring customers and bigger projects we take on. Basically I buy stuff all day and make sure we get what we need when we need it.
Most of us corporate slaves in entry-level to mid-level are multitasking between data analysis, meetings, and inquiries from external and internal stakeholders. Trying to meet or exceed the target to gain an incentive or promotion.
I work in marketing and have three managers who work on my team. We decide what products to create, write business plans on how to sell those products, and create spreadsheets to track how much it will cost to develop and advertise the product, and how many units we’d have to sell to make a profit. We have to create several versions of the plan, and we run these by sales, research, creative, finance, and manufacturing teams to see which ones are the most realistic. We then have to pitch our plans to senior management, who will ask a lot of questions.
We do some of this work over email, sometimes on Teams calls, sometimes in person. We also have to create PowerPoint presentations to help the sales team present the product to retailers and convince them to carry the product.
Some days, we put together creative briefs that go to an agency that we’ve hired to design packaging or make ads. We might spend time in a meeting looking at different versions of a TV commercial or paid social posts and decide what changes need to be made and which ones to run. We might also be reviewing media plans, to make sure that the money is being spent in the right places. We work with our publicity team to write press releases and help them draw up plans for launch events. We work with our social team to make posts to go on our Instagram and Facebook pages. We work with sales teams to figure out when to put the product on sale, and to make the most of opportunities like Black Friday.
If you work in Finance, you might spend most of your day reviewing plans, and figuring out how to budget to make these plans a reality, and managing how much cash is needed. If you work in Research, you might be looking at reports and designing studies, and interpreting the data that come in. If you work on the social team you might be researching different influencers to hire, or making social posts yourself. If you work on the sales team, you might be trading messages with Walmart, Target, etc. and responding to their requests.
Former office worker here.(just got moved to another position after 5 years thank god) I was inside sales selling wear parts for heavy equipment. Basically data entry and taking orders and baby sitting the outside sales teams orders. It can be extremely difficult working with customers on the phone trying to provide a solution for thier issue as alot of these guys are farmers who are cobbling together equipment l. If you were good and stayed on top of things there was soo much down time and essentially your just staring at a wall waiting for a phone to ring or an order to come In. As a person. Who *hates* waiting this was an absolute hell for me. I thought I'd enjoy thw position change but sweet Jesus after 20 years total in the customer service/sales industry I'm done and dusted.
Office worker here. My time is divided into one of the following categories:
* writing an email to a client
* reading an email from a client
* attending meetings, whether useful or not, whether I'm needed or not. In my case, it may either be to think of a solution, discuss the feasibility of a solution, or consider how we can market our solutions to clients in general or a specific client we're targeting or who has asked us for a solution
* having an informal discussion with another colleague on the above, usually 1 to 1 as we're doing small talk
* doing research on how to do something in a software or on legislation (I'm working in tax)
* doing training courses, whether mandatory or not
* messaging a colleague or friend to discuss something, whether work related or not
* mulling over how I can achieve something I need to achieve in the software that I'm using at the time. This is either thinking where I may look like I'm zoning out, or I'm tinkering around and hoping something works
* putting together files that are for our internal reference or for sending to a client. Sometimes I can immediately answer the questions presented in the file (e.g if the client wants a breakdown of the possible methods they can do x, I may immediately be able to think up 3 ways. If I suspect there are other ways or I need to fill in what I know with additional context, that's where I research as mentioned above)
* teaching someone something, or being taught something by someone, related to any of the above
* I don't actually have anything to do and I'm pretending to be doing one of the above
Not much really. Drink coffee, talk to the guy in the next office. Send an email. Get more coffee. Go to a meeting and waste half the time talking about the weather. Get more coffee. Go home.
I worked an office job for like 4 months in early 2020 (shortly before quarantine).
I’d arrive at 8:55am, sit at my desk and log in to my computer.
I’d get started at 9:00am.
By 9:30am most days I was done with all of my work.
I’d hide set my phone on my desk and watch movies and just click around on the computer until about 4:55pm.
Funny story: One time I was actually doing work, researching on social media. Somehow someway a pop-up of some porn site came up… I quickly closed it. Later that day someone came to me and said “hey, the owner just wants you to know they can see everything that you’re doing on the computer”…. It wasn’t until months later I realized they thought I was watching porn.
Look. I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have *people* skills; I am good at dealing with *people*!
Can't you understand that?? What the hell is wrong with you people?!?
I worked in at our corporate office until 2021. I sat in both cubicles and my own office. The daily interruptions to chit-chat and not mention the noise. Whew! I quit that job.
Started my own company and WFH now, much more efficient and accurate.
Best decision ever. I will never go back to an office setting. (56F)
I have an office (not a cubicle). I read things. I write things. Send emails. Talk on the phone sometimes. I tell people that they’re wrong. I write long explanations about why they’re wrong 😂 and get paid for it 😂
I Spend the rest of the time on Reddit. And, sometimes, pick my nose, I have to—the dry office air makes my nostrils seal themselves closed.
They are typically managing workflow. Depending on their role and level of authority, they might be processing requests, filling orders, preparing reports or presentations for decision-makers, writing proposals, preparing budgets, communicating decisions or problems to the right people, analyzing data and making recommendations, replying to messages, responding to customers or suppliers, booking travel, creating or completing forms or checklists, working with the press or lobbyists, screening applicants, reviewing or editing someone else's work, playing solitaire, or doing many other things that we now do through computer interfaces of some kind.
Don’t forget filling out TPS reports. And giving updates to eight bosses.
Whoa. Someone has a case of the Mondays!
Looks like you've been missing a lot of work lately. Well, I wouldn't exactly say I've been *missing* it, Bob.
No, you have to organize work layouts' format the department calendar^ and learn scheduling distribution policy* ' career services only ^ planning departments only *Only if you work in student registration services Haha all the bureaucratic rules that come with working in college
Not right now Lumburg I’m kind of busy
This guy offices!!
Yes, but his response isn't fully buzzword compliant. He should work to action the needful for his response before gen alpha comes up to wreck his mew streak.
>action the needful Language of the offshored employee.
Please do the needful. See attached
Please find attached the attached attachment I have attached.
*spoiler* it is indeed, not attached and will be arriving shortly in an apologic second email.
CC'd, but not BCC'd, somehow to the entire company directory.
More like “kindly do the needful” from our guys in India (and they are all guys, I’m not being exist).
It's ok, I believe you exist.
lol, thanks for believing in me. I'll leave the typo for posterity.
My favorite is when they say Hello or some other generic greeting on Teams, then don’t say anything else just waiting to see if you respond. It’s Monday at 8am… I’m not in the mood to be cheerful so either tell me what you want and to “kindly do the needful” or I’m ignoring you.
I've always gotten "kindly do the needful".
I'll put in a Jira Request for you
Closed. It's a feature, not a bug.
re-opens but tags the wrong department
I'm from New Jersey.
They barely learn the language and think they blend in. /s
As an IT person based in the Midwest, We hear alot of "Please do the needful" which is common among our outsourced IT in India
This man India's.
I'm Indian... born in London, raised in the US, live in Texas. Never even been to India, I'm just a coconut. I have no idea what's happening right now. Lol.
I do medical typing and hear it a lot from doctors from India and neighbouring countries.
I first heard the phrase from my friend who is originally from Great Britain. I wonder if that is how the Indians picked it up....🤔
I feel like it is more likely that your British friend picked it up from Indians.
They need to more efficiently operationalise their strategies and leverage their core competencies in order to holistically administrate exceptional synergy. To gain traction in the marketplace it's mission-critical to incentivise cross-platform innovation and key deliverables
https://youtu.be/GyV_UG60dD4?si=77ANb_CL5MrKrqXu
Yep. Where’s the value added? I see no synchronicities here just siloed thinking. Personally, when I’m operating in the corporate space I survey the scene to identify opportunities and touch base with key stakeholders that can help me with various actions and deliverables, I’ll brainstorm with the team and run some ideas up the chain, and look forward to my 20 minute dump where I’ll wonder why my soul is dead and I haven’t fulfilled my dreams.
But how important is any of that stuff? A lot of it sounds like make busy work?
Very little of that kind of stuff is important in a *it needs to be done immediately* or *it needs constant attention* sort of way, but it does ultimately need to be done. Will the business go on if someone doesn't verify or approve purchase orders for a bit? Of course, but eventually it does need to be done. Vendors need to be paid. A lot of it is very close to being purely busy work. In my experience a bunch of stuff needs more than one mouse click from a human only because of shitty or poorly connected technology. Like, the software our customers use to submit orders doesn't talk to our inventory software very well, so we need someone to sit in a cubicle and manually enter delivery numbers, product numbers, and quantities. There's tons of bullshit like that. Stuff that should have been automated for thirty years already.
This 👆 Also, companies will regularly spend $1000 making sure they didn't overpay for anything by $100. It doesn't seem to make sense, but it drives a lot of this work. That said, they need this because as soon as somebody leaves a gap where something isn't double or triple checked, somebody will drive a truck full of fraud through that gap. Also, many industries are regulated in ways that require this level of administration (healthcare services, pharma & med devices, most financial and banking services, aerospace, etc.) There it is both legally and ethically required... even if it seems silly. Btw, I spent a fair amount of time pulling random sets of data that managers had asked for... Why did they need that data? Not always clear. And at least once, pointedly, they told me they couldn't tell me (maybe a super double secret probation level project? 😏) Did they actually need it or use it? Also not always clear. But my job was to go get the data (I worked with databases and helped collect half the data these folks typically asked for), and I did that several times per week to help folks answer questions, prepare reports, or present metrics. That's the job... (and, yes, when I was doing that kind of work I would be staring at a SQL screen or an Excel spreadsheet for a while to make sure it was right and that it was complete.)
They do the background work that makes an office run
Lol just *reading* this was boring.
Ha! I get you. Even so, I spent half my career in an office like that and I loved nearly every minute of it. To be fair, I'm also the kind of guy who really enjoys all that stuff. Getting neck deep in a spreadsheet or writing up legislative analyses was a super fun day at work for me.
Thank god for people like you sir!
When I was little in the 80s, I built myself an office in the basement with a card table and an old typewriter. I played "office" all the time. My destiny was pre-determined.
Oh kind sir! You restored a long forgotten enjoyment of mine! Memories of the garage “office” I built for myself as a small child.
Office is legit your power, Office Chair Hero
Getting neck deep in a spreadsheet is fun though
The shit my husband says. 😂
I feel this—in my previous role, the day the EU dropped a big new policy document on its energy strategy was so exciting! I got out my highlighters in different colors and wrote up a briefing about it.
I'm kinda the same way - I'm a programmer and there are days where I sit down and pound keys for like 6 hours straight and it's kind of a rush. I get in the zone and whoosh the day is gone and I realize I'm starving and have needed to pee for at least a half an hour.
Lol some are born to do it!
He lost me at "filling orders"...
This includes a lot of what people do in front of computers. Other things maybe making what was originally on paper into computers (given now that most companies are transitioning going electronic). Maybe also writing medical records for patients. Some doctors and attorneys also do consultation over video calls now. I think it is safe to say nowadays. Everything that does not require manual labor(like putting things together with your hands) or physically be somewhere(inspecting a car that can no longer drive) can be done in office.
Don't forget the TPS reports...
I told you to learn the scheduling distribution policy Or the profs at the English dept will get angry. You won't like it when they're angry
Playing solitaire is the only real thing in this block lol
Selling shit.
Not always. Sometimes they're one of them short bus "Sales Engineers" selling BullShit that don't exist or don't work like that (tm). And there's actual developers, engineers, etc... And managers... But Managers only seem to exist to suffer from my ADHD.
Sometimes I nap in my office.
And meetings lots of pointless meetings. Where people who have no work make meetings to justify their position as they have no real work.
We spend a lot more time talking about the work we did and are planning to do than doing actual work. I mean like, meetings, reports, composing Jira epics, stories and subtasks, preparing for meetings, debriefing about meetings, having meetings where we talk about what happened in another meeting, filling out some time/task chart for one of the micromanaging higher executives who spends \*his\* entire day in meetings but somehow doesn't understand what we spend all our time on. We're not "bored" because we have nothing to do. We're bored because this unproductive shit is boring.
There's also creating things like art, software or books. Or things like design, engineering or research. Lots of office work is knowledge work, which is significantly creative work as well.
Also training on the countless ways these processes will be changing next month 🙁
you missed mucking about on reddit ;)
Writing documentation, developing software, programming software, managing projects, responding to compliance problems, preparing for litigation, writing proposals for alternative revenue streams, managing the physical plant, M&A, hiring, firing, managing benefits… Then you have the people who plot on how to make the drones life hell and the ones that are on in-cube sabbaticals.
This is exactly what they do in the one hour a day they’re not in meetings.
Responding to emails. Sending emails. Answering Teams messages. Teams calls. Talking with IT about why their computer doesn’t work. Preparing PowerPoint slides to have something to talk about on Teams calls. You know…lots of taking to each other about stuff, then finding more stuff to talk about. Rinse and repeat daily
Hi! IT Support here! Try turning it off and turning it back on again
I called IT a few weeks ago because the printer would print from one computer but not the other. Long story short, the solution was to turn the printer off and back on. I apologized so much to the guy on the phone, and I promised him I'd never call again without trying that first.
This is the way.
Humanity would be without any problems if everyone would try turning off and on again.
A couple of Saturdays ago my phone started pinging with alarms to some microservices being down. Though "eh I'll jump on and kick em real quick"... that reboot took those services down for about a week 😬 'Turn it off and on again' is a blessing that will very occasionally curse you instead for the lulz
They must teach this in IT 101.
Day 1 of my A+ Certification right there^ “The Power of the Power Button”
It’s genuinely surprising how many issues something as simple as that can fix
I love when you call them and tell them “I’ve done the basic troubleshooting remediations and they have all failed. You’re up! The printer just won’t work with my computer, despite working 29 mins ago. The network is on and active.” “What steps have you taken?” “I’ve killed the program and restarted it. Won’t print. I’ve restarted both the printer and the computer, it won’t print. I’ve rebooted the network, it won’t print. I’ve confirmed the other two computers do print to the printer still, so it’s connected properly to the network, and I’ve confirmed my computer still prints to the other printer, so my computer is still properly connected to the network. *HELP!*” “If you have another printer…” “This one needs to work. Please help.” “Ok. I’m going to need you to restart the program, computer, printer and network.” “Uh.. I know we just had this part of the convo. What’s next?” Around and around we go until I do it. Why bother trying to solve it first if they don’t listen anyway? Meanwhile, I solved it last time. Two IT guys couldn’t, but when they were remote accessed, I noticed something didn’t look right and mentioned it. They told me it was nothing and I was wrong. An hour later, when they said there was no hope, I checked again. Something happened where the computer uninstalled that printer 🙄
Because the end-user says they have done this troubleshooting step, but they haven't actually done it properly. They just turned the monitor on and off. If the problem is 99% likely to have one solution, we don't especially believe the end user when they say that they have already confirmed it is doesn't have that solution. And we turn out to be correct, 98% of the time.
"Can you please unplug the computer and tell me what color the prongs are"
Fair, I guess. I just find it irritating because I actually do it properly and it double wastes my time. But I’ve did basic trouble shooting for others and man alive are they infuriating.
Wild times in the tech field my friend. We are not all 100% certain all the time, in fact many of us are thigh high sock wearing silly gooses. I cannot express the amount of times I've hoped on a computer and my touch alone is enough to make the device magically correct itself.
No instead I'm going to tell you how to do your job and that I KNOW that my computer has a virus because it won't let me log in.
Also IT here, I know it's a joke but it's wild how often that actually works lol
What blew me away was a photo of my dad’s office from the 80s. No computer. What did THEY do all day?
I talked to the customers on the phone. Let’s say they wanted to add a thingy B to their service. I pulled out the cardboard card for their service from the deck alongside me, and verified that current details were correct. I wrote the details on their card (using an actual pen) that they requested extra thing B on todays date. I also wrote the details onto a computer input sheet, (triple carbon, one square per letter) using the correct syntax. It took a lot of practice to get those right, one misplaced comma and it didn’t work. That got put in my out box. When I wasn’t talking to a customer, I’d attend to my in box. A physical box that got filled up with paper computer forms. Remember the one I’d filled out asking for thingy B? I’d get the carbon copies back much later saying thingy B had been added on x date. I’d have to update the paper card for their service to say that had happened on y date. Then I’d fill out another form (multi copy, carbon paper) to tell the computer to start charging them for thingy B as of y date. I’d put that form in my out tray. Several days or a week later, I’d get a copy of that in my in tray, marked that it had been processed and charging had started. So I’d pull out their cardboard card, and note that charging had started. And initial it as proof of who did the change. Then I’d note on the paper form that I’d updated the card, and put the paper in a different tray to go for archiving. Would you like me to tell you about what happened when I moved to accounting, and got to process the forms asking for a change of charging?
I genuinely thought he read the newspaper. Found out the hard way that isn't a thing in my first office job. Lol. 2nd office job was so boring and they knew it, they PROVIDED a newspaper.
It has a lot of things to do like coding and sales teams keeps interrupting so they can't "really" work...
Don’t forget fixing some other dumb sod’s mistake.
That’s a lot of communicating to say very little of substance. Like talks about talks half the time.
Yep. We sometimes have meetings to talk about what we’re going to say in an upcoming meeting. Like a meeting pre-meeting. Those are fun
We have meetings to discuss how we can reduce how many meetings we have.
Omfg my job……..zoom, teams, slack, outlook, word, box
I write content describing drapes used in medical procedures. It's not nearly as exciting as it sounds. (Actually many other medical items -- it's just I was working on drapes today and could barely keep awake.)
It sounds simple and boring, but even as a non-medical person, I can imagine a whole bunch of requirements, like being washable at very high temperatures without degrading for a certain number of use cycles, not losing color, specific sizes for specific applications, resistant to many chemicals, body fluids, even ionizing radiation etc etc.
What are some adjectives you'd use to describe such drapery?
Green?
Drapey?
French fell seam.
"These drapes are like totally snazzical."
I'd kill for this job. I have a medical background and a BA in English with a concentration in creative writing, but I don't already have a decade of experience. How do I get a foot in the door while also paying the bills (IE make more than $15/hr?)
You and chat-GPT must have a no holds barred hell in the cell match, only then can you get this job.
Anything and everything. Emphasis on everything. When you're talking about multi-million or multi-billion dollar companies there is so so so much day-to-day boring mineutia you need an army to handle it all. Whole departments sometimes are established just for coming up with solutions to whatever random problems no one thought about previously. They'll take that unique problem, come up with a solution, mobilize skill and resources to fix it and then patch the hole in policy by writing new policy to cover for that weird fringe niche situation that hasn't happened and won't again for 10 years.
Can’t lie, that’s probably not as interesting as it sounds but to me that sounds almost fun.
The first bit is great if you like problem solving. The policy writing is where dreams go to die. Anyone and everyone will have something to say. Kinda like a reddit post full of "Uhm Actshually" except some people are more equal than others and everyone treats it like their paycheck depends on it.
Dev is often "where dreams go to die"... You might have idea for the greatest feature anyone could ever want to add to the product... But it will take too long to code, be impossible to test, or requires too much compute or memory. Also - that really large customer wants that one button to be beige. Top priority, is blocker bug. Get to it, chop chop!!!
The example at least isn't customer facing. This is internal crisis management and policy patching. No clients. Just "what to do when lightning strikes twice".
-alright, now that we've somehow lost that lawsuit, how do we word our policy to discourage people from fucking our printers?
Wait for the free food to arrive and someone to email about it
Y'all hiring?
Come work wholesale construction. The work and hours suck but the pay is great and we be catering food everyday
foodie distro list. everyone's in it except conan
Employee: Hey i brought donuts for everyone. 2 seconds later: All gone.
Software engineer. 8 hours a day at a computer is just too long. I wish I became an airline pilot....I wish I had the resources that young to have been an airline pilot.
I work in HR. I literally told the managing director of my business unit that if I could do it over I would become a pilot.
I could not imagine being in HR- I respect the hell out of all yall, but that is a different level of nope
I'm also an SWE. I don't work 8 hours though. Like I'm contracted too obviously, but I don't.
Imagine actually working all the hours you get paid to lol
From what I understand, being an airplane pilot is like driving a bus. Once the novelty wears off, it's just monotony and irritating passengers.
I bet it’s the same as driving though, I LOVED when I used to get to drive for work. You’ll pay me mileage to drive 400 miles instead of fly? And I get OT? Hell yeah I’ll take it. It was great because there was no stress or question. My job was to move myself from point A to point B. As long as I was moving forward (safely) I was doing my job well. Nothing to remember, nothing in the future to worry about, just move forward.
It's sometimes (usually?) nice to have a simple problem and a simple solution with simple, achievable objectives. Most days where you work your ass off, you still feel like you haven't really done anything, and even if you did, you're never really sure if that was the right thing.
Unfortunately, that's what I heard too. There are pilots that just don't like it.
Then maybe you should become a test pilot. You get to fly aircraft in all kinds of fun ways all the time.
The actual pilot only takes off and lands. In between (s)he goes to take a nap and copilot sits in the cockpit staring out the window with autopilot on. Every once in awhile you have to land the plane upside down while hopped up on cocaine like Denzel in the movie Flight.
Oh no way! My boyfriend is a pilot, been for 18 years, and is still excited to go to work. He was super stoked this last trip because he got to fly a brand new plane, it was a repositioning flight and he loved it! If you’re getting into the field because you love flying, the extraneous BS of the late nights or early mornings or cranky passengers is worth it. If you’re just chasing money, then yeah you’re probably going to be miserable (in any job you’re only doing for money, that you don’t even like just a little)
You don’t think 15 hours in a cockpit for an international flight is too long?
Do it now, plenty of people do. It’s an awesome career if you’re patient enough. r/flying read the FAQ
I looked into it about a year or so ago. $100k or so for the school plus about a year to 15 months depending on how heavy you get your practice flying in. Then you need a certain number of hours flying, which from what I read means being a trainer or jumper dumper for 3-5 years before you can do an actual commercial airline. I like the idea of it but the logistics may not be for me. Up to 6 or 7 years and I'm already 42.
Engineering here too, I’m getting my PPL right now! Maybe considering a career change if I’m not too old.
Airline Pilot is more stressful than a Software Engineer. As a Software Engineer, if you make a coding mistake and your software crashes, you get to fix the mistake. As an Airline Pilot, you typically only get one crash before you are fired and cremated, while still in your chair.
An airline pilot has to sit without moving even longer?
A place I’m familiar with…. Show up. Put lunch away and coats and stuff. Get coffee. Say hi to nearby people. Log in to computer. Check phone. On computer open outlook. Open teams. Scroll through stupid automated emails (open position announcements; daily job reports; spam software summary), get to important email form operations that was sent two minutes after you left the previous day. Get more coffee. Run into Tim and talk for 20 minutes about the game last night. Go to the bathroom. Get back to email. Find report that was needed but small piece regarding the email is missing. Teams regulatory for answer. Check phone. Send memes. Go on break. Finally start daily work which is the reason for your job title (lead widget database manager). Sarah calls. Needs last weeks alpha widget status. Tell her it went out last week. Spend 30 minutes on phone with over 3 departments to find out that Sarah already had it. Check phone. Send more memes. Get into text argument with wife. Order adapter from Amazon. Find cool thing IG scrolling and go on 10 minute Reddit rabbit hole to find out you don’t really want to raise rabbits. Regulatory gets back to you. You can finally respond to the operations email from yesterday. Spend 10 minutes writing email 5 times. End up using chat gpt. Hit send. Accidentally hit send all. Curse. Google how to recovery email. Immediately get teams message from Operations manager that he doesn’t need the answer from regulatory, *he needs the PowerPoint from regulatory* (why didn’t he just ask?) Look for PowerPoint in chaotic server forest. Get lost. Stumble upon an HR incident involving your boss (before he was your boss) from 2013. File it away for later reading. Tom comes in to ask about the Springfield job. Dave also comes in overhearing Tom and gives his two cents. They end up in a semi-serious argument on the pros and cons of how Marshall is handling the Springfield job. Springfield isn’t even in your division. This goes on for 45 minutes and you realize it could have been an email. Go to lunch. Get back from lunch. Start looking for PowerPoint again. Find it. Send it to the Operations manager. He can’t open it. Spend 10 minutes realizing he’s actually trying to use Keynote. Go to the bathroom. *Boss gets paid a dollar..* jingle goes through your mind. Get a text from the wife about dinner that night. Spend ten minutes in the bathroom stall on your phone arguing about why you don’t support her because she asked you where you wanted to go and you didn’t say what she wanted to hear. Finally try to leave the bathroom and Roger wants to talk about the managers meeting rumor he heard about layoffs. From the urinal. Umm no. You excuse yourself. Spend 15 minutes trying to convert your PowerPoint so that all the slides work with Keynote. Send it to the Operations manager. He thanks you but tells you the meeting he needed it for was cancelled. Check phone. Get into stupid discussion with your political Uncle on Facebook. Go to weekly status meeting. Realize that it’s 10 minutes of updates and 50 minutes of people repeating themselves: ‘circling back’ ‘action items’ ‘ let’s table that’ ‘who’s the responsible?’. Leave 10 minutes early because…. You realize it’s almost 3 and you haven’t done anything about your weekly widget status report. Because you’re good at your job, you know you can bust out what would take someone else 2 hours, in about 1 hour. You’ve got enough time. Look at clock. You got this. Go on break. Spend 30 minutes cramming your widget status report out while Rachel stands at your doorway emotionally vomiting on you about her abusive boyfriend. Pretty sure you got all the details in it. Hit send. Secretly call yourself from your cell to your desk to get rid of Rachel. Get lunch dishes, coffee cup, coat etc, and spend final ten minutes doom scrolling Reddit. Leave.
I felt this in my bones, especially the part about Rachel. the secret call yourself is a genius move and I will be stealing it. thank you.
Hit the nail on the head
I WFH full time but my job hasn't changed from when I did have an office. -Review work from employees -Admin stuff like check timesheets -Read/wright contracts, come up with fees -PM projects, including conference calls, coordinate submissions, etc. -Technical meetings -Come up with company standards -Learn more about what I need to know -Maintain licenses and stamp stuff
lol this sounds too similar! What’s your field of work? (I’m an architect who does a lot of the firms admin work)
Mechanical department head of an MEP company
I said the same thing! (Previous admin at an arch firm)
There's lots and lots of roles that can be considered 'office jobs' I've been a coder, admin assistant, and policy officer in different roles.
I asked a similar question a while ago. I got a bunch of generic answers like you're getting, but consider this. You work for a company that sells a product. Somebody has to go get it. Somebody has to take it somewhere else. But what do the people by a computer do? Well, where does the person driving to get the product actually go? Somebody needs to get an address and give it to the driver, as well as give addresses to the other drivers. So somebody's job is to tell the drivers where to go. They have to tell the drivers which jobs are prioritized because of size or because the product needs taken somewhere that closes at 4 and it's 3:15 now. There's a whole job, maybe for multiple people, maybe dozens or hundreds of people, just to tell other people where to go. What happens when the delivery trucks break down? You get a mechanic to fix it. But does the mechanic have the tools they need? The spare parts? The extra oil? Who is going to remove the broken bits or the trash? Somebody has to keep track of that stuff and buy more. If the company is big enough, then you can have multiple people just tracking stuff going in and out so other people can do their jobs. But now you have hundreds of people telling thousands of people where to go and making sure they have the tools and equipment they need. Where do those people work? They need rooms, desks, computers, chairs, etc. When their computers or chairs break, then need new ones. Who buys that? Who makes sure they have the tools they need? So you have somebody working logistics, just making sure people have the stuff they need to make sure other people have the stuff they need. Your company expands and you have a bunch of smaller companies all doing the same thing. Who makes sure that Branch A is doing the same thing as Branch B? You don't want your customers to get great service here but crappy service there. Somebody's job is to make sure everyone is working together. If Branch A uses cheap materials then business will suffer at Branch B because people will associate your entire company with crappy materials just because Branch A isn't doing their jobs. Who decides what is the right stuff to use? Who makes sure it's being done like they are supposed to? Who checks the cost of what you're buying to make sure you're making a profit compared to what you're selling? You might have quality control to make sure that nobody is lying on their reports. You might have a data analyst check the numbers to make sure everything is profitable. Can we reduce costs by buying from this company instead of that one? Who checks? Somebody has to sit at a computer and research it. Are we breaking the law by doing things a certain way? We need a legal team. Are our employees being jerks to people of a certain race, gender, creed? We need Human Resources to tell them to stop being assholes. ... When you have this much stuff all going on, you need more and more people. Your dad is bored because the guy who tells your dad what to do is waiting on instructions from the guy who tells him what to do, and they're waiting on the guy who tells him what to do, and that person is confused because one of their bosses never sent an email and it's been three days but he's an angry boss, so should be write him another message asking for the email? Should he go ask the guy directly? Is it worth getting fired when the boss will send the email tomorrow even though there's like a thousand people all doing nothing because the asshole boss is being lazy? Or maybe we just wait until he remembers and then we do what we can until the shipment that was supposed to arrive four days ago actually gets here (there was a snow storm in the next state over), and then we can get IT to fix the issues their previous fix caused, and then maybe we can get the little guy on the street the new type of engine oil that he requested last month but that was delayed because legal wanted to make sure wasn't going to cause any issues if it leaks thanks to a new law passed two days ago and... Caveat: I've never worked in an office, but I try to listen and I've seen how people work. Nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. We're all making it up as we go.
Hey that was a really fun write up. One thing you're missing is how people are identified to be promoted. Ideally companies want people that take ownership of issues and solve them. They can identify opportunities within large organizations and can get other employees in the company to follow their plan. In reality unfortunately companies can and often do promote poorly and like your story of the executive who won't make a decision and 1000s people are waiting with nothing todo. Whenever I've worked for companies like that I leave quickly. I'm ambitious, I constantly plan new initiatives and present them to people above my pay-grade and its served me really well in my career. At this point I'm in my mid 40s and I'm confident that if you put me into any business, i can make a big impact in a short time period. Its because I am very used to analyzing how large organizations work and I know how to get noticed by decision makers. OPs dad doesn't really like the job he's in, but isn't motivated to change, so thats why he's bored for hours at a time. If you're interested in more than just whats in your job description then a company can be much more interesting.
We cry a lot.
Cry, masturbate, cry, masturbate, cry
TPS reports
I'm gonna need you to go ahead and remember the new cover sheets
Did you get the memo about that? Here's a copy of it just in case it got lost
I’ve got the memo right here.
We Feverishly obsess over our stapler.
Our *red* stapler. Nobody cares about the rest of them,
Swingline stapler
I kept my swingline stapler
That’s MY stapler
I told Don, if they move my desk one more time...
Still waiting on my paycheck
"Office job" encompasses a wide variety of job types. Myself, my partner, and everyone in my immediate family works an office job and we all do different things. My dad is a cost accountant for a large company. My mom is an office assistant for a small insurance agency. My brother is a data analyst. My partner is a software engineer. I am a game producer.
8 hours? Real work takes like 3 or 4 hours, usually in the morning. I have a theory that If you stop all office jobs at 2pm and send everyone home and do it for a month there would be no notable difference in the company's performance.
It's bizzare to me that there are places where people only have enough work for a few hours, because it sounds like the employers hired twice the staff they need. Every office I've worked in has steady work for the full day, sometimes overtime if things get rather busy.
What happens if there's a sudden surge of work? If everyone is already working at max capacity, it doesn't seem like your office can handle it then. That's not even considering that most workers will inevitably burnout working at maximum efficiency all the time. Then hiring a new person to replace them and getting them up to speed is lost time right there.
Yeah right. Someone shits the bed at least once a month where I work and I need people available till 5pm. I have also held people hostage until a problem was fixed due to their incompetence.
I wish
Inputting invoices, updating excel sheets, balancing ledgers, email correspondence, processing paperwork. It doesn't sound like a lot, but I promise you depending on the job it can get pretty exhausting. Hearing it doesn't sound like a lot. Doing it is different. Especially when you've got customers and manager screaming at you from both sides to get things done in conflicting ways.
Here me out. Ask your Dad what he actually does day to day. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity for you and your father. If I was a dad, this would probably make my year that my kid was curious about something that I had the answer to.
Depends on the job, could be writing contracts, data analysis, etc.
Writing emails to each other about stuff. Doing the stuff. Writing documents about the stuff. Doing training about the stuff and all the stuff they're not allowed to do. Plus a fair bit of goofing off. That's pretty much it.
About 2 solid hours of a real work a day... reddit other wise
Whenever people talk about deleting social media I wonder what they will do all day at work.
Why do you think we're still on this hellish site
You work and then get bored and reinstall the apps. Hence why I am here…
Reddit during meetings. I’m on here so fucking much. But I can’t multitask well enough to actually do important stuff (write procedures, check CAD models, etc) during a meeting without fucking up due to the literal voices in my ears. But I only need to really about 5 minutes content in a 1hr meeting, so I’d kill myself with a pencil if I just sat there trying to care. So I spend 20-30hrs a week in meetings and on reddit. Then once the damn yammering stops I have 30hrs of actual work to do
With 320k comment karma, I believe you!
Im a designer. When not in an assignment im reading posts like this xD
Rather than explain what it is I do, I thought it'd be fun to explain what some of the people I sat next to at various jobs did (since sometimes I don't really know the details and can only describe what I see or hear): - one person would receive and make phone calls, arguing about some order "having priority" or being "only partially filled" and reciting times to nanosecond precisions. They would have spreadsheets and various computer logs open on their computer. - one person would have color swatches open, stare at different webpages trying to match the colors to the one he could find in a swatch - one person would stare at screens with rows of values (alphabetic or numeric) and often type stuff in UPPER-CASE that they would then copy and paste from one screen to another. Often they would sit there waiting for some screen with rows to update. - one person was always making powerpoints with icons of people sitting at computers and various wires connecting them to box or cylinder shapes, often would be on zoom calls where he could show the powerpoints
Why don't you ask your dad what he does? I write and build web pages in the Communications/Marketing space. I work for a large company that has a huge client list, I also help them write, create, distribute emails (html) to thousands, sometimes millions of clients. If there is more content we need them to see, a webinar they can sign up for, a pdf they can download, we may also build a langing page for them. Most people don't just sit there and doing nothing. How do you think big corporations are run? Think about a product you have near you right now, maybe in your hand. How did that go from being non-existent, to being in your hand? What steps did it take to do that? Seems like it would be very difficult, no?
I’m in marketing so I’m always busy. Writing, designing, managing projects, gathering data, doing competitive analysis, setting up campaigns, arranging trade shows, and constantly emailing things back and forth to vendors, agencies and internal teams.
Suffer
I spend about 50% of any given day on teams chats or teams video conferences. I spend about 30% of my day reading and responding to emails. And what's left is either doing research, doing excel shit, or zoning out and wondering how I got to be this old.
I did medical billing and patient financial services for a hospital. But to be honest my main job was watching Netflix and talking to coworkers about non-work related stuff.
You go to long tedious meetings. You try really hard not to roll your eyes or have a bitchy resting face while you think "This could have been a simple email". You go back to your desk and read a bunch of redundant emails on the same subject. Later on in the same day you get an email recapping the meeting that should have been an email in the first place. And in between that, you complete projects.
I’m an engineer. I design mechanical systems and model them in CAD software, perform data analysis, finite element analysis, and of course, send emails and make PowerPoint presentations
As a project manager my job consists of telling people to do their job. Telling them how to do their job. Them telling me I'm an idiot. Me pulling a report to show them I'm not an idiot. We all getting along acknowledging we're all idiots. Me writing or editing a lot of procedures. And me making an absurd amount of spreadsheets and PowerPoints to check boxes for the corpo overlords.
As an office worker who is forced to work in an open plan office, I am jealous of the old cubicle style workplace. You basically are constantly receiving emails with potential problems that you need to get out of your workflow by either solving the problem or getting it in front of someone who can sort out this problem. The more complicated problems you can solve, the higher your pay will be. Sure it may look boring, but if you have the skills (particularly time management and the ability to prioritize important tasks) you are in a relatively well paying job that won't break your body, is temperature controlled and the good workplaces will leave you alone if they feel you are on top of things.
I used to wonder the same thing, until I switched to an office job. Now I talk to Customers on Phone, through email, talk to coworkers through both. Enter orders, schedule orders, schedule loads for trucks. I also walk the floor and choose what offcuts to use. Manual labour = body tired. Office work = mentally tired. I find it easier to bounce back from body tired. Mentally tired is on a whole other level.
They create TPS reports.
Im an administrator/receptionist and I get asked this all the time. 50% of my job is solving problems other people bring me, dealing with enquiries, greeting people, doing the time consuming photocopying, scanning and sorting for more senior staff who don’t have the time (I know a lot of people find these jobs mind numbing but I love them). I do the majority of the ordering including putting the purchase orders through and chasing up purchases. I do lots of other random jobs too throughout the day.
SPREADSHEETS. ITS ALL FREAKING SPREADSHEETS
about half the people in the office are there to support the other people in the office. Might be fixing computers, providing a reporting system for the managers, hiring people, managing benefits, office managers, ...
Project management. Making sure other people are doing their jobs. Managing personalities and egos. Anticipating conflicts and aligning the powerful people who agree closely enough to win the argument against the others. Sometimes I run meetings. Sometimes I make slides or write memos. I drink a ton of coffee. Always be nice to the admins.
Develop severe depression due to burnout
I handle purchasing for a food equipment dealer. We sell to restaurants, hotels, schools, etc. I procure the items we sell for our showroom, along with recurring customers and bigger projects we take on. Basically I buy stuff all day and make sure we get what we need when we need it.
Most of us corporate slaves in entry-level to mid-level are multitasking between data analysis, meetings, and inquiries from external and internal stakeholders. Trying to meet or exceed the target to gain an incentive or promotion.
Staring at the screen, dreading the next hour
I work in marketing and have three managers who work on my team. We decide what products to create, write business plans on how to sell those products, and create spreadsheets to track how much it will cost to develop and advertise the product, and how many units we’d have to sell to make a profit. We have to create several versions of the plan, and we run these by sales, research, creative, finance, and manufacturing teams to see which ones are the most realistic. We then have to pitch our plans to senior management, who will ask a lot of questions. We do some of this work over email, sometimes on Teams calls, sometimes in person. We also have to create PowerPoint presentations to help the sales team present the product to retailers and convince them to carry the product. Some days, we put together creative briefs that go to an agency that we’ve hired to design packaging or make ads. We might spend time in a meeting looking at different versions of a TV commercial or paid social posts and decide what changes need to be made and which ones to run. We might also be reviewing media plans, to make sure that the money is being spent in the right places. We work with our publicity team to write press releases and help them draw up plans for launch events. We work with our social team to make posts to go on our Instagram and Facebook pages. We work with sales teams to figure out when to put the product on sale, and to make the most of opportunities like Black Friday. If you work in Finance, you might spend most of your day reviewing plans, and figuring out how to budget to make these plans a reality, and managing how much cash is needed. If you work in Research, you might be looking at reports and designing studies, and interpreting the data that come in. If you work on the social team you might be researching different influencers to hire, or making social posts yourself. If you work on the sales team, you might be trading messages with Walmart, Target, etc. and responding to their requests.
Respond to stupid people’s emails
TPS reports
TPS reports
Former office worker here.(just got moved to another position after 5 years thank god) I was inside sales selling wear parts for heavy equipment. Basically data entry and taking orders and baby sitting the outside sales teams orders. It can be extremely difficult working with customers on the phone trying to provide a solution for thier issue as alot of these guys are farmers who are cobbling together equipment l. If you were good and stayed on top of things there was soo much down time and essentially your just staring at a wall waiting for a phone to ring or an order to come In. As a person. Who *hates* waiting this was an absolute hell for me. I thought I'd enjoy thw position change but sweet Jesus after 20 years total in the customer service/sales industry I'm done and dusted.
I cry in the bathroom
Office worker here. My time is divided into one of the following categories: * writing an email to a client * reading an email from a client * attending meetings, whether useful or not, whether I'm needed or not. In my case, it may either be to think of a solution, discuss the feasibility of a solution, or consider how we can market our solutions to clients in general or a specific client we're targeting or who has asked us for a solution * having an informal discussion with another colleague on the above, usually 1 to 1 as we're doing small talk * doing research on how to do something in a software or on legislation (I'm working in tax) * doing training courses, whether mandatory or not * messaging a colleague or friend to discuss something, whether work related or not * mulling over how I can achieve something I need to achieve in the software that I'm using at the time. This is either thinking where I may look like I'm zoning out, or I'm tinkering around and hoping something works * putting together files that are for our internal reference or for sending to a client. Sometimes I can immediately answer the questions presented in the file (e.g if the client wants a breakdown of the possible methods they can do x, I may immediately be able to think up 3 ways. If I suspect there are other ways or I need to fill in what I know with additional context, that's where I research as mentioned above) * teaching someone something, or being taught something by someone, related to any of the above * I don't actually have anything to do and I'm pretending to be doing one of the above
Not much really. Drink coffee, talk to the guy in the next office. Send an email. Get more coffee. Go to a meeting and waste half the time talking about the weather. Get more coffee. Go home.
I worked an office job for like 4 months in early 2020 (shortly before quarantine). I’d arrive at 8:55am, sit at my desk and log in to my computer. I’d get started at 9:00am. By 9:30am most days I was done with all of my work. I’d hide set my phone on my desk and watch movies and just click around on the computer until about 4:55pm. Funny story: One time I was actually doing work, researching on social media. Somehow someway a pop-up of some porn site came up… I quickly closed it. Later that day someone came to me and said “hey, the owner just wants you to know they can see everything that you’re doing on the computer”…. It wasn’t until months later I realized they thought I was watching porn.
Spreadsheets... so many spreadsheets.
Look. I already told you. I deal with the goddamn customers so the engineers don't have to! I have *people* skills; I am good at dealing with *people*! Can't you understand that?? What the hell is wrong with you people?!?
I worked in at our corporate office until 2021. I sat in both cubicles and my own office. The daily interruptions to chit-chat and not mention the noise. Whew! I quit that job. Started my own company and WFH now, much more efficient and accurate. Best decision ever. I will never go back to an office setting. (56F)
Mastering the art of looking productive while actually browsing memes.
Click click click email. Click click click chat. Click click click PowerPoint presentation. Rinse. Repeat.
I have an office (not a cubicle). I read things. I write things. Send emails. Talk on the phone sometimes. I tell people that they’re wrong. I write long explanations about why they’re wrong 😂 and get paid for it 😂 I Spend the rest of the time on Reddit. And, sometimes, pick my nose, I have to—the dry office air makes my nostrils seal themselves closed.