How many of your work hours do you spend actually working?

[Nose Master]

I'm curious about how many hours people spend actually working at their job. This is under the assumption you work the generic 9-5.

In the spirit of the question, think of it as how quickly you could actually do your job, if pressed. Milking 6 hours to 8 by purposely working inefficiently doesnt count.

 

[HarryHengst]

2-4 at most. The rest is spend in pointless meetings, shooting the shit at the coffee machine, looking outside, reading books for my own pleasure, watching youtube etc.

 

[Felt]

I can see how this is easy for many jobs, but an office job isn't always "work". I might have meetings for 4 hours of the day, only have 30 minutes to work between those meetings in which case it's not really happening... so I might only "work" one hour that day but I certainly was working the whole day

in any case, a day like that is worse because I need to make up for lost time the next day

 

[Adventureracing]

The emergency I work in is always super busy. You're lucky if you get to sit down during the shift. You usually get a break but it just means catching up on all your shit when you get back.

 

[Peek-a-boo!]

Teacher here.

Every minute of every hour except maybe at lunchtime, but even then, I am setting up the class for the afternoon lessons whilst eating the contents of my lunchbox on the go ... 🥪

And we continue to plan lessons, mark papers, arrange the necessary requirements for specific lessons after the children go home. It's just as bad when the exams and parents evening are around the corner.

 

[shnurgleton]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ho...ing-your-working-day.115833/#js-post-20581539

 

[Nose Master]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/ho...ing-your-working-day.115833/#js-post-20581539

Click to shrink...

Doesnt have a poll so doesnt count etc

 

[MrKlaw]

Its tricky to measure but I went for 4. Bill for 8 though. Reality might be lower on some days but higher on others - SW delivery can be spiky in terms of time/effort

A lot of my work is getting others to do work, and checking in with people via slack/MS teams/email/phone. Quite often informal chats in the office kitchen are work related and help get things done. So the 'work' is an amalgam of various facets really.

 

[Ruruja]

At my old job it was like 5%.

At my new job it's like 95%.

 

[Nose Master]

Mine is around 4ish on average. During the holidays its 8+, but on your average week it's barely 4. I work in distribution and spend a lot of time waiting out the clock in my car.

 

[Pankratous]

I've been at absolutely 100% for months.

I still should be, but I'm mentally and physically drained. I procrastinate a lot more now. Probably <3 hours.

 

[Rand a. Thor]

Depends on my shift, and the workplace. The place I'm at right now has a busy midday to early afternoon service so if I'm working mornings it's gonna be 7 hours at average but if I'm working afternoon to night it's gonna drop down to 6 maybe 5 if it's truly dead. I'm working salads and a lot of the basic prep like lettuce washing and tomato stem removal is already done for us so there's not a lot do besides dressings, 3 appetizers, and a lot of small portions of cuts that take like 5 minutes tops.

 

[Phil me in]

Teacher here.

Every minute of every hour except maybe at lunchtime, but even then, I am setting up the class for the afternoon lessons whilst eating the contents of my lunchbox on the go ... 🥪

And we continue to plan lessons, mark papers, arrange the necessary requirements for specific lessons after the children go home. It's just as bad when the exams and parents evening are around the corner.

Click to shrink...

And that is why I quit teaching, isn't worth it these days no matter how you love kids or how fun the actual lesson are.

I also assume you never stop thinking about the job when your home too.

 

[Heromanz]

Like 30mins

 

[Quantum Leap]

I'm always envious when I read about people not having anything to do and getting paid to just browse reddit. I'm busy every minute besides my breaks/lunch.

 

[Deleted member 1478]

I usually work the first 4 hours in the mornings properly and then I'm pretty much useless after lunch with the database side of my job so it all depends how many calls I get to go help fix something.

 

[手加減 TG]

I work for 8 of 8. I'm very efficient with my use of office hours.

 

[11037]

I work 12 hour shifts, so I would estimate around 8-9. I have to take a lot of calls for my job, so there really isn't too much downtime unless it's a Saturday night.

 

[SABO.]

Not enough

 

[Ivanovic]

I'm always envious when I read about people not having anything to do and getting paid to just browse reddit. I'm busy every minute besides my breaks/lunch.

Click to shrink...

What's even worse is that they get paid a lot of money just to do nothing.

 

[Deleted member 1478]

I'm always envious when I read about people not having anything to do and getting paid to just browse reddit. I'm busy every minute besides my breaks/lunch.

Click to shrink...

To be honest I'd be more interested in a job that kept me busy and engaged for the full amount of time I'm working. I just don't have that.

 

[sirap]

All of them. The more I write, the more books I can publish. Each release raises my income significantly, and I've already lost hundreds of dollars writing this post :(

 

[Protome]

Programmer, I'd probably say 4-6 on a good day.
Atm we're all waiting to learn how many of us are getting made redundant so like...one maybe?

 

[Laughing Banana]

Teacher here.

Every minute of every hour except maybe at lunchtime, but even then, I am setting up the class for the afternoon lessons whilst eating the contents of my lunchbox on the go ... 🥪

And we continue to plan lessons, mark papers, arrange the necessary requirements for specific lessons after the children go home. It's just as bad when the exams and parents evening are around the corner.

Click to shrink...

You people really should be paid more.

 

[Dennis8K]

*browses Era*

Working hard

 

[IDreamOfHime]

Transport defect officer.
5 hours in a 10 hour shift. 2ish at the start as I brief and prep my teams on their tasks for the shift and then a little longer at the end of the shift as I evaluate all their work and carry out debriefs.
Switch and Netflix get me through the lull in the middle.

 

[Dr Doom]

Last one 6 hours

Current 2 hours. Most on YouTube, watching wrestling, and Era

 

[Slacker247]

Really depends.
2-6. Let's say 4 on average, 6 in busy periods.

Media/marketing, it's really not necessary to be in the office for this long, wasting your life. Have had multiple jobs, all the same. All so much down-time, all so much process, process, process, too many chefs, too may meetings. Could easily do 9-5 over 3 or 4 days instead of the standard 5 days. The meetings are probably the worst part of any job though - speaking for the sake of speaking. Incredibly unproductive, mostly.

 

[trudderham]

There needs to be an option for less than 2 hours. Honestly.

 

[Daniel Jackson]

Pretty much throughout the entire day, it's busy

 

[Zeckett]

2 hours tops.

 

[Shadybiz]

Depends on the day. I don't have a very predictable workload, so sometimes it's all day, sometimes it's as little as a half hour.

 

[CortexVortex]

Sometimes 2 hours, sometimes 10.
But in this new project which barely has any content yet, it's 2 hours tops for most days.

 

[capitalCORN]

All of them? I work in a kitchen. If you've got time to lean you've got time to clean.

 

[eXistor]

Working in video-game retail, it really depends on the day, how many customers there are and how much behind the scenes work there's left. Right now I have to to a complete inventory of all our used games which takes a lot of time and I constantly get interrupted by phone-calls (I hate the phone-calls dude) or just normal customers or new stock arriving, or price-drops. You're usually juggling a lot of tasks at the same time. That said, there is definitely a lot of down-time too. On a normal day I'd say there's a good 2-3 hours of down-time. Starting every September-December though, all bets are off, you basically are run ragged all day.

So on average I'd say I work about 6 hours on an 8.5 hour work-day.

 

[Apathy]

Some days it does feel like I work like 7-8 hours but usually it's more like 2-3 and try to extend that for the day.

I work for a big telecom, and I've worked at the call centers before where you are worked all the hours of your shift. In the offices downtown where there are separated from the call centers, they don't know how lucky they have it and how little work they do by comparison yet how much different their compensation is

 

[hephaestus]

I work in emergency repair and maintenance, honestly I`m running for my whole 10+ hour shift. Even if emergencies were slow in a week, I have a backlog that goes on for years.
I have never understood people that say they finish all their work in a few hours then do nothing. I cant comprehend how you can run out of work.

 

[Tayaya]

There's no option for 7 so I had to go 6. We actually track idle time pretty accurately and we basically ask that everyone aim for 75% of their time to be actually billable to customers. So 6 hours a day. I try to limit my non-billable time to 1 hour though since I'm in a management position and like to lead by example and not by policy.

 

[Kwigo]

2-7.5, it really depends.

 

[ExhaustedWalrus]

I work a digital marketing office job, 9-5. I'd say on a given day, I actually "work" about 4 hours that. It fluctuates a lot, though. Some days I have nothing that I really need to do since I'm waiting on other stakeholders, some days I am on deadline and have to finish things before EOD or ASAP. It can get slow and fast randomly.

 

[GenericGhost]

I'm a cook in a office setting. I spend about 3 hours cooking lunch, then serve it and clean. Total about 4 hours. Then I spend the rest my day looking busy in my office.
Not a bad gig but I wish it was more stimulating.

 

[Violence Jack]

On most days I might do about 30 minutes of actual work per hour leading up to lunchtime. After that, it's just a struggle to stay awake.

 

[Parthenios]

Nice try, Toby. I'm not going to fall for your trap!

 

[Deleted member 46493]

~3-4

 

[mhayes86]

Depends on the project. A few months ago it was practically the entire day and I was always busy. With the project over, I actually work for maybe an hour a day unless something comes up. I make myself look busy and am mostly just studying for a certification. I've never had so much downtime at a job before, and I hate it.

I'm not searching for a job just yet, but my resume has been updated and is out in the wild now.

 

[Kewlmyc]

Work at home help desk and traveling installer. Depends on if there's any install jobs coming my way.

So anywhere between 2 hours (help desk) to 8+ (install).

 

[Orzix]

between 4 and 6 off a 8 hours day i would say. Working in IT. Sometimes less if it's not too busy. Sometimes 8 during big project.

 

[bionic77]

I fucked around and made a thread on the gaming side but usually I am actually pretty busy most days and easily work more than 8 hours a day.

But there are easy tasks I do, like sometimes I am on the phone listening to a client and nothing is really being discussed but you still have to listen so that is a good time to browse era and shit talk in the NBA threads.

 

[djplaeskool]

I typically invoice around 6.5-7 billable hours per work day
Travel in-between client sites most days eats up the rest of my non-commute time

My old position used to have me a lot of times going places to simply sit around and respond to issues as they happen.
That was kinda fun, cause when everything was working fine, I didn't have anything to attend to.
Now I'm on all projects, so it's nose to the grindstone once I'm on site.

 

[D23]

4 hrs