![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkToday was a good, solid working day. I started work sometime around 11 am, and have just now, at about 10 pm, called it quits. Of course lunch, dinner, and a quick trip to the store happened during that time, plus a few rounds of checking e-mail and forums for messages, but still it was a fairly lengthy work day for me, probably around eight hours of actual work.
And that leads me to wonder how many people actually put in an eight hour workday of work. I don't mean turning up for work, and then leaving again eight hours later, I mean actually working for eight hours. I never really have. Closest I came was doing factory assembly work, where I did actually do work the entire time I was at work, but that was a six hour shift. (No breaks either. Mind-numbingly boring, but not particularly difficult stuff.) I've had an office-type job scanning in bills of lading and entering their info into the computer, which was also a six hour shift, and which I came pretty close to working the whole thing, but there was at least a little bit of standing around the break room, and chatting, and not just working. Hrm. The IRS thing I did was pretty solid work too, now that I think of it, and a full eight hours, so I guess I have had one job where I worked eight hours, but that was only on the days I came in, which certainly wasn't every weekday, or even most weekdays. That was irregular to say the least, and seasonal to boot. And most of my jobs have involved a lot of standing around doing nothing much, really. Being a night watch involved going around every half hour and checking everything, but otherwise was sitting a reading, while working at Treehouse was a ton of work most of the time, but still involved quite a bit of hanging about chatting with the other staff.
I know there are jobs where people do real work eight hours a day, five or six days a week, but it feels to me like they're in the minority, and that most of us, though we may get paid for eight hours, are getting paid for a fair amount of coffee drinking and yakking.
(And I shall add that I don't find anything wrong with being paid to drink coffee and/or yak. Breaks are good for you, they mean you do better work when you are working.)
And that leads me to wonder how many people actually put in an eight hour workday of work. I don't mean turning up for work, and then leaving again eight hours later, I mean actually working for eight hours. I never really have. Closest I came was doing factory assembly work, where I did actually do work the entire time I was at work, but that was a six hour shift. (No breaks either. Mind-numbingly boring, but not particularly difficult stuff.) I've had an office-type job scanning in bills of lading and entering their info into the computer, which was also a six hour shift, and which I came pretty close to working the whole thing, but there was at least a little bit of standing around the break room, and chatting, and not just working. Hrm. The IRS thing I did was pretty solid work too, now that I think of it, and a full eight hours, so I guess I have had one job where I worked eight hours, but that was only on the days I came in, which certainly wasn't every weekday, or even most weekdays. That was irregular to say the least, and seasonal to boot. And most of my jobs have involved a lot of standing around doing nothing much, really. Being a night watch involved going around every half hour and checking everything, but otherwise was sitting a reading, while working at Treehouse was a ton of work most of the time, but still involved quite a bit of hanging about chatting with the other staff.
I know there are jobs where people do real work eight hours a day, five or six days a week, but it feels to me like they're in the minority, and that most of us, though we may get paid for eight hours, are getting paid for a fair amount of coffee drinking and yakking.
(And I shall add that I don't find anything wrong with being paid to drink coffee and/or yak. Breaks are good for you, they mean you do better work when you are working.)
