How Employers Quietly Disengage First

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There was a Seinfeld episode where George tells Jerry and Elaine that he doesn’t do much at work all day and spends most of the time pretending to be busy. Jerry asks how he pulls that off and he explains that if you look annoyed all the time people think you are busy. After a brief demonstration they laugh and agree that would work. What’s not so funny is the number of people I have met who go to full time jobs and admit that they don’t have enough work to keep them busy. There are others who look really busy and don’t admit anything different, but a close look at their work schedule reveals they have a lot of time to talk in the hallway, talk in the break room, talk on the phone, and do a lot of anything but work.

I’ve changed jobs five times the past seven years as part of a career transition and in hopes of finding a full-time job where they actually have enough work to keep me busy for 40 hours. My current job looks like it might be able to satisfy that, but that is if you don’t analyze what you are actually doing. Take away the useless meetings, mandated activities, time spent answering emails, and teaching yourself your job and you are left with maybe a quarter days’ worth of work where you actually produce something.

I had an employer tell me it was my fault I didn’t have any work to do. I wasn’t given a steady workload. I did special projects…