Thursday, November 11, 2004
(1:35 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
Look Busy!
Usually when you get hired at a job, you have certain tasks you are assigned to do, and you are supposed to be there for a certain timeframe. Those tasks rarely take up the entire time you're there, but your employer is hiring you to be there to do them should the need arise. Sometimes you'll be given secondary work to fill the idle times, but sometimes, even that secondary work doesn't fill the whole time.So my question is, why is it so rare for a boss not to be a dick about it when you have done all your assigned work and are just waiting for something to come along? Most people are hired to fill a certain job description, and that job description usually does not read "be busily working at every moment." Yet bosses always seem to feel as though they are somehow being ripped off if the employee has finished his tasks and is just waiting for the agreed-upon timeframe to be over with. They start to think, perhaps, that if it weren't for all these lazy employees, they could be making so much more money. They might think that if someone is not constantly working, then they must be getting paid too much. Yet the workers cannot be dispensed with, so only one route remains for the boss to assert his control of the situation: arbitrary labor, tasks that don't even need to be done, jobs that are arduous and humiliating and just occurred to the boss off the top of his head.
I distinctly remember every bullshit task I was ever given in a job where I was already underpaid as it was, and I'm still kind of pissed about it.
