"Watch yer cornhole, Bud."
Posted on 08/09/2006 12:34:14 PM PDT by Cagey
There's a scene in the 1999 cult movie "Office Space" when unmotivated employee Peter Gibbons admits he generally comes in late, spaces out for about an hour, takes lunch and then spaces out for another hour.
"I'd say in a given week I probably only do about 15 minutes of real, actual work," he tells a pair of consultants.
Well, Peter, you're not alone.
A new survey by Salary.com and America Online found the average U.S. worker fritters away 1.86 hours per 8-hour workday -- not including lunch and scheduled breaks.
That's actually an improvement from last year's inaugural Salary.com/AOL survey, which showed workers squandered 2.09 hours a day.
Bill Coleman, Salary.com's senior vice president of compensation, said the results could reflect a slightly more energized work force due to an improving economy. Or maybe fewer hard-core slackers were polled this year.
H.R. budgets an hour a day
This year's biggest time-killer was personal use of the Internet. Of the 2,700 people quizzed in the unscientific survey, 52 percent said they wasted more time online than any other way. (The survey, by the way, was conducted online, and some responded: "I waste my time filling out surveys like this.")
Other top time-wasters included: socializing with co-workers, running errands and spacing out. "Staring blankly at the computer screen remains to be quite a popular choice," the study concluded.
In addition to polling workers, Salary.com surveyed human resource managers, who said companies assume workers waste nearly an hour each day. The difference between the slacking that companies budget for and the true amount costs U.S. companies a combined $544 billion per year, according to the survey.
Socializing not all bad
In the Loop on Tuesday, office workers had mixed feelings about the survey's results. Some believed the 1.86 number was a bit high. Others said it was on the mark.
Many gave guilty laughs. Few gave full names.
"Sometimes you need to walk away," said Jason, 27, who is in the hospitality business and admits to wasting about 45 minutes a day. "We're not machines or robots. And sometimes what the Cubs are doing is a hell of a lot more important than what I'm doing."
The survey intentionally did not define "wasted time," figuring people know it when they see it -- or do it.
There are gray areas, though, such as building relationships with co-workers.
"Talking about what happened last night on 'American Idol,' although it's not likely to help your job directly, if that's some sort of relationship you build with co-workers, and it's important to have good relations, there is some value to that," Coleman said.
Of course, if an employee ever fails to get the work done, they're on the street!
I blame FreeRepublic. ;o)
Try this.
http://slackermanager.com/
No thanks, I'd much rather socialize with a couple of my favorite freepers.
"Watch yer cornhole, Bud."
You must work for the same company I do! 10% of the people do 80% of the work and 10% sit back and take the credit for it!
They seemed to have something of the same work ethic...
You must be a lawyer.
That's hilarious! Robin as Samir. LOL
With full time pay? Sign me up. I'd be willing to work hard to get all my tasks done in that amount of time.
For me I know it depends on the day.
If it's been a very active morning, training or running from one meeting to another, I really do have to just take a time-out.
Bump for later.
Good catch! Maybe that is the family business that he invited Capt. Winters to work at after the war. (Or is it Maj. Winters?)
I have become ubiquitous.
And these putzes are complaining about my being distracted for 1.8 hours a day? Feh! They don't know what work is.
"PC Load Letter; what the *&^# does that mean."
Both, Captain, then Major.
Nixon drank. He wasn't a malingerer. He was one of the best soldiers imaginable. He was a hero.
I love that movie, OFFICE SPACE... How much FLAIR do you think you'd wear????
Even back in the '80's, the US Army was quietly happy to get as much as a single hour of "work" out of the average soldier every day.
Unless you are in a job where you are constantly producing some visible product, like a restaurant or an assembly line, "work" and "productivity" become relative.
I created a graphic example of how much is accomplished in a little time, and how little is accomplished in most work days.
My office was swamped with work, tight timetables and only three of us to work. So I put us on "maximum flex", in which only one person was in the office, and only when they were working hard, for however long. The other two would split and get family business done, or slack off.
We burned through six months of work in a week, and in another week or two we were six months ahead. We came in late at night, early in the morning, on weekends--mostly when there was nobody around to interfere with us.
I demonstrated that one person working hard for a single, uninterrupted hour at peak attention could accomplish far more than three people, with average workday attention, and typical distractions all working a 9-hour day.
But equally important, I demonstrated that one hour of real "work" a day was about the maximum you can get out of a person. They just do not have the focus and energy to do more than that, and cannot be forced. They can, however, be interfered with to do less than that, and easily.
I had to discontinue maximum flex, first because it did not mesh well with the rest of the organization's inefficiencies, and second because the other two guys' spouses were tired of their hanging around all day and getting in their hair.
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