Tick Tock

Sometimes, I get to thinking at work.

How many work hours are wasted a year on staring at a computer screen, watching TV, playing games, etc.?

Really, Ive read all kinds of reports like this

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/07/11/wastingtime.TMP

and I see that, all these "wasted hours" are costing millions of dollars a year to employers.

Why is this?

According to the article, the number one reason for people sitting there, doing nothing work related in particuliar, is not enough work to keep them busy.

I can sympathize with that. I havent had enough work to do since I got out of college in a standard month to fill up even 4 days of that month. Peter on Office Space is funny when he says "I only really do an hour of honest work a day", until you actually get in the corporate world. You then find yourself repeating that to other people. I know I say it to my wife every day. Its gotten to the point where I actually look forward to sending out a couple invoices or paying a few bills, or the occasional corporate project that takes up a couple hours of my time, because its often the only work Ill do in a week.

Truthfully, I complete items far quicker then an average person might, but it is a little rediculous.

So what is the real problem here? I point to Americas obsession with delegation.

America, probably the only country in the world, breeds a culture of "lazy asses" for lack of a better word. You are expected to want, embrace and pursue the status of having a completely hands off approach on anything deemed below you on the corporate ladder. In other words, your job simply becomes bossing around the people below you, and making excuses for their mistakes to the people above you, who are, in turn, bossing you around, and making excuses further up the chain for you and the people below you.

The last job I can remember actually being busy about 90% of the day is when I worked in a fast food restaurant. This is not one of those big corporate ones, like QFCCJ, but one where management was actually required to participate in the function of the store. There was no "passing down responsibilities". Every one did everything.

To illustrate the stupidity of corporate America, let me use it as an example though.

Suppose there was a manager at this fast food shop. That manager spends an hour doing dishes, four hours serving food, an hour doing doing administrative things, and two hours doing prep and other cleaning.

In corporate world, the Corporate Conglomerate X will often promote the manager. Now, since the manager should no longer be touching things like serving food or cleaning, they hire others to do that. One guy is hired to serve food, one guy is hired to do the cleaning and dishes, and one guy is doing prep.

So, now you have

- Manager, who is using an hour doing administrative things, and an hour kissing ass
- A guy serving food, who is spending four hours serving food, and whacking off for 4 hours
- A guy cleaning for an hour or two, and whacking off for 6 or so hours
- A guy doing prep for an hour or two, and whacking off for 6 or so hours

(you have to excuse the fact that in a fast food type setting, these types of folks would all be part time. In a corporate world, they'd all be full time suits, possibly salaried.)

So, its no wonder people are just standing around every where, doing nothing. I think that is a symptom of too many middle management paper pushers who are disconnected from the operations theyre pushing paper for and encouraged to delegate out every little duty, down to typing their correspondence, to some one else.