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There's a trick in this clickbait: > According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-

There's a trick in this clickbait: > According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-time office workers revealed that most people aren't working for most of the time they're at work. The plain reading is that this article is based on BLS data. The BLS makes huge amounts of data available (and is friendly about answering questions), and the 8.8 hour figure is really theirs: https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/chart1.pdf https://www.bls.gov/tus/charts/chart1.pdf But the second sentence is about unrelated research not conducted by the BLS, even if you trust that it exists. This data looks bizarre. 23 minutes of smoke breaks? Only 15% of Americans smoke (https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adult_data/cig_smoking/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/adul...), so if 85% of people spend 0 minutes a day smoking the other 15% spent 153 minutes per work day smoking. That can't be right, so this list must be the average time spent on an activity of all the people who reported engaging in it, which makes it pretty useless for understanding the overall situation it purports to talk about. Assuming a study was done, this is probably self-reported data of a self-selected population. Ask 2,000 websurfers to break down their yesterday or last week of work and you're not going to get reliable data. Without an accounting of methodology (or at least a citation), this article is an infohazard. People might read it an accidentally take it seriously, or remember these numbers but not remember they were completely unsupported.

PhasmaFelis 9y ago
Yeah, very bizarre. She's claiming that the average American works spends 23 minutes a day on smoke breaks, and 26 minutes a day looking for a new job, and 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks", etc. Something is completely bogus here.
- im3w1l 9y ago
  > 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks" This figure I can believe.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    As can I. As with the smoke breaks, it becomes a water cooler moment - a socially acceptable time to talk with colleagues about personal lives and the occasional work-related meeting.
- Orangeair 9y ago
  One possible explanation for this is that people are supposedly spending time doing certain things, but in reality are doing different for things. For example, my mom used to talk about how people at her work were allowed smoke breaks, but no equivalent breaks were allotted to non-smokers, so people would pretend to smoke just to take a few minutes off.
mercer 9y ago
As a smoker, I'm only mildly surprised at the 23 minutes. While it does seem unusually long, my experience at least confirms that probably easily half of my smoke breaks turn into a meeting of sorts (which can last a while!), or something else that is not work but work-ish enough that it doesn't seem to cause issues. 153 minutes is probably more than reality, but even a full hour a day would only be mildly surprising in some of the environments I've experienced (so I might be entirely off-base for the US). In fact, some of my non-smoking colleagues started participating in the 'smoke breaks' (alongside the 'hanging-around-in-the-coffee-area' breaks) not just because those breaks can be problem solvers, but because it would lead to important informal 'meetings'. Personally I hate this. I wish we had fewer self-harming 'down-time' moments at work (whether cigarette breaks or after-work inebriation) and more of the positive kind (meetup/lightning-talk-but-of-course-with-beers-for-those-who-care, long big-meal lunches as part of company culture, etc.), because I'm convinced they're crucial to the health of the company (cross-pollination of ideas/concerns between departments, for example).
madshiva 9y ago
non smoker do break too, most of the time even bigger than smoker. Yes, I have proof.
blubb-fish 9y ago
23m = 3m leaving desk + 10m smoking + 10m talking + 3m returning to desk

PhasmaFelis 9y ago

Yeah, very bizarre. She's claiming that the average American works spends 23 minutes a day on smoke breaks, and 26 minutes a day looking for a new job, and 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks", etc. Something is completely bogus here.

im3w1l 9y ago
> 17 minutes a day "preparing hot drinks" This figure I can believe.
- falcolas 9y ago
  As can I. As with the smoke breaks, it becomes a water cooler moment - a socially acceptable time to talk with colleagues about personal lives and the occasional work-related meeting.
Orangeair 9y ago
One possible explanation for this is that people are supposedly spending time doing certain things, but in reality are doing different for things. For example, my mom used to talk about how people at her work were allowed smoke breaks, but no equivalent breaks were allotted to non-smokers, so people would pretend to smoke just to take a few minutes off.

mercer 9y ago

As a smoker, I'm only mildly surprised at the 23 minutes. While it does seem unusually long, my experience at least confirms that probably easily half of my smoke breaks turn into a meeting of sorts (which can last a while!), or something else that is not work but work-ish enough that it doesn't seem to cause issues. 153 minutes is probably more than reality, but even a full hour a day would only be mildly surprising in some of the environments I've experienced (so I might be entirely off-base for the US). In fact, some of my non-smoking colleagues started participating in the 'smoke breaks' (alongside the 'hanging-around-in-the-coffee-area' breaks) not just because those breaks can be problem solvers, but because it would lead to important informal 'meetings'. Personally I hate this. I wish we had fewer self-harming 'down-time' moments at work (whether cigarette breaks or after-work inebriation) and more of the positive kind (meetup/lightning-talk-but-of-course-with-beers-for-those-who-care, long big-meal lunches as part of company culture, etc.), because I'm convinced they're crucial to the health of the company (cross-pollination of ideas/concerns between departments, for example).

madshiva 9y ago

non smoker do break too, most of the time even bigger than smoker. Yes, I have proof.

blubb-fish 9y ago

23m = 3m leaving desk + 10m smoking + 10m talking + 3m returning to desk