5 ms·

If there is no work to do, I'd rather go home and watch a movie of my choosing, or anything else I feel like doing. Idle time at work is excruciating.

reidjs 5y ago
Idle time is nice if the alternative is heavy lifting or dealing with rude customers
- randomdata 5y ago
  When it is at home, yes. When someone wants to take up your time at work that could be instead spent getting the job done so you can go home, or already be at home, it is not a pleasant experience.
  - shukantpal 5y ago
    If you get the current task at hand done, you're not going home. You're paid by the hour (in this case)
- youeseh 5y ago
  > rude customers Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. The stuff around internal politics though - little pecking order shit, where the managers and other coworkers can and often do make working unbearable causes many exits and often violence.
  - lsiebert 5y ago
    > Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. No, it's not, many workers I know face repeated and regular stressful abuse, which is almost always worse if they are visibly part of a marginalized group of people, who also get racial and misogynistic slurs thrown in their face. There are dramatic differences in treatment, and many managers don't step in to protect their employees. That's not to say the other stuff you mention doesn't also occur. It's not even necessarily retail, I know a really sweet Latina woman, she manages and runs multiple bicycle rental places in SF. People will be incredibly rude to her, but when she says, "Hold on, let me get someone else to help you" and gets a white male employee of hers, they are suddenly all smiles and apologetic and understanding. I honestly would encourage folks here to remember to be good customers, to treat workers as you would want people to treat you, because workers in the US are almost always underpaid and dealing with work related stress. Try to know what you want by looking online, understand that workers don't owe you happy smiles and social interaction beyond the goods and services you pay for, listen to and ask for suggestions and consider them as expert advice if you are having trouble making a decision, and if possible be polite and say thank you.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      If she is the manager and has a staff why is she working the front counter? I've never seen a manager hand off a difficult customer to a lower employee. As a customer I would ask to speak to the manager if I wasn't getting service never does the manager ask the co-op student to handle this difficult customer they can't. Something about your story doesn't add up. You say she is the nicest person but is she good at customer service because those are two different skills.
      - lsiebert 5y ago
        Ah, you are reasoning from your own anecdotal experience to say that something is unlikely because you haven't yourself observed it. Maybe you should try an experiment? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-signed-work-emails-using-a-female-name-for-a-week_n_58c2ce53e4b054a0ea6a4066 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-sign...
        lsiebert 5y ago
        That experiment from her perspective. https://nickyknacks.medium.com/working-while-female-59a5de3ad266#.ginj3xk30 https://nickyknacks.medium.com/working-while-female-59a5de3a...
        ipaddr 5y ago
        I do post under various genders / ages / races and the advantages of being part of each identity are not shared between groups. There are advantages to being female or black or old or young or male depending on who you are talking to. It is eye opening.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    >Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. >The stuff around internal politics though... can and often do make working unbearable I'll go out on a limb here and say you have never worked in a retail job before, dealing with the general public. A small percentage of the public are simply fucking awful people who will do absolute anything they can to try and get what they want. Surprise surprise, dealing with this form of abuse (and more importantly, never knowing when it's coming) on a daily basis destroys your mental health - just as dealing with abusive behaviours from a spouse or parent does. Businesses should not tolerate this, but they do, because it increases their revenue by a couple of percentage points.
    - youeseh 5y ago
      I've worked several customer service jobs and helped many people navigate dealing with customers on a frontline. It can be learned and taught. I'm not saying, "the customer is always right", but negotiation - even on the fly negotiation is a skill that anyone can learn.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  I've worked plenty of those kinds of jobs over the years. Your opinion is the minority, a sizeable one but obviously the minority. The opinion of the person you're replying to is the majority. Nobody wants to hang around and do nothing at work, even if you're getting paid. If the job is done people want to go home and sit on their ass on their own terms.
  - gowld 5y ago
    You're saying you've never wanted an occasional 1 hr break during a work day?
    - randomdata 5y ago
      One hour breaks are always welcome, but one hour tasks that require watching someone go out of their way to bore you is the furthest thing from a break. And while they might be tolerable when done occasionally, in the age of Agile all the things, where even restaurant staff are now hosting daily standups, those meetings are not occasional.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >Your opinion is the minority, a sizeable one but obviously the minority. The opinion of the person you're replying to is the majority. As someone who's apparently in the minority, what's the evidence of this? Is this just your self-assessment?
    - zdragnar 5y ago
      Anecdatum: slow days at the warehouse were brutal. The busier we were, the faster time flew. Nothing was as dreadful as sitting around waiting for an order to pick, staring at the clock waiting for lunch or the shift to be over.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Many people are more fulfilled when their skills are utilized than when they have to space out while the talentless are allowed to spew jargon that won't actually change anything.
  - gowld 5y ago
    We're talking about unskilled jobs where you aren't allowed to pee when you choose.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Thorrez 5y ago
If you're paid by the hour then you get money by sitting around in meetings, but not by going home and watching a movie.
- Zandikar 5y ago
  Just because the company only values your time at X an hour, doesn't mean you're content wasting that time for X an hour. Idle time at my old minimum(ish) wage jobs when I was younger was honestly the biggest stressor I had. When we were busy, time flew, it was no big deal. But sitting around idle, that same hour drags on, and can be a real drain on mental health. Especially if you're going to school or something and have better ways to spend that time, but due to the work environment, you can't spend that time accordingly for whatever reason. Sure, pay is pay, but time is more valuable than any job can afford to be honest, and few things let that reality sink in as much as idle time at a job you hate, but you have to stay and deal with it because you're struggling to make ends meet.
- randomdata 5y ago
  But you could be working during that time, giving at least some stimulation and sense of accomplishment. Listening to someone drone on about nothing you care about only serves to remind you that you could instead be doing something productive with your time.

reidjs 5y ago

Idle time is nice if the alternative is heavy lifting or dealing with rude customers

randomdata 5y ago
When it is at home, yes. When someone wants to take up your time at work that could be instead spent getting the job done so you can go home, or already be at home, it is not a pleasant experience.
- shukantpal 5y ago
  If you get the current task at hand done, you're not going home. You're paid by the hour (in this case)
youeseh 5y ago
> rude customers Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. The stuff around internal politics though - little pecking order shit, where the managers and other coworkers can and often do make working unbearable causes many exits and often violence.
- lsiebert 5y ago
  > Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. No, it's not, many workers I know face repeated and regular stressful abuse, which is almost always worse if they are visibly part of a marginalized group of people, who also get racial and misogynistic slurs thrown in their face. There are dramatic differences in treatment, and many managers don't step in to protect their employees. That's not to say the other stuff you mention doesn't also occur. It's not even necessarily retail, I know a really sweet Latina woman, she manages and runs multiple bicycle rental places in SF. People will be incredibly rude to her, but when she says, "Hold on, let me get someone else to help you" and gets a white male employee of hers, they are suddenly all smiles and apologetic and understanding. I honestly would encourage folks here to remember to be good customers, to treat workers as you would want people to treat you, because workers in the US are almost always underpaid and dealing with work related stress. Try to know what you want by looking online, understand that workers don't owe you happy smiles and social interaction beyond the goods and services you pay for, listen to and ask for suggestions and consider them as expert advice if you are having trouble making a decision, and if possible be polite and say thank you.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    If she is the manager and has a staff why is she working the front counter? I've never seen a manager hand off a difficult customer to a lower employee. As a customer I would ask to speak to the manager if I wasn't getting service never does the manager ask the co-op student to handle this difficult customer they can't. Something about your story doesn't add up. You say she is the nicest person but is she good at customer service because those are two different skills.
    - lsiebert 5y ago
      Ah, you are reasoning from your own anecdotal experience to say that something is unlikely because you haven't yourself observed it. Maybe you should try an experiment? https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-signed-work-emails-using-a-female-name-for-a-week_n_58c2ce53e4b054a0ea6a4066 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-happened-when-a-man-sign...
      - lsiebert 5y ago
        That experiment from her perspective. https://nickyknacks.medium.com/working-while-female-59a5de3ad266#.ginj3xk30 https://nickyknacks.medium.com/working-while-female-59a5de3a...
      - ipaddr 5y ago
        I do post under various genders / ages / races and the advantages of being part of each identity are not shared between groups. There are advantages to being female or black or old or young or male depending on who you are talking to. It is eye opening.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >Dealing with rude customers is quickly learned. >The stuff around internal politics though... can and often do make working unbearable I'll go out on a limb here and say you have never worked in a retail job before, dealing with the general public. A small percentage of the public are simply fucking awful people who will do absolute anything they can to try and get what they want. Surprise surprise, dealing with this form of abuse (and more importantly, never knowing when it's coming) on a daily basis destroys your mental health - just as dealing with abusive behaviours from a spouse or parent does. Businesses should not tolerate this, but they do, because it increases their revenue by a couple of percentage points.
  - youeseh 5y ago
    I've worked several customer service jobs and helped many people navigate dealing with customers on a frontline. It can be learned and taught. I'm not saying, "the customer is always right", but negotiation - even on the fly negotiation is a skill that anyone can learn.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
I've worked plenty of those kinds of jobs over the years. Your opinion is the minority, a sizeable one but obviously the minority. The opinion of the person you're replying to is the majority. Nobody wants to hang around and do nothing at work, even if you're getting paid. If the job is done people want to go home and sit on their ass on their own terms.
- gowld 5y ago
  You're saying you've never wanted an occasional 1 hr break during a work day?
  - randomdata 5y ago
    One hour breaks are always welcome, but one hour tasks that require watching someone go out of their way to bore you is the furthest thing from a break. And while they might be tolerable when done occasionally, in the age of Agile all the things, where even restaurant staff are now hosting daily standups, those meetings are not occasional.
- gruez 5y ago
  >Your opinion is the minority, a sizeable one but obviously the minority. The opinion of the person you're replying to is the majority. As someone who's apparently in the minority, what's the evidence of this? Is this just your self-assessment?
  - zdragnar 5y ago
    Anecdatum: slow days at the warehouse were brutal. The busier we were, the faster time flew. Nothing was as dreadful as sitting around waiting for an order to pick, staring at the clock waiting for lunch or the shift to be over.
ravenstine 5y ago
Many people are more fulfilled when their skills are utilized than when they have to space out while the talentless are allowed to spew jargon that won't actually change anything.
- gowld 5y ago
  We're talking about unskilled jobs where you aren't allowed to pee when you choose.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Thorrez 5y ago

If you're paid by the hour then you get money by sitting around in meetings, but not by going home and watching a movie.

Zandikar 5y ago
Just because the company only values your time at X an hour, doesn't mean you're content wasting that time for X an hour. Idle time at my old minimum(ish) wage jobs when I was younger was honestly the biggest stressor I had. When we were busy, time flew, it was no big deal. But sitting around idle, that same hour drags on, and can be a real drain on mental health. Especially if you're going to school or something and have better ways to spend that time, but due to the work environment, you can't spend that time accordingly for whatever reason. Sure, pay is pay, but time is more valuable than any job can afford to be honest, and few things let that reality sink in as much as idle time at a job you hate, but you have to stay and deal with it because you're struggling to make ends meet.
randomdata 5y ago
But you could be working during that time, giving at least some stimulation and sense of accomplishment. Listening to someone drone on about nothing you care about only serves to remind you that you could instead be doing something productive with your time.