My first "real" job was on a government software project, where I guess I was deemed too junior to actually do anything important. I spent time reading, explori

My first "real" job was on a government software project, where I guess I was deemed too junior to actually do anything important. I spent time reading, exploring the computers, sending email, etc. But we had to precisely record how our time was spent so it could be billed back to the government correctly, and they were extremely serious about utmost honesty in recording time. Nothing I did pertained to any particular project, so I used the "general" time charging code. Management repeatedly got upset at me for billing so much to the general time code. I kept asking for work to do. Nobody gave me any work to do. So I kept billing my time to the general time code. And they kept getting upset at me for billing my time to the general time code.