NS: When there’s No Work to Do
Note: Originally published on Sep 21, 2012
When you are at work, and you have no work to do, what will you do?
Find or ask for work to do?
Act like you are doing work?
Sit at your desk and stone?
Read, surf the Net and chat?
I believe there are no definite answers here. If it is really your job, your career, and you have aspirations and plans, then maybe you can be a proactive worker. If you lack motivation and are stagnant in your job, you might pretend to work, or you might stone. But maybe you wouldn’t just engage in leisurely activities because you don’t think it’s right to be seen doing all those stuff at work. You still want your job.
Heheh. What if you have ‘guaranteed employment’? In other words, you can’t be fired. You are bound to your job till your release, with little room for advancement in job or allowance. In such a circumstance, restraint possibly gets thrown out of the window. If there’s nothing to do, why not do what you wish? It’s not that you don’t do your work. You have done most of your work, and what’s left are non-urgent bits and pieces that might require others’ attentions first.
When I was new, I welcomed work and learning to do work because it was better than stoning all day long. But as I grow into the job, routine saps motivation. And without motivation, there can be no proactivity. So? I mixed my day with work, submitting a workplace suggestion (mandatory), mouse-clicking, stoning, chatting and Net-surfing. Maybe that’s not the best impression I can give to superiors, but it’s true that I have done my routine work and it’s true that almost everyone has no urgent tasks on hand.
Why bother to fake a positive, or at least non-negative, impression even when it makes no actual difference? Why put in any effort into psychological deception? I think work attitude is reflected only in times of work. And I think putting down the need to stay in superiors’ good books, without being indolent or insolent, reflects more of a person than any superficial impressions.
