Maybe because I’m having a (short) breather in between busy projects, so taking some (well deserved) sneaky downtime on the boss’s dollar, but the issue of skiving is on my mind. The ethics of it, when and where it is appropriate, how common is it?
Sometimes (in the financial industry anyway) I feel there is a mass, known-but-never-admitted, “secret”; that skiving is totally prevalent, done by everyone, and no-one thinks there is anything wrong with padding out your work activities to appear busy. And I’m pretty sure if a four day week ever became common practice, people would have no trouble getting their stuff done in four days instead of five. Probably only a minimal number of mugs/ dedicated workers (choose your own phrase) are actually being as productive as they can be in their work hours.
So: skiving. Have you? Do you still? Ever been in a job where it is just expected and accepted? Do you feel guilty about it? Or is it a legitimate way to still stick it to the man a bit in this dull modern world? is it a bad thing, or is it just a word invented by the Establishment to denigrate those at the bottom of the rung as lazy and feckless?
Personally, I don’t think I skive much on the whole, and my catholic guilt complex kicks in whenever I think I am being lazy, but I certainly don’t feel guilty about it as long as I’m not directly causing someone else more work.
(Right, you’ve been writing this post long enough. Back to work, young Cowslip)…
Of course. I’ve been doing it my entire career, where possible.
The very first job I ever worked in, I figured out that I could complete all my assigned tasks by about lunch time, and spend the rest of the afternoon screwing around. So that’s what I did. I was still covering more ground than the vast majority of my team, I didn’t make it obvious, and I was earning peanuts, so it was a no-brainer.
When I worked in law firms, my philosophy was to give 100% effort when it was busy, but never to pretend to be busy when I wasn’t. I would go to work every day not knowing if I would be sleeping in the office that night, so I’d have been mental to spend the rareish quiet moments shuffling papers and finding things to do. I watched plenty of others take that approach and burn out quickly. Instead, I’d take my Blackberry and head off to the gym/cinema – they could always call me back if they needed me.
My philosophy has always been that you have to self care. Your employer (or at least: my employer(s)) will generally not look after your well-being, so it’s on you to ensure that you balance giving good performance with taking care of yourself. And a bit of selective skiving is often a really important part of that.
In my current role, I’m working across a number of time zones, and for (shudder) Americans, so work flows in around the clock. I’m never fully off email, and it’s quite possible that something urgent could crop up at 11pm, and I’ll end up working late to get it sorted (it happened last night, in fact). In that context, I’d be out of my mind to try to find things to do to look busy at 10am on a quiet Tuesday. I’m better served spending that time doing something else that will keep me sane and enable me to continue doing the job properly without loading a rifle and climbing the bell tower. It’s been a very very long time since I’ve worked a job that was truly 9-5, so I don’t consider there to be a massive distinction between classic office hours and the rest of my life: it’s all pretty much negotiable. But negotiation has to run in both directions.
Sick days are similar. I don’t get ill very often, but on the rare days I do there’s usually too much going on at work to actually take the time off, and I tend to end up pushing through. That’s why a few years ago I decided to start taking a minimum 3 sick days a year (read: I bunk off). I just use them as “mental health” days when an opening arises and I feel like a bit of recharge is needed. Long run, lazy lunch, go watch a movie. Works wonders.
All jobs/careers are different, and I’m sure lots of jobs don’t lend themselves to the above. But I think it’s a really good idea to take ownership of your own work/life balance as best you can, and in many cases, that will involve some strategic skiving. I wouldn’t even consider it skiving if you work pretty hard: it’s just self protection.
So far, I’ve never once had an issue with the above approach (touch wood) – I’ve never had a boss or employer who wasn’t happy with my performance, and I’ve generally been pretty open about the fact that I’m “time-shifting”. You just have to be sensible about it, understand the demands of the job you’re doing and not take the piss.
Bill Hicks said it best….
I hope you never received calls in the cinema. That would be appalling and unforgiveable!
Good lord, no. I’m not some sort of monster.
I have, however, stepped out of many films to take a work call, and indeed on many occasions left completely to head back to the office/home to deal with pressing matters.
Good to know. Thanks for clarifying this vital issue 😉
Bingo was very quick to defend himself there. I think he protesteth too much. Betcha he switches off his work phone in the cinema and pretends he has a bad signal.
When I really want to commit to skiving I like to fake my own death.
It’s super gratifying when I arrive back at the office after a couple of days. Makes a lovely change for people to be so happy to see me.
@Arthur-Cowslip
Well done for calling the blaggard out, Arthur.
My chum in Stuttgart went to the cinema when his wife was 8 months pregnant. No sooner had the opening credits rolled than his phone rang: “my waters have broken”.
Imagine a cinema full of disapproving Germans.
Ok he gets a pass
No he doesn’t. What the hell was he doing in the cinema when his wife was 8 months pregnant?
@Bingo-Little, I hope your employer isn’t reading this.
Market research, innit.
On a semi related note, my youngest was born five weeks early, and labour began shortly after I’d returned home from an all night Arnold Schwarzenegger movie marathon. I was on 2 hours sleep, and didn’t sleep again for another 24. Brutal.
Once my son was eventually born, we named him “Dutch”, in tribute*.
*No we fucking didn’t.
I love that Cat Stevens song.
If in doubt, look busy. Walk around at a good pace carrying a piece of paper. If you’re in a factory or a warehouse, get a brush. Thankfully in my job there are often members of the public I can claim to be dealing with and no-one will question prioritising this. 95% of the shit I write on here is during time when I’m meant to be working. Am I working? Fuck no, I’m staring into space.
Why should I let the toad* work squat on my life?
(* or Moby Dick for that matter?…. drum solos are out of proportion)
I work hard and often extra hours particularly on weekends. Do I get any extra credit or compensation for it? No I don’t. So the odd day where I don’t really put my nose to the grindstone is deserved. I am an engineer and sometimes one anyway needs to wait for inspiration to strike anyway in order to solve problems and move a project forward
I am over 60, my closest colleague recently got laid off and I got no pay rise this year, effectively a pay cut. Fuck em, from now on I am working max 40 hours a week. If I am still there in 2 or 3 years time I would like to reduce to an official 32 hr week.
I try and avoid work completely. I don’t like it. Don’t like the concept, don’t like the reality. Never have. Plus I like to swim in the mornings, which isn’t compatible with a proper job, unless it’s as a lifeguard or a swimming instructor, neither of which appeal to me. I live a frugal existence in a cheap place, don’t have expensive tastes or costly children, get by doing as little as possible. Skiving is pretty much my life.
What is your source of income and how much do you need to get by? Genuine question. @Gary
Yes, I’m also wondering where this slacker’s paradise is! I must look into moving!
I work (ha, as if!) for the local university, in theory teaching English. I get the princely sum of €1,400 a month for, again in theory, 12 hours a week (not all year round, obviously. I get about 5 months paid holiday a year.) And I get by perfectly well on that (but I do own my own house, which was cheap to buy). Running a car is my biggest expense. And eating out. (I eat out a lot.) Since going deaf, all my work is done online. Have you seen The Whale? I’m kinda like on-line teacher Brendan Fraser, except he’s big and fat, whereas I’m lithe and handsome.
They pay you all that money just to tell people to add an S?
“Skiving is pretty much my life.” Do you think we’re all new here?
I work much too hard and get very anxious about skiving. People pleasing tendencies, I guess. But the thing about working in education is you’re not master of your time, at all. Everything runs in specific slots, you have to be in X place at Y time, you can’t not be on site when you’re supposed to be (safeguarding), you can’t have a lazy morning and come in a bit later and make it up somewhere else. Well, maybe you could, but you’d be bloody irresponsible and self-serving, and you’d get fired sooner or later for the above safeguarding reasons.
Just like any group moves at the pace of the slowest, so education culture is set by the needs of the children. Upshot: very little autonomy in terms of workload / time management which, to anyone not accustomed to it, would probably feel intrusive and infantilising. But you get used to it.
Supplementary thing: I’ve no objection to looking after yourself and prioritising work life balance as long as your job performance is good, but I do get very annoyed with colleagues who pretty much steal their living. The impact is always felt by your colleagues, not by the organisation / bosses. Real shirkers seem to me to be saying that as long as they’re alright, Jack, the rest of us can suck it.
Word. I’m in a job where if I don’t do the work literally the only person who will suffer is me. No-one else will have to do it if I don’t do it. And I do most of it anyway. If I have to do something for or with anyone else I don’t mess about. No sniggering please.
Yeah, that latter point is the key. You have to hold your end of things up, or you’re just being a dick.
It doesn’t feel very grown up to have to pretend to be busy when you’re not, but nor is it very grown up to leave what should be your own work for someone else to do.
So far I’m liking the responses. This is starting to sound like The Idler magazine!
Did a fair bit of skiving in my work life.
Some jobs it was expected of you, if not by your bosses then by your co-workers/skivers so as not to make them look bad.
I’ve been in jobs where I’ve been told in no uncertain terms by co-workers, to slow down so that the bosses/clients don’t grow to expect that more will get done. OTOH, a boss I had once, told me “I’m happy with the standard of your work, I’d just like you to do more of it”.
Swings and roundabouts.
The whole concept of working requires a bit of give and take, if things are to run smoothly. Bosses always want a little bit more out of their workers while the workers want to feel like they’re getting away with something some of the time. If both sides can accomodate this, without one or the other absolutely taking the piss, money can be made without anyone feeling exploited.
I’ve worked with one or two lazy bastards who could spend a full day doing what the rest were doing in an hour or so. The rest of the time they’d spend wandering about talking to anyone who’d listen and avoiding the bosses/supervisors.
Things I discovered after years of working/skiving: Sometimes skiving requires more effort than just getting on with it and time can sometimes really drag when you know you’re skiving.
“Some jobs it was expected of you, if not by your bosses then by your co-workers/skivers so as not to make them look bad.” — oh gawd, we had someone in our team like that once. A good 15-20 years younger than everyone else, keen to show how hard he could work and doing twice what everyone else was doing. Nice guy, but made us all look bad. Plus, to be fair, some of his work WAS a bit rushed and incomplete, so he wasn’t a superhero or anything.
He has since been promoted away somewhere else, so we can all relax now.
Reminds me of that scene in Cool Hand Luke where they’re tarmacking the road.
I’m extremely lucky to have a job that kind of meets many of my values, interests and skills. It’s not the highest rung on the ladder by any means. The head of the whole organization, (as well as my direct supervisor) is younger than me. So I suppose I am a classic Gen-X slacker. But I do what I need to do for the job, and am very happy to have wonderfully talented and diverse colleagues doing a whole range of different jobs and projects, many of which I can convince myself and others, it is worth investing time and energy in cooperating on.
So I will spend some time at my desk (either in the office or here at home) doing the tasks I have been given. I will also spend as much time as possible chatting to other colleagues, because that’s how I learn best about what they are actually doing, and can then spend other idle hours pondering how our work can better connect together.
None of that is wasted time, even the time I spend creating silly puns or memes involves testing my drafting, composition and graphic skills. Reading and posting on here keeps me aware of a world beyond the working bubble, and is a useful downtime between tasks.
When necessary, I will work from 11pm -3am to complete a piece of work that I know I would never be able to do in the ‘working day’, because of demands from the team I support.
Last night I was talking to somebody from Deutsche Welle about human language technology (HLT), data journalism, video podcasting on gamer platforms and other new innovations which I can see all relevant to the work of my colleagues and me. I don’t mark it down as work time, but it unquestionably informs how what I and colleagues do do in our work can be improved by new ideas.
There is so much opportunity for cross-fertilization, if we are open to it.
I’ve worked with a couple of people who would literally spend all day telling everyone, one at a time, how busy they were rather than do the work. They would then have to do it in the evening or at the weekend to meet deadlines and would then come in and tell everyone they were so busy they had to work in the evening / at the weekend.
I worked in the civil service in the 80s, non customer facing, and very little work got done in December although we did get a lot of drinking done.
I feel bad if I don’t have things to do, probably a product of my parents’ Protestant work ethic.
My work comes in very busy periods (up to 10 hour days) with super quiet periods, which I’m experiencing now. That said, I had a meeting the other day where I successfully pitched a radical new approach to a yearly problem, written in 10 mins on the back of a metaphorical fag packet, but it’s not hard work, just experience. That meeting was the only decent work I’ve done this week, but it’ll get crazy again before too long. It always does.
“I feel bad if I don’t have things to do”
I’m the complete opposite! Human beings, eh? What a varied species we are.
I’m a great advocate of doing the job I’m paid to do rather than filling every minute. Usually I’m very busy, and when I’m not there is usually something I can get working on so it doesn’t become urgent down the line. I’ll do that to the best of my ability, suggesting improvements where I see them, but won’t go looking for extra work for its own sake.
Who am I trying to impress? I’m not interested in the next job up from mine and so long as the pay covers my modest needs I’m happy to my current one well and conscientiously. A recent training circular at work claimed ‘We all want to take our careers as far as we can!’ Well, no. People at the highest levels in organisations almost certainly got there through a combination of hard work and ambition. I’m glad such people exist and appreciate that every workplace needs them, but I suspect they may not understand that some of us lack the ambition gene.
Finally, I definitely recognise @BryanD ‘s description of some of the biggest shirkers being the ones who spend a lot of their time complaining about how busy they are. Thank the gods for wfh rather than in open plan offices.
“People at the highest levels in organisations almost certainly got there through a combination of hard work and ambition.”
… and luck. Don’t forget luck. Mainly luck.
.. Plus the willingness to step on other people for your own benefit. Yes, that as well.
It’s not all nice at the top, folks. (Not that I would know).
^This is a more grown-up articulation of my position.
I fail to see how anyone gets anything done individually in an open-plan office. So much noise, people yabbering, other peoples’ keyboards being hammered at, interruptions, squirrels….
The secret is to train the squirrels to do the work for you. Work smarter, not harder.
No way. The ceremonial stoat would get the union onto them.
I retired early so my life now is pretty much one big skive – like Gary, my mornings are taken up by swimming and I wouldn’t want to change that now after getting used to it over the past few years.
I do know what you mean though about the guilt – when I was working, my boss (and a lot of groups I interacted with) was in the US and so I spend many nights on late night conference calls, emails late at night etc etc. I would usually try and get out of the office by 4pm and spend the early evening with the family, but I still always had a pang of guilt (and also when I took the next day off after an all night call). That said, I was very much a believer in the fact that I was paid to do a job, not for the hours I spent in the office and so the guilt soon passed….
Well I just retired (last week actually) so I’m currently focussing hard on drifting and doing what suits me. But when I worked I had an annoyingly strong work ethic which meant I found skiving difficult and ended up getting over stressed a few times through taking on too much and getting anxious, not sleeping etc. Very unhealthy.
But…but. I only focus like that if it’s something I deem to be important, or something to do with line management i.e. affecting people I manage. If it’s corporate BS, I’m out. Town Halls, briefings about new structures, presentations about our values etc etc which consume hours of diary time I completely ignore and whilst I might log into them you can bet I’ll be on here, making a brew, playing the guitar or writing a shopping list etc.
It’s funny, when I was freelance I was never like that as I considered my clients pay decent money for me and they deserve a good result, and also you’re only as good as your last reference. When I went permie again for the last three years that I worked I had to re-learn that corporations need contractors to do work so they can waste employees’ time. And I hate someone else wasting my time. That is my prerogative!
Congratulations on the retirement. That’s no excuse for the word “permie” however. Sounds like someone in Australia having their hair curled.
The other option is perm which is obviously ill advised in any context.
No, the other option is “permanent”. I suppose now you’re retired you think these kind of shortcuts are acceptable. I mean really.
Not even Australians say permie, as far as I know.
They say parmie a lot, in matters of ubiquitous pub meals*
*Unless they say parma instead
Ah yes, chicken parmie. Not a fan…
This, basically. I was freelance for 15 years and if I didn’t do the job well and on time I might well not get my contract renewed. This was a mild source of pride for me.
I had a self-imposed career break and now I’m a back as a permie which means I feel I don’t need to do as much, or at least I don’t have to worry as much about unemployment. Which suits me. In fact I’ve been “quietly quitting” for a couple of years, and each week I take stock of whether I should retire now or give it another week.
The amount of “how are we doing, where are we going” meetings we have also means that I can make tea, post shite on the internet or any other “me” things I feel like. I get the work done, just not as rapidly as I might in earlier years.
You are basically me. When the “how are we doing, where are we going” meetings bear no resemblance to life on the ground and senior management incompetence means this will only grind one and on you’ll retire. Trust me.
Thing is, bye and large, if your work is mostly about brain stuff like thinking and giving advice, when you are contracting you’re pretty much your own boss, and you behave accordingly. You basically don’t skive at all, you just use your time wisely and pay close attention to the old work/life balance. Swap out from contracting (cheers, HMRC, you tossers) and go permanent (SWIDT Moose?) and you’ll be answering to some lifer numpty who has been promoted to a management position, and they will more likely than not be a cretin. Whereupon skiving becomes far more tempting for ‘stick it to the man (or woman)’ reasons.
Speaking from experience VV?
If I get really reckless, I’ll spill the name of the client I have in mind. Even so, faced with numptytude of staggering proportions, the ethic still kicks in, and I don’t skive. Of course, due to the Olympian levels of cretinism at work, I don’t get any credit for that either.
Interesting comments about the USA. I’ve occasionally been over there and had to work according to their ways. (Academic and fancy research lab contexts). Though I was in the office at 7, they had a meeting with coffee and bagels, and it was like a breakfast briefing.. Folks got on with stuff then still took an hour for lunch. By 4 or 5, many were leaving. No going to the pub. Huge amounts of hyperbole about what was being done relative to what was being done.
I believe Sweden has the shortest working week in Europe, and is no less productive. Despite endless pissing around on the internet, turning up late, years of lunchtime drinking and long lunches, talking trash with congenital colleagues, etc, I still managed to write 150 research papers, approaching a thousand case reports, supervise hundreds of students, see hundreds of patients, etc.
Seems to me you can produce plenty and even enjoy it, without looking driven and taking yourself too seriously. The main thing is to avoid meetings that serve no function.
I think, or perhaps hope, that you mean “congenial” colleagues 😉
Fecking predictive text…
I live in Canada but work for a US company and previously lived and worked in the US. There is such a lack of cynicism compared to UK or Europe and an almost cultish attitude regarding the company and top managers. I find it pretty weird. Stuff like “Martin would really appreciate you finishing this today” where Martin is the senior director overseeing all our operations. Always first names used as if we are all great big pals together. It’s an illusion
Passive aggressive much, Martin?
I did a long contract for an American Bank once, and was amused to find that almost everyone else in my team (the permanent staff) was a Vice President of something or other. Ludicrous.
They love their job titles, but looking at LinkedIn, that seems pretty universal at least in my area of expertise. Don’t give a shit personally.
There’s that old joke about the guy who gets a great new job at an American company making cars. He goes off to work on the first day and mid-morning his mum wants to know how he’s getting on. She calls the switchboard but no one has heard of him as he’s just got there. They ask her which department he is in. She wracks her brain and remembers he’s a VP and something to do with headrests.
“Is that VP – Left Headrest or VP – Right Headrest madam,” asks the switchboard.
Skiving? I wish…. Much like Bingo’s opening salvo, I am a fast and efficient worker and can get through my workload quicker than my colleagues, and with better feedback around outcomes to boot. Not a bad turnout for someone with a lifelong impostor syndrome. So do go home early? No, I help them out by doing some of theirs as well.
More fool me. A meeting today told me to do less and care less, as my actions draw attention to those of others, who do just enough to escape notice. Until they are made to look idle alongside.
Crazy job is this medicine malarkey.
Echoes of one of my summer holiday jobs when I was a feckless sixth-former. I got a gig as a bin-man with the council. Start early, around 7, open up the bin-store with a big old brass key, trundle out the bin on wheels. Two bins, two brushes, a shovel, all on bicycle style wheels. Lock up the bin-store again and set off on a pre-determined round. Day one the regional foreman takes me around the circuit in a van, points out the static bins I need to cover, and the streets with maximum litter. Gives me the key to the bin-store and leaves me to get on with it. Off I go, whip round the circuit doing a diligent cleaning job, and make it back to the bin-store around 1pm. Stash all the kit and pop into the local pub for a late lunchtime pint. Stretch out on a park bench around 2pm and snooze. I’m supposed to finish around 4pm. The foreman rocks up in his van again, checking up on my progress, finds me relaxing and isn’t impressed. In a strop, he drives off to inspect the round. 20 mins later he returns, admits that it’s all spick & span tickety-boo, but proceeds to lecture me sternly about showing up the rest of the workforce and instructing me to go more slowly in future or I’ll be out of a job. Civil servants eh?
I feel longer term skiving is quite soul destroying. I’ve had jobs where I’ve literally had weeks with nothing to do. You start to go mad after a while
Otherwise though my policy is to work flat out Monday to Thursday, including early starts so I can skive on a Friday. Logic being I’ve done my weeks work and the weekend can begin. If we ever went to a 4day week it wouldn’t change a thing
“I’ve had jobs where I’ve literally had weeks with nothing to do. You start to go mad after a while”
I couldn’t agree less. Waking and having the whole day ahead to do as you please is what preserves sanity in this turbulence we call life. Whereas wearing clothes you don’t want to wear, travelling to somewhere you have no interest in going to and spending time alongside people you don’t enthusiastically choose to be with, that is where madness lies.
How big was that trust fund, exactly? 😉
Enough to buy two pairs of Adidas trainers and still have enough left over for an Aperol Spritz.
Yeah I like having nothing to do also. However if I am at home on a weekday when not working it feels wrong. I pretty much have to travel somewhere if off work. I need to adapt to that.
Wish I could live off 1200 Euro a month….
1200? Pah, ain’t no one alive could live off a paltry 1200 Euro a month. Thankfully, I get 1400. Raking it in, living the dream.
I’m fully retired and I get €1650 a month from the government. Plus they’ve just given me an extra £150 today in case I’m feeling poor as well as old.
Am hoping to get about 1750-2000 pounds a month when I retire made up of UK, Canadian and Swiss state pensions (a portion of which will not be index linked). Then topped up with government investment fund (converted to a pension) that I pay into each month and another UK company pension from somewhere I worked in the 90s. Hope to get by on that with no mortgage, but that is not yet the case.
I see that Canada is one of the countries the UK has a reciprocal pension deal with.
There are deals with several countries whereby the pensions of UK expats increase as pensions increase back in the UK. In other countries without agreements, your UK pension is frozen at the rate when you became eligible or emigrated, whichever was the later date.
Some additional countries are now keen to do reciprocal pension deals, but the UK government is currently refusing to do any more of them.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/reciprocal-agreements/reciprocal-agreements#:~:text=The%20UK%20has%20agreements%20for,Barbados
Useful to know thanks. It’s a bit of a minefield in general especially transferring the company pension I have. Used to be possible to transfer to an equivalent over here, but it was apparently abused with people using it for non pension purposes so it’s now difficult to do, and you have to know what you are doing to avoid huge taxes when you transfer. Experts on doing it here are thin on the ground so leaving it where it is for now.
Australia isn’t on the list, though NZ is…I get round this by not letting on that I live in Oz most of the time.
Oz Gov. has been trying to get a deal. UK Gov. not interested.
Huh. Not as if Oz is a paid-up member of the commonwealth or anything. All Tony Abbott’s fault probably.
Mm, there’s “nothing to do” as in “you can do anything you want”, which I agree is fab, and there’s “nothing to do” as in “try and look busy while you watch the clock” which is absolute torture.
A couple of decades ago I got a job as an admin assistant for a few months with an office for a big energy company, and I swear I was only there to make my boss look important by having people under her. It was me and this other admin assistant who had been there for years. On day one I was sat at a computer (in the open and within sight of my boss, so no skiving opportunities) and shown a few spreadsheets, and as the weeks went on I assumed any day now something would kick off and I would be given a project to do or something.
But nothing, and I mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. I clocked in each day and sat at my desk for 35 hours a week (side note: remember the working week used to be 35 hours? It’s creeping up) and try to look as if I was doing something. And this, oh horror, was before the days when everyone had internet access. All my computer connected to was some internal company intranet thing, and the folders and spreadsheets for the place. I couldn’t sit and read or listen to music or anything. I would just stare at my screen and go to my happy place in my mind, go and make a round of tea every hour or so, and create big colourful spreadsheets out of my own imagination and which contained no useful information at all. Or write poems and stories and song lyrics which were all monumentally dire.
I was torn between thinking this was an easy ticket and I shouldn’t rock the boat, and wanting to be an eager beaver and ask if there was something I should be doing. But after a few weeks in, I thought asking for something to do might make it obvious that I had so far been doing nothing. Reader, I stayed silent. I have no idea what my admin colleague did, what my boss thought we were doing all day, and whether it was all a secret pact that no-one wanted to spoil, or some weird experiment on me to see how long I would take before I cracked. It may well be that the company was just a blank canvas run by an eccentric billionaire and no-one was actually doing anything.
And I was there for about six months, which seems absolutely crazy now, and which I suppose makes the young me a Skiver Extraordinaire. I eventually caved in and got a job in a call centre just to do something busy instead.
There’s one thing I can think of that’s even more frustrating than doing nothing, and that’s utterly pointless work frustrated by someone else.
Throughout my 20s and 30s I designed fairly high-tech AV products. In my mid-30s, I joined a company which designed, made and sold MP3 players. Two years later, that company was bought by an American firm, which made microprocessor chips for MP3 players. So I got to design MP3 players for lots of different brands (all using their Micro chips).
Designing a silicon chip and designing a player are quite different skill sets, like designing car engines and cars, but the US boss told us we in Cambridge had to work as a ‘team’ with people from the parent (chip design) company in Texas.
So I had to design a circuit board for a customer’s MP3 player, with a chip designer in Texas. I’d done plenty before, but he was 20 years older than me and often reminded me how he was my senior and knew what he was doing much better than I did. I’d work from 9am to 4pm, spend an hour on a phone call with him, he’d carry on while I slept and, in theory, we’d get the job done twice as fast. Unfortunately, he was so arrogant he didn’t listen to anything I told him, and would “correct” my work for me overnight. So I’d spend the next working day fixing the mistakes he’d made, and we’d repeat it all the next night/day.
Back and forth it went for six months, much “don’t worry, this is just teething troubles” when I complained to management. I went on holiday for two weeks. He “improved” my design, and got prototypes made. They didn’t work.
The day I came back from holiday, I handed in my notice. During my notice period, I got prototypes of my design made, which did work. He got sacked.
Six months later, the US parent firm went into administration. I can’t say I was surprised.
I had something similar, but we were on the same site. We were developing some software together, I was mainly in charge and would go home after working a reasonably long day around 6-7. He would go home too, but compulsively check things from home in the evening and make changes without informing me. Then when using it the following day I would be debugging issues that he had inadvertently introduced overnight. Drove me crazy. We now have a better software revision system to hopefully avoid all this stuff, but he is no longer with the company.
Never worked a 35 hour week, my first job (83) was 37 hours. 9 to 530 (5 on Fridays) including an hour for lunch that was unpaid
Creeping up? I can’t remember a time I worked less than 45 hours in a week and in every senior job I’ve ever had it’s been 60+.
Thank goodness I’m now part time, as the papers call me, 3 1/2 days, or 7 sessions. Aka about 38 hours actual.
For reasons of health (headaches can give me bad guts) I have to avoid work-related stress. And family-related stress, too, but I’ve not had to tell off an Offspring since they were old enough to understand why.
Anyhow, since lockdowns first began, I’ve been WFH and I basically graze the internet all day. I’m being paid while I write this. When work gets busy, I don’t refresh the AW quite so often.
Instead of commuting to the office, I now leave the house and walk to the garage. The time I leave and the time I get back in the house are pretty similar, but the time I used to spend commuting to the office, I hang out the washing, answer the door, go for a walk round the park, etc.
I think I’m much more efficient as, WFH, I spend a lot less time bumping into people and chatting in the corridor. I could probably do the same amount of work in 4 days, but I’d probably spend the 5th day on solid housework.
“I’m being paid while I write this” – I thought we all were. Why else am I getting these payments?
I quite like having a day off when everyone else is working. Makes me think of the odd sick day from school and how nice that was.
I think the phrases “crazy busy” and “out of control” are overused. I think a busy person tends to make out all is well because they don’t want anybody to think they’re struggling. I got to a senior position as a precocious 53 year old (three years ago) and to begin with, I worked harder and longer hours than I have ever done before. However, over that time I have managed to get a small team in to do the work that I used to do all by myself. Yes, I was a bloody martyr/hero but actually I was spinning plates. They do a lot more than I did and do a better job, so I am learning to let go of that. Someone I respect told me to get things organised in such a way that you make yourself redundant. That makes perfect sense to me – and after 40 years of devoted client-facing service (with several employers in two countries), I can now finally delegate things without feeling guilty or worrying that it will go wrong if I’m not personally doing it.
The benefit of my position is that I know in some detail the mechanics of the job the wider team does – cos I’ve done all them jobs and worked with skivers and heroic martyrs alike. Most of the time, especially in big organisations, many senior managers have no direct experience of the work at all. For those managers, they often come across like Mel Smith in the music shop.
As a 17 year old in the late 70s, I worked in the civil service. I had been ‘distracted’ from school, and wanted more fun. The salary paid for gigs, beer, and ‘rocky’. I completed pushing the mail and filing the documents in an hour or two, then it was reading novels, flirting with the typing pool, and writing shit poetry. Wednesday lunchtime the inkies came out, so me and the other office juniors would respectively buy our favourite, read them cover to cover, and trade, so for me, NME, then sounds, then melody maker. Drunk every Friday lunchtime. Knock off at 4.50pm… now, all of my work as it was then would be done in a few clicks and not need me. I often wonder if my pals likewise escaped.
We have a question from the gentleman at the back with the sheltered upbringing – what is “rocky”?
Far be it from me to cast slurs on Vincent’s youth, but in my time Rocky was Moroccan hash.
Guilty as charged. Yes, I inhaled. That was the point.
Moroccan. For that relaxing jazz fag or two.
In the immortal words of Tom Lehrer, these days I try to get all my shillying done in the morning so I have the afternoon free for shallying.
When I read books for a living people tended to assume I was skiving anyway. A lot of staring into space was involved.
“Busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do.” as Bing, Bendix and Hardwicke sang in Connecticut Yankee.
Finished full time work seven years ago, worked part time (four hours a week equivalent) for three years and now fully retired. I always felt I should be doing something even when waiting about for people.
Now as they say how I found the time to work I’ve no idea. Next week three daytime concerts, morning visit to the cinema. I don’t think I’ve been busier doing nothing.
In the early seventies I worked for a seed processing firm. For 3 or 4 months we were crazy busy with sugar beet working 7 days a week. Another 3 or 4 months was spent ordinary busy, 9 to 5, 5 days a week. Then 3 or 4 months with absolutely no business. The workers were given paintbrushes and slowly painted everything at least five times.
In the offices above their heads us management gossiped and did crosswords – each day was about two weeks long.
In the winter I longed for those long lazy days of summer. In summer bored out of my head I longed to be busy again
So how do you feel now that you have no real purpose to your day/life beyond doing Wordle?
I do all sorts of other things apart from Wordle. All sorts and lots of it. Things like this and like that. Goodness me, is that the time?
For the past few years I’ve been working from home for a small firm where the attitude is to get the job done, ensure you’re there when a meeting is set up, but otherwise manage your own time. Works great as I can make an early start but break for an extended lunch which involves some excercise, and when necessary disappear for things like parents’ medical appointments and getting to shops when they’re quiet. Also able to take screen breaks by lying on the bed for ten minutes, which is a big plus when you’re spending all day at the desk.
Sometimes we’re very busy and I’m working long hours; others I have slow periods when I can do some domestic chores, reading or internet browsing. Overall I get a lot done, my employer’s happy, and I have a decent work/life balance. But I’m sure that in some organisations this approach would be regarded as skiving.
‘I’m sure that in some organisations this approach would be regarded as skiving.’ In the Conservative Party, certainly. If Jacob Rees-Mogg was your boss your feet wouldn’t touch the ground.
“Stopping others from having fun” is what he’s about.
I’m pleased to say my employer, previously reluctant for staff to WFH, has seen the light. During covid lockdowns, they made a profit as the offices didn’t need to be lit or heated. I now WFH FT and nobody ever expects me in the office. I turned up for two afternoons during 2022, and that was only to train the two graduate new starters in something which couldn’t be done online.
I have been in the office throughout nearly every day. They want everyone there now at least 3 days a week. Point being that collaborative work is better with random chats around coffee machines and water coolers that can sometimes help with issues people are having, and better for information sharing than a more official Zoom call with an agenda. I see their point. Face to face meetings are nearly always better too.
I’m general I also think it’s better for mental health to get out of the house and easier to not end up working all the time
In my current role, I don’t really work ‘with’ my colleagues, and the team I ‘manage’ are all in India. So my garage office is fine (and I don’t have to sit in a car in a traffic jam when I really want the loo to get there).
I don’t have any problems switching off – I have thousands of records in the next room, and they’re not going to listen to themselves…
But meeting people you don’t necessarily work on a day to day basis can give you an idea of how things are going generally. I didn’t see any designers for more than 2 years, now I see some of them daily and catching up, finding what they are working on can help give one more of an overview. Ironically I am WFH today as I am not feeling well
If work was at the end of my road, and not a 45+ minute / 12-mile drive, I’d agree with you. But most of my days in the office I’d speak to almost nobody, and the benefits of WFH (and the extra 90 mins each day) for me outweigh the risks. I have plenty of family and neighbours to talk to.
12 miles in 45 minutes? Wow. Clearly it’s not a one size fits all, there are benefits on both sides. I live 5 min drive from work or a 20 min walk (in warmer weather with a recovered hip) so going in is not really a hardship apart from getting snow and ice off the car (pretty much a daily occurrence this winter)
I live outside of Cambridge and work is on the outskirts of the city. The’re no direct route and the roads go three sides round a square, two sides of it at a snail’s pace.
I last worked in the centre of Cambridge about 15 years ago, and the fastest I could get from home to office was 45 minutes – a 20 min drive to the edge of the city and a 25-min cycle across town. Nowadays, with traffic increasing as it is, it would take me 45 mins just to drive to the Park + Ride.
It is only 6 or 7 miles from home to work across the fields, along the fourth side of the square, which is fine on a mountain bike in summer, but not so much in February.
I hope you’re feeling better today, Dai.
I’m about to do something I’ve not done for nearly 20 years – work on a weekend. I’m the department ‘volunteer’ on a big project from an external supplier. They’re given us two 3-hour long presentations and I missed both, having taken Offspring The Younger to the DVLA test centre both times (he passed on Thursday – attention, road users of South Cambs).
We had a meeting yesterday and I realised, having missed both presentations, I didn’t know what anyone was talking about. So I’m going to do a bit of catch up after breakfast, and watch the recordings of the two presentations.
I was going to do some gardening today, but it is raining…
But it never rains there. It’s the driest part of the IK.
Thanks @fentonsteve First Crohn’s flare up for about 7 or 8 months. I am blaming it on all the ibuprufen I have had to take because of my hip bursitis. Hopefully improving now after a bad day yesterday.
I was thinking about this last night and couldn’t sleep. Weird coincidence as I have only just seen this thread. I’ve been in the same industry now for 30 years and am well compensated for what I do, but I always feel like I don’t do enough. My job has a lot of responsibility which weighs very heavily at times. I started thinking about all the ways I could be failing and got up at 1 this morning and worked for a couple of hours to try and settle myself down a bit. I’ve become a bit of a serial worrier (just like my father as he got older). I went for a run earlier which I often do on a Friday when I’m working from home. It makes me feel better but also a little guilty.
I have a new boss this year and I have spoken with her about this to some extent. My role is unusual because I have a fairly senior leadership role but I spend a lot of time as an ‘individual contributor’ (as the Americans like to say). I’m in the weeds most days. I enjoy this way more than the bureaucracy and politics and it’s what I’m good at.
As for skiving, yes, I guess I do that but I think I’d totally lose my marbles if I didn’t.
Given your father’s history and your increasing worrying maybe it aint just the job and maybe talking to someone other than your boss might be the go.
Not something you want to escalate.
Good luck.
I should elaborate. I spoke with the boss about work/life balance and what I do to break up the days. I didn’t elaborate on things further than that.
I’m in the process of leaving a job which I had become so proficient at I could do it in half the time available, leaving plenty of skiving time. But for some reason being very productive but not busy isn’t all that satisfying after a few years. Not that I want to be busier, fuck no, I’m definitely on the wind-down career-wise, and very happy about that. It’s that I actually get very stressed not being busy, while at the same time not wanting to have more to do. It’s a dilemma, I tell ya.