The idea of what people do all day has been rattling around my brain for weeks now. I am so curious how people spend their days at work. What do you fill 8 hours with?
Ever since I left college I’ve only had one type of job. I’ve either worked as a Desktop Support Technician ((The guy who comes to your desk when you have computer problems.)) or a Help Desk Monkey. ((The guy you call and report/complain your computer problem to. Hang up. Then curse at.))
Due to the limited scope of the work I’ve done, I have absolutely no idea what most people do for 8 hours a day. How does an Accountant spend their time? What does Human Resources do all day? The lawyers and other legal types, what do you do all day?
I’ve worked in retail and I’ve worked in a print shop so I have some limited experience with retail and sales jobs. But seriously, what do you do all day?
I am not trying to downplay or belittle what you do. I just don’t know what it is. I am curious.
I stumbled across this question because I’ve been thinking about how I work and how my days go. I have very little ability to plan out how a day will go or built breaks and time to work on pre-defined projects within the given day.
My day changes from hour to hour and sometimes minute to minute. I can have a couple of hours planned out or have a basic idea of what I want to accomplish before I go home. Then, a couple of seconds later a high priority ticket comes in, or a VIP call hits my queue, or a computer decides to die in the middle of a big deadline or an important meeting. ((For the record, computers prefer to commit suicide around 3:30pm on a Friday.))
Since my day is so fluid and I’m unable to plan an entire day out ahead of time let alone a week or multiple weeks. I am curious what consumes your days.
Can you plan a whole day out or a half day and are you able to stick to that plan?
Is your job fluid and changes moment to moment so you never plan more than the next task or the next few minutes?
Tell me, what fills your workday?
I am very curious to hear about your days. Please leave a comment, write me an email ((peroty@gmail.com)), or post to your blog and leave a link in the comments.
mike
it’s funny, i’ve just started working at a job where i kind of have to direct my own projects.
for the past year and a half, i’ve been working as a line cook at an italian kitchen. know the recipes, know how to prep and serve the food, and you’re good – eight hours of autopilot and you’re home free.
but i just got a job at a nicer place, one that does catering as well as cold salads and a deli-style collection of, for lack of a better term, “rich-folk food”. grilled salmon and flank steaks for centerpieces, surrounded by salads and grains i’ve really never seen before in my life.
aside from general prep work for catering orders and helping customers, i also have to keep the salads shelf stocked, which more often than not means going into the cooler, looking around, and figuring out something to make.
it’s a weird shift to make, to know that at some point i’m gonna have to just throw down and make “something”, something classy, something that’ll sell. the training process has been shockingly informal compared to what i’m used to, though they’ve been good sports about helping me out – i’ve never been to cooking school, which makes me sort of an anomaly there.
in a way, though, i’m really just shifting from one planned shift to another, different plan. it’s a plan half-guessed before walking in the door, then finished and mostly set within an hour of getting in. it never needs to last much longer than than my scheduled hours, really.