Time Wasting

Here is a list of the three most popular ways employees wasted their employers’ time twenty years ago.

Smokers were at the top of the list.  They smoked an average of seven cigarettes a day and took an average time of ten minutes to smoke each cigarette.

Sickies were the second most popular way of wasting employers’ time; the average number of sick days taken per employee, at that time, was seven days per year. However twenty percent of employees managed to take ten sick days per year.

The third ranking time waster was making private phone calls at work.  Four percent of male office workers made more than 100 private phone calls each week and most employees managed to make anything between five and fourteen private phone calls each week.

One percent of employees allegedly made no private phone calls at all when they were at work.

The private phone calls at work excerpt prompted the following recall.

I remember( this was around forty years ago) when I needed to phone a friend in Papua New Guinea and it had to be in her working hours – which matched mine.  What rigmarole.  First of all I had to get permission from my boss, who informed the switchboard operator to place the call.  I had to stick to a three minute phone call and then I had to re-imburse the cost.  This company is still in business today. 

Around about the time these facts were published I worked for a small textile firm, part-time.  I asked for time to go out at lunch, to phone a garage to find out about car repairs.  The phone box was a ten minute walk away and there was no suggestion about being allowed to use the business phone.  The woman owner ran a very successful business; due in no small part to strict policing of any so-called ‘fringe-benefits’.

Different story today.

In a survey recently conducted by an on-line employment agency, it seems the greatest time waster in contemporary workplaces is face to face chatting with colleagues.  Nearly fifty percent of time is wasted having little – or not so little – chats with the people at work. Never about work, but about any other thing that might come to mind.

It will come as no surprise to learn logging onto social media is the second biggest time waster (Ms. Soup was surprised to see this in second place) and the third choice for work avoidance, was doing nothing.   Yes, doing nothing.  Or if you need to be seen to be doing something, fall back on cleaning the computer screen or keyboard or tidy up your workspace.

In the meantime, the work task you have been putting off is still waiting there in the background…..

Just do it.