s/o Have you ever had a boring job?

[Lady Florida.]

I didn't want to derail Daria's thread about her son's boring job.

 

Have you ever had a really boring job?

 

I had one once. I quit teaching for five years. Long story but I had to decide if I really wanted to teach or did so because my father wanted me to be a teacher and he died when I was fourteen. I had to know if I was only teaching because of him. Turns out I did want to teach. But anyway -

 

 

I got a job as a bookkeeper for a local electrician. They mostly did contract work and rarely did electrical work for individuals. They had 4 employees. I worked from 8 am to 4 pm but was done with all my work duties by 10 am. Even the bookkeeping work itself was pretty easy and boring (as in not challenging at all). That left me with 6 hours of pure boredom. The guys were usually out on jobs so I didn't even have someone to talk to. I would occasionally have to answer the phone but it didn't ring much. Most jobs were contracted in person between the owner and the customer. I read a lot of books during the 7 months I had that job. 

 

[Pink and Green Mom]

I was placed at a job through a temp agency the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college.  The job was working for a New Jersey township in the accounting department.  I was an accounting major so I thought this placement would be great.   I spent 8 40-hour weeks doing absolutely nothing.  Whenever I would ask my supervisor for work, she would tell me to practice my typing.  There was literally no work for me or the other temp hired.  I suspect the township had "use it or lose it" budget money.

[wendyroo]

When I was in college I worked in the reserve library.  There was almost nothing to do.  In a 2 hour shift I would often only serve 2 or 3 patrons (I had to get their books from the reserve shelves and check them out), and re-shelve a similar number of books.  That left a lot of time for twiddling my thumbs.

 

For the first two year it was great; the head librarian was a very reasonable person and encouraged us to work on homework or play solitaire on the computer.  Unfortunately, she left after my sophomore year and the new librarian was much less reasonable.  His policy was that we were not allowed to work or play on anything non-library related during our shift.  During our free time, we were to scan the shelves and ensure that all materials were properly filed.  Since the only people with any access to the shelves were the staffers, hardly anything was ever out of place and the "work" was entirely pointless.  It was a very small library, so in 2 mostly uninterrupted hours you could easily inventory all the shelves...and then the next staffer could do it again during their shift...and then again and again and again running your finger along the spines of properly filed books.  

 

I quit after only a month of the new regime.  I went and worked for one of the other libraries where the work was boring and repetitive, but also productive and necessary.

 

Wendy

[J-rap]

I've definitely had some boring jobs, but always had at least one or two fun people to work with, so that changed everything.  Without other people though, yeah.... very boring!!

[Amy in NH]

I worked for a school district one summer scanning all the very old student records onto microfiche before they were shredded. Boring dingy basement job.

[solascriptura]

I’ve worked at several boring desk jobs. They were easy and my co workers were nice, but the sheer boredom wears on a person. I didn’t feel right pulling out a book or anything. Good thing I got out of it. That kind of situation usually leads to lay offs.

[JudoMom]

I had a job at University that involved student files and a windowless room.  I don't remember what I did, but I remember wanting to cry every time I had to work.  It was so boring.

[MeaganS]

I was a temp at Sam's Club home office for a summer. I scanned court-ordered payroll docking paperwork (like for child support). All day every day I'd unstaple, scan two sheets or so, then do the next. I started making used-staple sculptures on my desk. Lots of audiobooks on headphones kept me sane.

[Wheres Toto]

The majority of the jobs I've held have been boring to one degree or another.  Retail, office, stockwork, filing, hospital.  The best ones were those where you didn't have to constantly "look busy", where you could do personal work or read or SOMETHING when there was no work to get done.   It's really hard to look busy and productive when there is literally nothing to do, and the days draaaaaaggggggggg.

 

I liked my last office job but it still had boring parts.  Days where it was really slow, days where there was nothing to do except print large documents, or make stacks of copies, or mindless data entry.  But there were also days with big involved projects to balance it out.  Those projects are what I currently do occasionally as a freelancer.

[SKL]

I agree, my most boring jobs have been when I finished all my work in less than the hours I was scheduled for.

 

I am a person who blabs a lot at work once I know the people, so that helps offset some of the boredom.  But it's still stressful to be a non-productive team member.

 

I think the worst was the used book store I founded, after it was all set up.  There was too much time between customers.  Obviously I had books to read.  :P  I was also a full-time college student and did homework at work.  Or wrote in journals etc.  Sometimes I even had someone to talk to.  But still, during those quiet hours ... ugh.  I also got really cold from being too inactive in the winter.  No amount of hot air or pacing around seemed to be enough.

[SKL]

My first office job involved "candling."  This was back in the stone age.  County appraisals had been done on manila cards.  Then revisions were made by sticking stickers over the numbers and writing new numbers (in pencil) on the stickers.  Someone decided we needed to go back to the previous numbers.  My job was to erase the new numbers, hold each card up to the light, look through the sticker, and write the old numbers on the stickers.  The job also involved entering either the old or new numbers in the computer.  Thankfully this was only a part-time job.  :P

[Word Nerd]

Before taking a full-time temp-to-hire position, I did several single-day temp assignments after moving to a new area post-college. I worked at a factory making music stands, at another factory printing phone books, and I was a sample lady at Sam's Club. Although I kind of liked the variety of work I did while filling in as a temp, both of the assembly line jobs were pretty dull and I was glad I didn't have to do them long term.

Edited October 23, 2017 by Word Nerd

[Daria]

I once had a temp job that lasted just two weeks, where I made coffee and rearranged sodas in the fridges in all the breakrooms in an office building.  The building was about 10 stories tall, and it had 1 break room on each floor.  At the start of the day, someone else had stocked all of the fridges with soda, and my job was to visit all the break rooms, and check the fridge to make sure that they had an appropriate selection of sodas.  If, for example, the fourth floor was down to one diet coke, I would need to find another fridge that had extra diet coke, and move some.  Also, if someone didn't wash their coffee cup, I should wash it.  

 

I was specifically told that the temp before me had been let go because they had seen her sitting down on the job, and people had objected that the company was wasting money, so I was supposed to keep moving.  

 

After the first day, I brought a book.  I'd work my way from the top to the bottom, and then sit in the bathroom stall and read for 1/2 an hour before taking the elevator up and starting over.  

 

[Kassia]

Factory work was my most boring job ever.  Put together the same pieces all day long.  It was a temp job.  I have a high tolerance for boredom so it was okay for me.

[Garga]

Yes!  I had a government job.  It was shift work as the place I worked was on 24/7.  We were "essential personel" so even if it was snowy and all of the rest of the government was closed down, we were open.

 

We were ridiculously overstaffed and undertrained.  I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing most of the time.  I calculated the actual work I did, and it was about 20 minutes of work over an 8 hour shift.  My coworkers and I mostly sat around gossping about each other, which is when I learned that men are as bad of gossips as women.  

 

It was always a long slog of sitting there for 8 hours a day with nothing to do.  On the weekends or night shifts we could read books, but on the day shift when the "day workers" were there (like management or vendors) we had to just sit there staring at each other. 

 

It was awful.  I hated it.  

 

I've also had jobs where I've been overwhelmed with the amount of work to get through and we were severely understaffed.  That's awful, too.  When I'm done this homeschooling gig, I want a moderately busy job where I get a sense of completion.

[nevergiveup]

Oh, where do I even begin....

In college, as a summer job I worked on a research farm where I got to count insect populations on soybeans.  So, we took soybean samples, froze them and then spent days going through the samples logging all the different kinds of insects we saw.

Then, along the same lines, I got to take defoliated soybean leaves and scan each one into a computer, digitally zap the defoliated area so the sound leaf area could be measured, thus determining (for the researcher) how much defoliation resulted in loss of yield. A soybean plant has a lot of leaves.....

I also had a temp job working in a bank where all I did for 8 hours was add receipts using an adding machine.  All day every day. 

Another temp job was working for a foundry-- filing, and typing in work orders. 

So many levels of boredom.

[mom2scouts]

I had a really boring job in college. I was security for the student recreation center. Sometimes I would get to sit at the entrance and check student IDs and that wasn't so bad. Usually, my job involved sitting in a hallway near an outside door and making sure the door closed and locked when anyone used it as an exit. People were only allowed to enter one of the main entrances, so my job consisted of watching people go out the side doors and telling people who wanted in to go to a main entrance. Mostly I just sat around and, since I was considered security, I wasn't allowed to read, study, or do anything else while I was at work.

[Audrey]

I once worked as an attendant at a parking garage.  It was very boring. The most exciting thing was when the ticket dispenser would jam and I'd have to go crawl between the gate to try to fix it before cars piled up too much.  I found a way to make it less boring by making a game out of saying "hello" and "have a nice day" for every line of cars.  The way it worked was that there would be periods where cars would be lined up to leave.  I would try not to greet people the same way twice in a line, nor wish them well the same way twice in a line.  Short lines were easy. The long, long lines were more challenging. 

[foxbridgeacademy]

I worked for a garage door company in Florida.  Previous to my employment when the office person left at 3pm the phones got switched to the bosses cell phone.  So if he was in the middle of a job and they got a call he'd have to stop work to take it or let it go to voice mail.  He found that a lot of the people just hung up and he was worried about missing out on business (this also applied to his weekends when he was in fishing tournaments).  So I worked from 3-6 M-F and every other Saturday 12-6.  My job was to answer the phone and file work orders.  There were rarely ever any calls and the filing amounted to about 10 minutes worth of work. 

[SparklyUnicorn]

Every single job I've had has been soul crushingly boring.

 

 

[Scarlett]

I didn't want to derail Daria's thread about her son's boring job.

 

Have you ever had a really boring job?

 

I had one once. I quit teaching for five years. Long story but I had to decide if I really wanted to teach or did so because my father wanted me to be a teacher and he died when I was fourteen. I had to know if I was only teaching because of him. Turns out I did want to teach. But anyway -

 

 

I got a job as a bookkeeper for a local electrician. They mostly did contract work and rarely did electrical work for individuals. They had 4 employees. I worked from 8 am to 4 pm but was done with all my work duties by 10 am. Even the bookkeeping work itself was pretty easy and boring (as in not challenging at all). That left me with 6 hours of pure boredom. The guys were usually out on jobs so I didn't even have someone to talk to. I would occasionally have to answer the phone but it didn't ring much. Most jobs were contracted in person between the owner and the customer. I read a lot of books during the 7 months I had that job.

My job now can be boring. I work for a collision repair shop and sometimes the phone doesn't ring all day. At least I have WTM boards! I only work in the office 2 days a week and the other one day I work is all kinds of errands and stuff so not boring. When there is a lot of business and customers calling and coming in my job is not boring. I solve problems and also get to chit chat with a wide variety of people.

[G5052]

I worked as a receptionist at a pool. I checked memberships and handed out/took baskets. Somehow I always got the morning shift during lane swimming and lessons where very little happened. The lane swimmers rarely said anything at all. Usually the moms brought the kids dressed and ready to go for their lessons, and took them home to shower, so no baskets. The phone rarely rang too.

 

When I was an R.A. and then head R.A. at a state tech college, being on call in the evening was boring unless it was Friday or Saturday night. Students generally studied hard all week and then went crazy. I usually did my studying in the evening anyway, so I just did that and went to bed most of the time. Security had the schedule, so I just had to stay in my room. It was rare to get a weekday call.

[rocassie]

Yes, shelving and shelf-reading books at my local library as a teenager.  Despite being boring it was a great first job; flexible, low stress, paid better than minimum wage, and looked good on college/scholarship applications.

[MotherGoose]

Yes, I worked for a company that hired me as a temp. Not nearly enough for the regular employees to do, much less me. I was also a tour guide in a historic home that got very little traffic. That one was great because I didn't have to try to look busy, I could bring my own things to do if no one was wanting a tour.

[Elizabeth86]

I haven't had many jobs. None were what I would call boring, but I am really boring. I crave the mundane and repitious things in life. The more boring the better :lol:

[lmrich]

I worked in the admissions office of a nearby college. I stuffed envelopes. 

 

The highlight of the summer was the time a family wanted a tour of the campus, and I was the only person in the office. I had never had a tour of the campus myself, so I had a good time exploring. But I gave the worst tour in history. 

[TravelingChris]

I have had jobs that weren't very interesting like typing in numbers all day long or filing. But the most boring job I got was at a research library in a special department they had there. In a month, I would have two days of work doing a mailing. I would answer phones and was lucky if one call a day was received. I was very excited when we had a conference because I got a few more calls and organized a few things like ordering the catering. That was the only week anything ever happened except the mailing days. But wait, it got even worse. I got a college student for an intern and she also had nothing to do but I was supposed to make up stuff for her to do. No other job comes anywhere close to being as boring.

 

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[nixpix5]

Oh yes I have. In college I worked at Eddie Bauer call center. I have never hated a job more in my life. It went sooooo slow. It was grueling to no end. I learned sales was not my thing.

[Hilltopmom]

Factory work one summer in college.

[TrixieB]

Oh yes I have. In college I worked at Eddie Bauer call center. I have never hated a job more in my life. It went sooooo slow. It was grueling to no end. I learned sales was not my thing.

 

That was the job I quit before my first day.  I really needed the money but I just couldn't talk myself into actually going to the first day of work.  You have just confirmed I made 100% the correct decision.

[ScoutTN]

Only two:

bank teller - dull at best. how I dreaded that!

work study job during grad school as an office asst. for maintenance dpt. - awful, though they didn't care if I read while waiting for the phone to ring. 

 

 

[AnnE-girl]

The summer between high school and freshman year of college, I had a temp job as a receptionist in an office equipment company. It was right after one of the partners had split off into his own company, and half the office was empty. The atmosphere was very weird, and there were occasional calls for the new company that I was supposed to direct to a different number, but no one wanted to explain to the temp why everyone was so on edge. I eventually figured out that there was a lot of animosity over the breakup of the partnership. I was only supposed to do very clearly defined receptionist tasks per the temp company contract, so there wasn’t much to actually do. Bringing a book was discouraged. I played a ridiculous amount of computer solitaire. At least I looked busy.

[Junie]

I had a temp job one summer during college that was pretty boring.  The people made it fun but the work was monotonous as was the light-feel-good-rock music.  "We play the same 100 songs every day, just in a different order!"   :laugh:

 

The job was doing 10-key entry in a hospital billing department.  The work was supposed to last 5 hours a day, IIRC.  I was given stacks of cards, each with a patient's name at the top, followed by stickers with multi-digit numbers.  The stickers had been peeled off of medications or other medical equipment used for that patient.  The job has since been replaced with scanners.

 

One day the VP of the hospital was giving a VIP tour through the offices.  He stopped to ask me what work I was doing.  When I told him, he said, "You couldn't pay me enough to do that."  I asked him if he would be willing to trade salaries.  ;)  He declined.   :glare:

[Amy in NH]

Oh, where do I even begin....

In college, as a summer job I worked on a research farm where I got to count insect populations on soybeans. So, we took soybean samples, froze them and then spent days going through the samples logging all the different kinds of insects we saw...

 

So many levels of boredom.

I had a similar job counting fish fry (tiny baby fish) in a combination of river water and formaldehyde, tangled in river plants and assorted muck. They had to be separated from the muck and set aside for species identification as part of a water quality study. Tray after tray, all day long. Booooring. The worst was mid afternoon - fighting the nodding-off. Edited October 24, 2017 by Amy in NH

[Barb_]

K12 school was the most boring job I've ever had. That's why I homeschool.

 

Every job I've ever had has been stimulating in some way. I haven't loved them all, but the ups and downs were usually more related to bosses and coworkers. I used to wish for a little boredom because all of my jobs have been pretty high pressure (Publix cashier in a busy store, college server at a busy bar and grill, insurance billing and collections...). Now I'm thinking it was probably better to have stayed busy.

[Barb_]

I had a similar job counting fish fry (tiny baby fish) in a combination of river water and formaldehyde, tangled in river plants and assorted muck. They had to be separated from the muck and set aside for species identification as part of a water quality study. Tray after tray, all day long. Booooring. The worst was mid afternoon - fighting the nodding-off.

Research boredom is why both of my science majors have gone in other directions--one is a software engineer and the other is doing her phd in policy. Not what they bargained for lol

[Barb_]

I worked in the admissions office of a nearby college. I stuffed envelopes.

 

The highlight of the summer was the time a family wanted a tour of the campus, and I was the only person in the office. I had never had a tour of the campus myself, so I had a good time exploring. But I gave the worst tour in history.

This made me giggle. Poor, unsuspecting family

[Amy in NH]

Research boredom is why both of my science majors have gone in other directions--one is a software engineer and the other is doing her phd in policy. Not what they bargained for lol

I'm ashamed to admit that I left a poor grad student high and dry one summer. While he was flying around the clouds of South America collecting water samples for acid rain study, I was supposed to be running already collected samples through the gas spectrometer at the university lab. Once the novelty wore off it was a boring and lonely job.

 

They did some very interesting climate science in that building - analyzing arctic ice cores, etc - but I discovered I don't like the work. Maybe I would have liked field work better, but that was the summer I dropped out of uni. By the time I went back, my interest had changed and now I'm preparing for a career in policy research. Which also sounds boring... hmmm.

[fraidycat]

Oh geez. Yes. Currently. I have a casual/on-call job that requires a lot of sitting in the cab of a big rig. I rarely stay awake for a full shift - the hum of the engine and lack of any stimulation puts me to sleep almost every time. I’ve tried reading and watching movies, but nope, still can’t stay awake.

Edited October 24, 2017 by fraidycat

[lailasmum]

Yes I've had lots of boring jobs. Shop work, security and admin jobs when there are big gaps between things going on or lots of waiting around. I definitely discovered I like a more changeable and challenging environment to work in and the jobs I've had since nearly all had that. I think I get bored easily though.

Edited October 24, 2017 by lailasmum