what do you do all day?
I’m referring to you out there, specifically the people with desk jobs. What the hell do you do all day? I know what other employees do. Hair dressers cut, color and style hair. Construction workers build things. Teachers teach. Nannies, like myself, follow around small children and do whatever they tell us to do (nope, not the other way around as much as we would like it that way).
But you, you in the cubicle, what are you doing?
Am I the only one that has no idea what anyone does at work all day? I spend lots of time on gchat much like the rest of us so called twenty-somethings out there. I’d say 90 percent of my twenty-something friends have these desk jobs. Whether it’s a cubicle, open collaboration set up, or your own office with a window and a door (lucky bitches), I want to know what you do all day (besides gchat with me).
I was gchatting with a long time friend yesterday and she asked what I do all day. I asked what she does all day. Isn’t it kind of funny that most of us actually have no idea what those closest to us do for a large 8+ hour chunk of the day?
I love your presence on gchat. Your arrival at the office in the morning alines nicely with the time I am off work (this is one instance I say YAY timezones) and it provides a spectacular excuse to catch up. But what do you do?
The overwhelming most popular answers:
- I make spreadsheets.
- I make phone calls.
- I write stuff.
While I agree that these are actual activities. How do they pertain to your job and why does someone pay you $XX,XXX to do this job? Does anyone actually look at these million spreadsheets you make?
Next week, I will have one of these jobs. So please, tell me what you actually do. Do you feel like a contributing member of the American work force?
Tell me, what do you do all day? Do you know what your friends do all day?
i do nothing all day. no seriously…i don’t.
Thus why we have blogs.
hmm my typical day when I worked at Kirkland’s…gchat and spotify…the occasional meeting at which I rarely spoke…more gchat and spotify…bathroom break, coffee break, long lunch break…and back to gchat…wait let me think…nope, that’s it.
Ha yes! I think this sums up the typical work day I’m thinking about
i play on the internet…
I freak out.. Usually all day. I freak the heck out. And then I online shop.
The life of Shushu. My favorite.
I don’t have a desk job 8 hours a day. mostly i spend the time on the field, but there are some days when i have to do office day. it’s when i need to do some releases check, permission check, budgeting check, etc etc etc. and i can do that while drinking coffee and eating cookie
See my point! Those of you without desk jobs can tell me exactly what you do.
Well it’s 10:43 and I am commenting on this post so…. No I’m kidding. (or am I? Oh crud, I feel an existential crisis coming on.) I’d say 50% of the time I am playing around, but my job is also social media and web marketing so I can refer to it as “research” and get away with it. The other 50% I write websites, advertisements and manage SEM content, and hope there is enough ROI that they continue to pay me. It’s a fun little game called “did I earn my pay today.” Most days… nope, but every once in a while there is a quarter of a million dollar contract signed based on lead I generated and they decide to keep me. Those are good days.
You really need to get your blog going again. That is all.
Hahahaha! I’ve always wondered what my friends did all day in an office, too. I’ve always had active jobs, then I became a stay at home mother.
So when I was offered a desk job…let’s just say it bores the snot out of me.
I was recently hired by a resort to handle their marketing and advertising accounts. On top of this, I write their company blog posts as well as write “spam descriptions” for their website. What I call “spam descriptions” are basically a bunch of words that google likes, so that when you google something along the lines of a resort here in Texas, then hopefully their website will pop up on the first page. Make sense? LOL. So yeah…boring.
The job sounds so interesting though! Well, beyond the SEO / spam nonsense
Hahaha, I love those questions and that you dare to ask them!!! Well I give people meds, organize things around patients, talk to patients and get frustrated over doctors and other like two billion care-related things all day long! But well, I know my job isn’t really a 9 to 5 job…even if I enjoy being a nurse I really would LOVE a desk job!!! Mainly to have time off in the weekends, EVERY weekend.
Ahhh I wonder the exact same thing. I am a former teacher, and current artist/ blogger, so what I do all day is obvious. Lots of my good friends are things like “project managers” etc. What the hell does that mean??? I ask and get similar answers, but wonder further….
After working at a desk job for nearly 5 years, I often wondered what other people do at their desk jobs! Those spreadsheets you were talking about – I used to make them…tons of them. And yes, they allowed our clients to sign off lots of $$ for their next advertising campaign. Other than that….lots of time surfing the net, FB, and most of my time spent blogging was at work! Now, after being out of work for 3 months, I’m not looking forward to going back
Ah, that sounds so lovely. I’m a speech pathologist and rarely even see my desk. When I do I’m rushing to get reports written, emails written, phone calls made, scheduling, rescheduling, billing, planning…our hospital blocks all social media on our computers so even if I did have down time I couldn’t do anything with it.
Every company would probably be smart to block the social media stuff, but then what would their employees do all day
I’m the Lead Operating Manager of Mirco Homo Sapiens at a large corporate American company.
Or preschool teacher…whatever.
Back in my pre-France life, I went to a lot of meetings, which I mostly I found to be a huge waste of time, I compiled reports of department statistics (BORING), I prepared presentations and delivered them and training, I answered a bunch of questions, tested new processes and systems, wrote the scripts for the testing (again… BORING) and a bunch of other random stuff that was piled on my desk. It kept me busy and insane.
I kind of hate the ‘what do you do’ question for two reasons. The first reason is that my job isn’t really my life, and I hate being defined by my employment. The second is that when I tell people “I’m a UNIX systems administrator,” their eyes inevitably glaze over until I add, “it’s a computer job for an Internet company. I sit at a computer all day and keep webservers up and fight spam and stuff.”
Despite hating the question, I have to accept it because my job is what brought me to Germany in the first place- they wanted someone in my job role in the European office and everyone else in my department declined because of house/kids/beet garden/other responsibilities that would prevent them from living in Germany for a few years.
Like another commenter up top, I also run spotify a lot in the office because music = sanity.
By the by, my gchat name is stevenglassman42. I’m always happy to chat with new people.
So fun – I’ve been wondering the exact same thing since I don’t have an office job. I imagine my husband’s day like that: arrive at the office, coffee, gossiping (or “information exchange” as men call it), super duper important meeting, more coffee, phone calls, break, same thing in the afternoon. Of course, it probably is totally different. Well, I guess I’ll never know!
I used to have a desk job and I did just about the same thing everyone else does: Sat there with intermittent moments on actual productivity scattered amongst games of Solitaire and sleeping XD
♥ Cat Dead, Details Later
I am not a fan of my desk job, chillin’ in the cubicle. My office has pretty much every website that could qualify as mildly entertaining blocked (read: blogger, gmail, facebook, twitter, etc.) I can check weather and news, but that’s about it.
I take phone calls, price transportation for customers, and organize bids for our salespeople. It’s really not all that exciting. I sometimes get yelled at by customers, though, and that’s always fun.
I feel like you could make a yelling customer laugh and completely change their mood. So you’re probably great at your job!
Hmm. Before my office job, my jobs were pretty easy to imagine: I was an animal rehabilitation specialist (re-training shelter dogs and neglect cases), then a vet tech. Now my office job comes with the title of Sr. Pricing Coordinator. when I say that, most people stare blankly
I spend my days ensuring pricing setups match contracts that are signed, researching billing errors and coordinating a large company billing system. So.. spreadsheets, writing things, answering emails, researching items. I think it just really depends on what your job is at a desk that varies it.
That’s so cool you did animal rehab! I’ve never heard about that but sounds super cool. I love that you could tell me actual things you do at your desk, you must be super busy! Thanks for stopping by my blog
I have enjoyed reading all these comments so much! My days are mixed, I work but that includes field research, writing, thinking…part of my work day typically includes a 2 hour nap
Right? This is hands down my favorite post I’ve written solely because of all the good comments
When I worked in an office, what I did all day was call people to collect on their credit card debt or take calls from people calling in to pay or, more often, yell at me. I did have a window view a couple times (they reorganized a lot), one time with a palm tree, which I thought was nice. Now, I work in a daycare and I imagine my day is similar to yours except that I have at least four times as many kids running around (but I generally have one to three other people with me, I get to give them back at the end of the day, and I don’t see them on weekends). When I worked in an office, I was at work for 10-13 hours a day. Now, I work anywhere from 6-9 hours and I am more tired on any given day than I would be in a whole week of sitting at a desk.
I can’t even imagine watching more children. I’d like to say that maybe it’s easier because they play together but if they’re as terrible at sharing as all the kids I’ve worked with here, you’ve got quite the hand full.