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Today my wife asks me what I do all day at work.
When I was a kid I asked my father the same question once. He was an electrical engineer and he worked in an office all his life. He still does. At the time my father was not able to give me any sort of coherent answer about what he actually DID all day long. It frustrated the 8-year-old me to no end.
I look at my wife. I blink. I have no sensible answer for her. I have become my father. I finally say, “Well… nothing, really.”
And that’s the sad truth of my career now. I go to the office each day with the intention of getting “something” done for my company. But at the end of each day I really can’t say I’ve done anything meaningful or useful or even very interesting in the grand scheme of things. I am living in a Dilbert comic.
So what do I do all day?
I drink coffee. I go to meetings. I answer the phone. I drink more coffee. I write some email. I sometimes solve problems. More often than not I simply refer people to someone else who may be able to help. I drink even more coffee. I chat a lot on IM. I eat lunch. I talk about the other people in my office. I make a lot of witty comments. I go for a walk. I go to more meetings. I surf the web. I read magazines. I drink more coffee. And, thanks to the coffee, I pee…a lot.
True, I don’t always do things in that order, but you get the idea. When I was a child I used to play “office” with my siblings and we’d sit at desks and scribble on papers and staple things together and draw crazy inventions with crayons and generally spend a lot of time doing nothing. Thinking back on those days I realize that I was more productive then than I am now. At least I had some pretty pictures to hang on the refrigerator when I was done playing.
But the older I get, the less this actually bothers me. This is both disturbing and comforting to me at the same time. On the one hand I’m outraged at myself for not wanting to do better and achieve greater goals and change the world. But on the other hand I’m pretty much doing nothing and getting paid for it, so why should I complain?
It’s not a bad existence. It’s not a particularly great one, either. But I am beginning to understand how people just sort of “give up” at my company and don’t even bother trying to make things better. They have more important things to worry about. They have families. And the company is just a “hobby” that happens to pay them.
My father was a great dad. He worked his crappy office jobs so that he could do things with his family. He taught me thousands of things that are so much more important than how to work in an office. He sacrificed a lot of his dreams and opportunities to do things for his kids. I realize that now, twenty years after he did them.
The reason I bring all this up is… I’m going to be a father soon. And I have to wonder if I want to be the sort of father who can tell his child what he does all day. I’m not sure how important that is anymore. I suspect having a child will make me rexamine a lot of my values and thoughts about the world.
Luckily I have eight hours of free time every day to dedicate to it…
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One Response to “Hardly Working…”
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Z says:
I suspect having a child will make me rexamine a lot of my values and thoughts about the world
I suspect it will too. I’m also suspecting you must work for local government.
April 5th, 2006 at 10:02 am