I sort of miss the office politics and screw-ups right now. Last time in my last company when I was an executive in project department, major screw-ups, office politics and irregular hours is something I hated the most.

Now, I am in a small company, far better pay, 5 days a week, no office politics, there’s rarely screw-ups and I get to go home at 7pm. My life is no longer only work, my personal time increased tremendously. Time seems passing at extremely slow phase.

Sounds good? No!

I get stuck in front of a computer for more than 8 hours everyday and no work for me. All these while I am just trying to act busy in front of my boss. While colleagues around me always have unfinished job, I stuck in front of my PC surfing net, trying to get all my working hours occupied with at least something. In the office, I need not to talk with anybody and the culture seems doesn’t allow me to do so. I am bored. I really don’t know how long I can survive here.

You may ask me whether have I ask for work from my boss. As my company is a small one and we have another 3 people in the department and I am just a newbie, they don’t assign heavy task for me. Some of my daily can finish in just an hour! How I gotta spend the rest of my hours in my office??

All challenge in my working life is gone! I don’t feel my life served a purpose!!

beg them for some thing to do?

or heck learn up something that's going to help you in this job. perhaps ask the seniors what they do so that you can better prepare yourself and use the time to read up / boost skills.

understand how u feel..sometime i rather be dead busy then have nothing to do

mayb it's just a transition period..usually newbies do not get much things to do..ur senior might just wan u to understand the whole process flow before handing u a more major task to do..

do like what goldfries said, asked around c what do u need to learn or u can lend some helping hands to those who seems to be always busy

happened on me during my internship with some company at PJ. Felt real guilty during that 3-4 months.

Geez i wish Im in your shoe so I can use my free time to do some personal speculation or read up my unfinished book:(

Learn as much as you can about ur company's IT infrastructure. How are the networks connected? Where are the switches and routers? Where are the servers? Do you even have access to any of the servers? This is kind of a good test of whether the company has faith in you.

Also find out from ur colleagues what are the normal problems end users face and how to solve it ASAP. In a non-IT environment, solving an IT problem in a few seconds is of paramount importance.

Basically the best way is to equip urself with enough knowledge that you can handle the workload if in some weird event all ur 3 colleagues are not around.

I will feel like shit if i was to be paid there and do nothing.

As a project based staff, this happens to me always (when I've project, I'm damn busy, otherwise I'm idle)

I totally understand how you feel. I don't purposely act 'busy', but that doesn't mean I can do anything (e.g., watch movies, comics etc.)

Usually I'll first ask my colleagues if there's anything to help, if no-one requires my service, I'll just
- Do some housekeeping tasks, clean the junks inside my laptop
- Sort and organize my emails, contacts etc
- Read some articles in wikipedia

hehe is kidna boring i cold read book too.and sleep too when i was traning. is so much boring

When i was training ar, the 1st and 2nd week seems soo boring..
But then come the works: Do a series of soil test on the project site. It was damn tiring. We (other trainees and i) worked like a "buruh kasar" ..

But then again, the last 2 weeks is the same as the 1st 2 weeks..
SOo boring..

Oh yea? Like me, I am waiting for my training and I am doing what here? MSN and replying to Lowyat forum... otherwise, I'm just bothering the boys in my team. Haihhh... uber siennezz.

get your collegue's completed work and see, evaluate, learn from their strong skill, know their weakness. Imagine if the work was on your hand, how do you do it, and compare with theirs, is it better or worse. Keep on learning, dont act busy, its pointless, your entire office isnt that large, they know your jobscope and you know theirs, try to be resourceful, be efficient, and willing to learn/improve. There are 100 ways to do the same thing, dont use the same way all the time, learn new or better ways to do the same thing. I have been in that situation before, and wasted alot of time, i regret that, I should have learned alot from those expert just reading their completed job, try not to ask questions, but look for answer yourself, thats how you grow, ask only really there arent a way to achieve answer, dont just ask because u can know the answer in 10 seconds compare to dig the answer yourself with 10 mins. BTW 1 advice from me, dont hold your bowl too hard now, break it if you have to, you still have a long way to go, dont regret when u noticed you didnt spend enough time to learn how to make a bigger bowl and hold that.

"be water, my friend" - google it if not understand.

time for job hopping lo

if you continue to be like this, you will soon see yourself as useless one even though you are not.
sometimes others in the company will gossip at the back as well.
it is better hopping for other vacancies. good luck.

I guess the first two months is the hardest time to kill. Nobody gonna trust the newbies even though it's the smallest task on earth. But thank goodness you were not dumped with silly job (paint the door, post the mail, photocopy 100sets of minutes, bla bla bla).

Every morning ask your next-table-colleague if there's anything you can assist. Even though it's a courtesy question (most probably he/she will shake the head), it shows you are not there to break their rice bowl. Studies show that exisitng employees somehow feel threaten when a newbie step in.

Best part to learn at the same time to show them you are R E A D Y to move up one step... read past projects or whatever files you are allowed to access. And jot down losta questions to ask them. Regardless you are familiar with the field or not, still product knowledge is slightly weaker than your colleagues. When you start to kacau them, they'll finally surrender and dump you with workloads. Hopefully by then you won't grumble for not able to spend time surfing during office hour!

Bet you'll gain extra marks from your boss too!

This post has been edited by jeaniie: Oct 31 2006, 08:18 PM

haha I understand how you feel. I used to have a contract-based job as well.

One day, the company internet went down, I couldnt access the internet. That was the worst day ever!!! Being taskless, I was dead bored.
Cant even pretend like I'm working.

am a newbie in my company..erm.this is my 4th week here..when there's no task given..really bored to death..duno wat to do...n feel rather guilty when seeing others ppl are busy doing their works.

Wah... try to learn the process in your company, if you're in IT try to learn the environment of the systems so when you are given work you are already familiar with the stuff.

I just wonder why some companies hire people, but just nothing to let the staffs do.

My ex company is the same as well. Coz learn nothing, so just left there.

I had experienced two extremes at two different places:
1) Too free, nothing to do, colleagues suspicious of you breaking their ricebowl. Result: Quit after 3 months.
2) First week already work until 8-12 almost every day. Bosses were like shit. Result: Quit after 1 month.

Conclusion: Get a job you are comfortable with.