Are You An Office Slacker?

Posted by in Career Advice •



It's long been a running joke that people who work in offices spend most of their time just looking for ways to just appear productive, while doing as little work as possible. In fact, it's the standing punchline for many stand up comedians, comic strips and even movies.

In the movie "Office Space", the lead character admits that he spends most of his time just staring into space and in spite of that, he gets promoted. In one hysterically funny part, he tells the efficiency consultants during an interview that he works just hard enough to not get fired. It's a great movie and it always makes me laugh. The reason that it's so funny is that it seems like an exaggeration, but we all know that it's secretly, just a little true.

Believe it or not, the majority of Americans do have a problem with office slacking. It's surprising to me, because I'd like to think that most of us work harder than we'd like and our job performance is measured by results. Still, according to the experts, slacking off is still a big problem in many offices.

Salary.com did a survey about how people use their time. They asked respondents questions about how much time they waste during the day and what activities they waste it on. In fact, the survey showed that on average, the employees wasted a little over two hours each day, and that doesn't include their lunch break.

Here's how most people wasted their time:

  1. Using the Internet - 44.7%
  2. Socializing with co-workers - 23.4%
  3. Conducting personal business - 6.8%
  4. Just spacing out - 3.9%
  5. Running errands away from work - 3.1%
  6. Making personal phone calls - 2.3%
  7. Applying for a new job - 1.3%
  8. Planning personal events - 1.0%
  9. Arriving late/ leaving early - 1.0%
  10. Other time wasting - 12.5%
What I found to be the most interesting part of this survey was that the amount of slacking seemed to vary significantly by age. Here's how the total amount of wasted time looked by age group:
  • 22-27 year old - 1.95 hours
  • 28-37 year old - 1.61 hours
  • 38-47 year old - 1.19 hours
  • 48-57 year old - 0.68 hours
  • 58-77 year old - 0.50 hours
It's telling that the younger workers were the ones most guilty of slacking, but I wonder why. At first glance, you might infer that younger workers don't have as strong of a work ethic as older workers. That might have something to do with it, but I don't think that it is the entire picture. When you think about it, people under 47 are more likely to have smart phones and spend more time using social networking. Also, many of the older workers are at different levels of their career and the odds are higher that they are working in jobs that they like, whereas the younger workers may be working in jobs that the they don't enjoy or that don't have as much responsibility. When the employees were asked why they slacked off at work, here is how their responses broke down:
  • Unsatisfied at work - 46%
  • Underpaid for the work they do - 34%
  • Don't have deadlines or incentives - 24%
  • Hours are too long - 19%
  • Co-workers or friends cause distractions - 18%
Do you slack off at work? What things do you do that cut into your productivity? What causes you to get distracted? Let me know in the comments.



By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for PhillyJobsBlog, along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.
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