Work day timewasters

[deathrey]

1 hour ago, Chest Rockwell said:

I accidentally forgot to put myself on mute yesterday and was playing guitar during a meeting 🤦

I've also forgotten to put myself on mute twice recently, one meeting was being recorded. Luckily not the one where I declared to my husband that the meeting was boring so I was going to go put the washing out.

Edited February 12 by deathrey

[FLips]

1 hour ago, Arch Stanton said:

On my work computer I've got an Excel version of Pac-Man too, as well as a golf game and even an Excel version of Sonic!! When I was much younger and dumber I used to sit at work playing them on my monitor during the working day, naively thinking I was being inconspicuous about it.

That may very well be the same game as ours had Excel Sonic as well but I don’t remember the golf one!

[Arch Stanton]

I know nothing about coding or how computers actually work, but it always blew my mind a bit that Sonic could be run in Excel.

[HarmonicGenerator]

2 hours ago, FLips said:

Not a big enough Dr Who fan to know who it is but I got to the one after Paul McGann that looks like old Ben Kenobi. Score of 6332. Not having more than that one go though or I’ll be on it all night!

Show some respect to John Hurt! 

[BomberPat]

if I'm writing massive walls of text on here, it's usually a good sign that I've got some tedious paperwork that I'm putting off.

In the last couple of weeks it's been Skyvegas. There's a couple of daily free games that can win you free spins on others, so I try and fit those in, and if I win any money on there, if it's less than a fiver I'll generally stick it on a scratch card or another game and try to up it, and withdraw if it's more than a tenner. No money in, so no loss, and I once won £60 doing it, so it beats Solitaire.

One time when working in a call centre, it was a really quiet weekend, getting towards the end of the day with no calls coming in, no mail orders to input, no emails to answer, so we were basically sat clock-watching, some of the temps had already been sent home early as there was nothing for them to do. It got to maybe half an hour, an hour at most before clocking off time, and I'd been (I thought) discreetly fucking about with some games online to pass the time. The supervisor calls out, so everyone can hear, "you fancy going home now Pat, or did you want to finish your game of Tetris?". 

Years later, I worked part-time in a branch of Moss Bros. There were only ever two of us at most on shift, and on Sundays I was the only one in, and because in Jersey shops opening on Sunday was still something of a recent novelty, and we were off the main drag, I hardly ever got any customers. The building had a glass ceiling and no air con, so it was sweltering heat in the summer, you have to be stood up, and you're in a full suit and tie all day. Miserable. Phones have to stay in your locker, so finding any way to pass the time was a killer once you'd got all the little jobs done - and it was a small shop, so with no customers, all of that was done by lunchtime. 
We had these fancy UNIX touch-screen tills built into the counters, though, and I realised on one particularly dull day that there was a decent workaround there - through the till system, you could access the Moss Bros website to check prices, product availability and whatnot. And on the Moss website, there was a link to their Facebook page - and from there, you're just on Facebook, so I could log in, use Messenger, and play some games. They were all practically unplayable with that set-up, but still, it was a good effort.

[Lorne Malvo]

If I'm not on here, I'll either be on the BBC News or BBC Sports/Football websites, or on Youtube. But it has to be something I can watch on mute, so likely a gaming longplay video.

At the moment I'm watching a lot of mountain biking videos where someone will start at the back of the pack then try to work their way to as high a position as possible.

I hardly ever play any games at work as it's a guarantee that as soon as I load the game up my phone will ring. The one exception was that Google Cricket game posted on here years ago which I got addicted to for a month.

[Onyx2]

10 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

if I'm writing massive walls of text on here

(with affection Pat)

[FLips]

35 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

Years later, I worked part-time in a branch of Moss Bros. There were only ever two of us at most on shift, and on Sundays I was the only one in, and because in Jersey shops opening on Sunday was still something of a recent novelty, and we were off the main drag, I hardly ever got any customers. The building had a glass ceiling and no air con, so it was sweltering heat in the summer, you have to be stood up, and you're in a full suit and tie all day. Miserable. Phones have to stay in your locker, so finding any way to pass the time was a killer once you'd got all the little jobs done - and it was a small shop, so with no customers, all of that was done by lunchtime. 

We had these fancy UNIX touch-screen tills built into the counters, though, and I realised on one particularly dull day that there was a decent workaround there - through the till system, you could access the Moss Bros website to check prices, product availability and whatnot. And on the Moss website, there was a link to their Facebook page - and from there, you're just on Facebook, so I could log in, use Messenger, and play some games. They were all practically unplayable with that set-up, but still, it was a good effort.

I can attest to the Moss Bros boredom as I worked there for a brief spell a couple of years ago. Even in a busy retail park the downtime was really down, you'd maybe get one or two people in at most with hour long spells of nothing, especially at night.
Luckily I was part of the management team and the other managers were fairly lax as well. One shift two of us got a pen and paper and tried to remember all the original 151 Pokemon in Pokedex order. More frequently, those of us on the night shift, including the store manager, would ignore the no phones rule and just get spotify up and do music quizzes.

Don't miss wearing suits all the time at all. I have days now I don't even change out of my jimjams.

[BomberPat]

When I worked jobs that didn't require me to wear one, I used to wear suits quite a lot just on nights out and the like, and I was told that how I was dressed and the little bits of know-how about fashion I expressed in the interview were what got me the Moss Bros job, but since working there and having to do it all the time, I never wear suits outside of weddings and funerals these days. Aside from the job, part of that is that I used to love tweeds and a waistcoat, and the double whammy of Gareth Southgate and Peaky Blinders made me not want to look like every other prick on a stag do.

I've done a weird amount of jobs that have entailed me being on my own for long stretches, and very few that have allowed for stuff like quizzes and mucking about with co-workers, though on another quiet day at the call centre I introduced people to Tape Measure Pontoon after it got a mention on a Radcliffe and Maconie call-in. You get a tape measure, extend it to full length, then snap it back and try and stop it as close to 21 as possible. 

Edited February 13 by BomberPat

[SuperBacon]

I absolutely despised wearing a suit and tie every day when I was in recruitment, even when sat in an office with no clients or candidates to see, regardless of the weather as well.

I worked in construction sales roles so a lot of my clients were manufacturers or contractors and one day I turned up to meet a sales director, who asked if I was there to audit them, as I looked like a city nob.

Fair enough if you work in finance and are going to meet Deloitte or whatever, then you bust out your powder blue suit and pocket hanky, but I was always told to mirror what your clients would do, and would often be on industrial estates in East London talking to lighting people, or in Farringdon meeting architectural metal designers, so from them on out it was "casual Bacon" only.

No tie and collar open, maybe sometimes I'd wear my jeans and trainers, ladies and gentleman I looked like a substitute teacher on mufti day ("guys, call me Dave yeah?")

Not particularly a "fun" time waster, but in that role we were targeted on call stats, especially outgoing calls, and then our director would go through the report on a Monday.

Anyway, I'm a lazy shit who did anything to avoid working (and especially calling people) so I'd wait until a Friday afternoon,  dial up either my ex, or a mate, they'd let it go to VM and then I'd sit there on the call until the VM ran out (usually a good 20 minutes or so) and then repeat this several times so I'd clock a few extra outgoing hours. 

Also, just remembered Sky Sports Missing Men game. RIP. 

[Keith Houchen]

There was one that wasted MY time that might have been a time waster for someone else. I worked in a store that sold beds and some prick would always phone up taking the piss. Sometimes I couldn’t make it to the phone in time though and that was even worse. 

[SuperBacon]

10 minutes ago, Keith Houchen said:

There was one that wasted MY time that might have been a time waster for someone else. I worked in a store that sold beds and some prick would always phone up taking the piss. Sometimes I couldn’t make it to the phone in time though and that was even worse. 

Was it a bed shop for beds?

[Loki]

It's here and Reddit for me but I don't actually post on Reddit very much, just read and find shit to post here and claim as my own.

I'm WFH so the opportunity for piss-taking is huge and it takes discipline to NOT just spend all morning in bed watching Star Trek Voyager.  Or Dynamite/Smackdown.

I've never regarded myself as a Trek "fan" but in all honesty I've rewatched TNG/DS9 and Voyager an unhealthy number of times now.  There's very few other shows that are so... comforting to watch.

[Keith Houchen]

4 minutes ago, SuperBacon said:

Was it a bed shop for beds?

Yeah, for beds. 

[SaitoRyo]

I'm a big fan of browsing Vinted and favouriting items that I like the look of but don't intend on ever purchasing. 

Otherwise, I'm actually pretty good at the whole productivity thing. I have a zero-stress job and work from home, so as long as I have a cup of coffee and some good country music or a podcast playing in the background I don't feel like I need a distraction!