You guys have free time at work? Kinda curious what you all do?
I am and Electrical Engineer and am usually busy all day. Sometimes I'll head home a few hours early if i hit my hours for for the week or if I have to "hurry up and wait"
this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
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Office worker in government. Everyone around me is either an idiot/incompetent or doing all the work. Will get 'rewarded' with more work if I start asking for more.
At least you get to go home early if you want. I guarantee that 80% of office workers pretend to work all day because if we don't then we are given more work/responsibilities without a pay increase, job title, any reward.
A lot of office work is 'be ready to answer a question at anytime when someone walks up to your cube'. And to be fair, you are probably the only person who can answer that question since most people's role is niche/specialized.
But honestly, pretty sure office workers/management want people in the office all hours of the days because they hate their home life, and use work as their only socialization.
Not trying to be sarcastic, but do you not find joy in your work? I'll ask for more work too when I run out of things to do as well.
I just like electronics and stuff though. And the boring/tedious parts of my job I think it is at least fun to try to automate or streamline them with python or other tools
Not sure if you can find joy in anything if you do it 8 hours+ every single working day of your life, if you still get excited enough to ask for new work without having to I'm jealous of how much you like what you do
I suppose it is a mixture, of both work and coworkers.
I like trying to "perfect my craft". But also, I like spending time with my coworkers and getting to brainstorm and chat with them.
That being said I am also very fortunate to only have to work 36hrs per week. Pay is less than full time, but it can also just eat out less
I began putting objects on my keyboard with notepad open within three weeks at my new government work. Teams chills out. Can be very very boring
contribute to openstreetmap
"My job consists of basically masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring to the men's room so I can jerk off while I fantasize about a life that doesn't so closely resemble Hell.β
Briefly daydream about having time to kill, log my overtime, and get back to my giant never ending pile of tasks
Gen-X represent ... if you want.
OpenStreetMap contributions.
Remote into my other machine and play video games
Lay in my hammock and talk to the birds and squirrels.
Investing, learning commodities and markets, planning life financials, planning outside work schedules, meals, activities, dates, home or vehicle maintenance. Couponing. Health based care and ideas.
Check in on family/older people always is worth doing often you never know when it'll be the last time you could ever hear or see them.
Basically being productive in your life outside work while on company time, its actually the highest tier achievement in an employee role.
Thank you for reminding me to schedule my hair appointment on the clock today.
Go down a hyperfocus rabbit hole.
I donβt have an office job in the traditional sense anymore, but when I did, I would do a lot of trip planning. My boomer mother always books tours or uses a travel agent, but I stay away from the first because they seem to be filled with mostly boomers, and the second because Iβm cheap. Iβm not really confident enough to do it for a place where English isnβt easily understood or used, but weβve gone some cool places based entirely on my own planning and research.
hummingbirds
I rarely have time to kill at work. I don't get paid by the hour, so I need to work to make money. And if there's no work to do I go home. In the very rare times when I'm waiting on someone else I usually eat, hydrate, or take a smoke break.
Crosswords on my phone. I can take a glance at the clue and chew on it without staring at the screen
Got a favorite app? Been trying to get into crosswords, but I do find them difficult.
Been using sporcle.
Also, on the difficulty note, I find people around me tend to enjoy helping. Its become a bit of a ritual in the evening for my partner to help me with tough clues. Great for car rides too (passenger on the phone, obviously)
There's one on the Play Store (eww, I know) by Redstone games that ive been using for years. No third party data sharing and minor data collection. No login required and it runs fine with network disabled, you'll just need to allow it on network if you want new puzzles, though it comes with MANY.
I rarely have free time at work. I like what I do so it doesnβt feel like a soul sucking grind, I just finish something and start working on the next thing.
Iβll troubleshoot or enhance my home lab when I take a break. Be productive around the house like laundry or empty dishwasher, let the dogs out, organize digital files or mail/bills. How very βover 40β of me, right?
Back when I still had the time, I played Universal Paperclips. That was fun.
Wikipedia rabbit holes. Start on one subject that randomly popped up in my brain, and off we go.
physical labourer - music and working on maths problems are great. Notgibg melts the day away better than liquid dnb and PDE topology
I basically do what you do except replace homelab with make music. As such I don't have much advice lol, it's a good question.
"You cannot kill time without injuring eternity".
βThe time you enjoy wasting is not wasted timeβ
I read a lot of KU ebooks. When I work from home my steam deck helps me get through tough 2hr " daily standups".
2hr daily meeting.
Fuck man, sorry.
I work from home once a week, and yeah the steam deck is nice in this regards.
btw, did you know that the steam docking station also works on laptops? Found that to be very useful, now I don't have to unplug and plug in a bunch of hdmi when I need to use the monitor for work/gaming.
YouTube or emulating something on my retro handheld I stash behind my monitors at work.
Skribbl.io play draw&guess with Indian kids
Make maps for the government. I watch YouTube all day.
I work from home and I take naps. I can justify being offline for a few hours or more.
play phone games (bejeweled/parking lot..) or read books/manga/wikipedia
still looks like I am active on Teams/online.
Dude, do we have to have the ethics speech again?
Do we have to have the corporate bootlicking prevention speech again?
Yeah go ahead, copy and paste exists.