No Stupid Questions

Account Manager at a marketing agency, I run ~5 marketing departments with a mix of my own staff, outsourced contractors and employees at my clients' businesses.

We create marketing campaigns that consist of a set of emails, social posts, ads, thought leadership articles, blogs, landing pages, downloadable PDF reports and the attendant reporting on how they performed, plus finding and targeting the audiences in various segments. It's a mix of database management, creative writing and design, project planning and communication meetings.

I generally spend about a 1-2 hours a day on each client, plus meetings. We make and send the collateral, get approval, execute, track, measure, compare, make a strategic conclusion, repeat

Recently finished university and got my first job in basic accounting. All I do is well, watch videos on phone, messages people and a bit of accounting here and there. Boring, relaxing and that’s about it. Going to stick with it for a year and then prolly find new work.

Reality is that there is a lot of difference between office jobs, mechanical designer, purchaser, corporate laws specialists, and let's say project managers have very different jobs but still have office jobs.

Hour by hour? Read e-mail, browse lemmy, chat using teams (or slack), run to a meeting, then to another one, meet someone in the corridor and ask them a question about an ongoing project, realize that you need to review a report, open the file and get called, rfget a coffee, run to another meeting, conclude you won't neither review the report X or nor start the report Y and call it a day.

Well, I generally come in at least fifteen minutes late. I use the side door, that way my boss can't see me. Uh, and after that, I just sorta space out for about an hour. I just stare at my desk, but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch too. I'd probably, say, in a given week, I probably do about fifteen minutes of real, actual work.

The thing is, it's not that I'm lazy. It's just that I just don't care. It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now, if I work my ass off and the company ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime. So where's the motivation? And here's another thing,I have eight different bosses right now!

So that means when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my real motivation - is not to be hassled. That and the fear of losing my job, but y'know, it will only make someone work hard enough not to get fired.

Now they are trying to offer me some kind of stock option and equity sharing program? I have a meeting tomorrow where I am probably going to be laid off.

you spend most of your time "hopping on a quick call," replying to an email reiterating what you said last time, and doing the needful

I help our customers make their business processes less stupid, time consuming and riddled with errors. Practically speaking it means I go to meetings, documentation process changes, build out business process automations, and attempt to convince an unwilling workforce that no, 17 spreadsheets is not the only or best way to run a business (change management).

I’d totally like to share what I do at my office job at the equivalent of the IRS in my country, but that’s classified :(

I work as Adminstrator and Developer for Medical Software in a Hospital.
Most of my days are either spend preparing for future planned Software deployments, checking if they can meet our needs. Fomulating out the requirements and data imports and exports to various existing systems. On others like today I'm a bit more hands on and actually fix a bug in an application, laid out a plan for QA testing and eventual deployment of the new release and wrote some documentation so that should I vanish from the face of the earth, the stuff I do can be picked up by someone else.

Well, I generally come in about 15 minutes late. I use the side door; that way, my boss can't see me. And after that, I just sorta spaced out for about an hour. I stare at my desk but it looks like I'm working. I do that for probably another hour after lunch, too.

I'd probably say in a given week I probably do about 15 minutes of real, actual work.

I'm a pet product specialist for a pet food manufacturer. I respond to customer emails, calls, and chats about our products. This could mean assisting pet owners in selecting products based on their pets' unique medical or physiological needs, answering nutritional questions, handling complaints, and more. In my downtime I work on reference materials for the rest of the team, continuing education on animal nutrition (my last class was on avian flu in pet foods), and prepare promotional materials for expos and trade shows.

On light days we do a lot of sharing memes, shit talking in group chat, dicking around on the Internet, and finding other creative ways to fuck off.

Lots of microsoft excel and bullshitting

I'm a chemical engineer at a plastics company. When I'm in the office I'm looking at data and making decisions based on that, like whether to stop or increase production rates, whether to shut something down for maintenance, or finding what piece of equipment is broken and causing a problem. I also design improvements to the process like finding better ways to run the machinery, new equipment that gets us more capacity, or new ways to control the equipment. I would say about 80% of my time is in the office and 20% is in the manufacturing area.

I do IT governance. When someone builds a server or a firewall rule or a database in a way that could leak patient data to somewhere it shouldn't be I find it and make them fix it. Generally people don't want to redo something that they've done so there is a whole process around who you tell so that everyone know the problem and who has to fix it.

I am a project manager for an automotive part maker.

My job is emails, tickets and meetings on the computer all day every day.

My job is to make sure the engineers work on the correct tasks at the right time. I am responsible for the planning and delivering on time (delivery is a part with mechanical, electronic and software working together correctly). I am responsible to keep the project within the budget. I decide on priorities, what the team needs to be working on first, second and third. I am responsible for making the team work according to the quality process, which means they must follow to correct steps, design rules, reviews and create the appropriate documentation.

I can tell you, sitting in front of the screen all day, is harmful to health (in a different way than a physical job is). For example, almost everyone I work with is wearing glasses, my own vision has degraded a lot.

I'm a translator. I translate everything you can possibly think of. HSE documents, emails to illicit lovers, websites, I'm your person.

I reengineer business processes based on best practices and state of the art technologies and methods.

I work as a programmer, we get a feature request from a customer that passes through a lot of stages (billing, scheduling, architecture, etc). When it gets to me it's a simple "it's now x, it should be y, this is done when a, b and c". I then go through and change or add code until everything is achieved, it's then tested and out it goes. Rinse and repeat.

I work in data refinement. I stare at numbers until I find some that feel scary. Than I put those in a bin.

I work with computers to map things.

Across my various jobs in this field, the days were usually varied but fairly busy.

I worked for a government agency that would map abandoned mines and locations of mishaps to better understand what kind of environmental issues were posed. This involved meetings with hydrologists, miners, drone pilots, and field workers. It also had some field visits, itself.

Another one, I worked for a city's outreach program and I often was in meetings explaining what I could do, and then I'd have to gather maps and data to put together the product they wanted.

For another job, I had to cross reference a ton of city and county data to find land lots that were large enough for a developer to potentially purchase and then build housing on. This included looking at zoning laws and reading a ton of documentation about new zoning and votes for such a thing. Also included learning about what each category of zoning meant.

Currently I work for an energy company and it's varied in a lot of ways. My day to day is never the same and is kind complicated to the average bear.

I am an IT technician, I get paid to solve problems.

A user can't send emails? I'll check the logs and error messges, find the problem and is I am allowed to, solved the problem.

Oh, we need to setup up a new firewall rule?

Ok, I'll log on to the Palo Alto appliance and have a look at the logs.

We need to configure our systems so that we get our logo as the avatar of sent emails?

Ok, I have no idea on how to do that, so I'll start googling, ah it is all BIMI, and shit, I need to speak with legal, and set up a new certificate vendor? Crap... Shit, our logo isn't actually trademarked? What? Fuck, we need to do a DORA check on the certificate vendor? Crap...

Other people's work

The bulk of my day is reading other people‘s documentation to make sure it‘s at least reasonably up to standard.

Engineer here. You’re salaried but treated like an hourly employee. You get paid to work 40 hours a week but get “told” that working less than 45-50 hours a week makes you a slacker. Your exempt which means you don’t get a mandatory 30 minute unpaid lunch or a paid 15 minute break every 4 hours. Vacation time is normally unlimited but requires manager approval so if you get the old “boomer” type that drank the corporate cool aid, good luck getting any more than 2 weeks worth approved regardless of years at company.

Sorry I digress, My job starts at 8:00 but I slide in to the daily standup at around 8:10. No one notices or cares. Afterwards, I get a cup of coffee, catch up on vital correspondence and questions from overseas coworkers. It’s sometime between 8:30 and 9:45 That I realize the Bangalore Software team sent out an emergency meeting at 11PM last night for 5AM This morning. “Oh well” I think to myself and sip on my coffee catching up on what I missed. Turns out one of them forgot to plug in a machine. They crack me up.

From 9:45 to 10:00, I have conditioned my body to take a shit. I time it for exactly 10 minutes. My second one is precisely times for between 4:00PM and 4:15PM. I figure those two times are freebies to my 9.5 hour forced work schedule. Upon returning, from my “break” I begin to actually work.

I design things using CAD software cool stuff. I am content by 10:10AM I have my headphones on, I am doing what I actually went to school for. I begin to think this is entirely worth all the other stuff I put up with. I get in the zone and time flies.

Its, 10:25AM. There was an emergency on the production floor. They tell me its a problem they have never seen before. They assure me they have taken all the proper diagnostic steps have been taken and I need to look at whats wrong to prevent a line stop.

I think, “its go time” I follow the techs down to the line and start diagnosing the problem. In no time at all, I find that they never checked the test wiring despite that being like in the first 5 steps of diagnosing a problem. I head back to my desk. Its 2PM by now, I microwave my lunch and work through it. Distractions happen maybe I get an accumulated total of an hour or two of design work done before its 6PM and I head home.

Yup…… You could tell me to switch jobs but every company I work for in my line of work is just like this.

I largely analyze data and create software to automate business tasks. This allows people in my company to make informed decisions about the business, how money is or should be spent, who & where to hire, helping non-techical people automate repetitive tasks. I also present/interpret data and influence decision-making.

This might mean creating forecasts. Automating data analysis with reports. Building data sources (gathering and manipulating data from different places and compiling it). Building interactive software or excel sheets for non-technical users. Creating white papers or presentations on analysis I've done. Etc.

I use excel, google sheets, google app script (basically javascript), tableau, python, and SQL.

Office work is largely paperwork, even if very little is on actual paper nowadays. Much of the work involves creating records or communicating with others to get things done. A salesperson will try to find clients for the product or service. They’ll typically create a record of customers or prospects with their contact information and notes about the negotiation. They’ll create a formal quotation or estimate for the customer and if the customer wants to move forward they’ll create an order confirmation. That document will trigger some other department to fulfill the order, either by providing a service or product to the customer. A work order might be provided to a service technician specifying what work is to be done and where. If a product needs to be delivered a picking slip might be created to tell someone in a warehouse where to get the product and how many to get. Once it’s been picked the product will go to the shipping department to be packed and shipped. An item fulfillment will be created saying what items were packed, how many, and what the tracking number is. Once the order is fulfilled an invoice will be created. If the customer paid in advance the payment will get applied to the invoice automatically or by someone in the accounting department. If the customer is on credit terms they’ll be sent the invoice with instructions on how to pay and when payment is due.

There are so many steps like this. The records help the business plan. They know how many parts and supplies to order. They can track if they’re selling more or less than forecast, if they need to place a rush order for more parts, ask people to work overtime or hire more employees. If something starts costing more they can look to see if they need to raise prices or redesign the product to use a different component, or find an alternate source. At the end of the day, it all comes down to accounting, making sure the company is generating enough income to pay the bills, suppliers, and employees, and hopefully make a profit.

I mostly played video games in between intense bursts of productivity to get work done.

Yes, I was doing this before remote work was a thing. You just have to be slick. I once set up a "lab" of three PCs to "test some new software" in a back room and then played Birth of the Federation on one of them while the other two ran perf counter output, for 3 months straight. This was an act of desperation to keep my mind busy. They had laid almost everyone off in the company so I didn't have much to do, but it started a tradition that carried me all the way to retirement!

Today I have...

• spoken to a team member under my supervision about their workflow (30m)
• reviewed applicants for a role on my team (15m)
• prepared some financial reports for a client (1h)
• prepared some financial forms for that client (1h)
• figured out the right methodology for a complex letter for that client (30m)
• drafted a complex financial / legal letter for that client (1h)
• felt stressed about this client's situation (45m)
• applied a check list to this client's project (30m)
• reviewed and attended to some emails (30m)

It's time for lunch now.

It really varies too much between industries to give a single answer. Someone at an insurance company is going to be doing something vastly different than an accountant, and they'll be different from an architect (though only part of what architects do is in the office).

That being said, office work for the average worker, as in a salaried or hourly worker with a fairly rigidly defined job description, is usually going to be paperwork, even though there's not always paper involved.

It's taking information and moving it around, in one way or another.

As an example, one of my exes worked for a company that handles employee benefits, investments, and other services to other companies. Lets say a worker has an IRA, gets a nice insurance policy, and there's a pension fund.

Her job is to take data from the company that contracted with the company she worked for, enter that data into the system in an properly formatted way, run calculations, then trigger the appropriate funds being moved from one account to another. No meetings unless something goes wrong. It's all day data entry and management.

Now, before that job, she worked at a tax service under a CPA. She would get actual paper back then. Receipts, forms, and look for deductions for the client, then print out the church correct tax form, have the client sign it, then send it off. She would finish one, then start the next, all day long during tax season. Off season, she would be receiving accounting records from clients and entering them into the system of the company she worked for, and process things like withholding.

Pretty much, neither of those jobs required leaving the desk her entire shift.

Now, my best friend runs a department at a community college. He leaves the actual desk frequently. There's meeting with his superiors, meetings with his underlings, meetings with vendors, budgeting work, orders, policy decisions, disciplinary decisions, and the list keeps on going.

My best friend's husband was a flunky at architectural firm. When he was on a project, his job was drafting designs per specifications given to him. It required doing some oh the work, meeting with the architect, then changing anything per their decisions, or finalizing those plans. From there, once plans were ready to be used by someone to build something, he would essentially coordinate between contractors and his office to troubleshoot any snags with things like permits, supply issues, etc. So it was usually a lot of desk with work over a few weeks or months, then weeks or months barely at a desk, but still mostly in office.

Myself, I never had a long term office job. But, during recovery from a work related injury, I was pulled into the office of the home health company I worked for. My injury precluded patient care, but I was okay for light duty.

I was placed in staffing. I would roll in early, about 6 AM, and check for any call-ins. That would be employees needing to have their case covered by someone else for whatever reason. I would call other caregivers based on availability, proximity to the patient, and hours already worked. The last one was to avoid overtime unless absolutely necessary.

The software used, I would type in the name, and their details would pop up with their address, phone number, and current schedule. Same with the patient.

The first step for me was always to check the patient's location, because that let me filter out people on the list as available by proximity before anything else, since I would have to just go down the list. I'd enter a name, check the location, and decide who to short list. Once I had the short list, I'd verify they were not going into OT, and start calling, with priority given to employees that had requested more hours.

Most of the time, a call-in would take fifteen to twenty minutes to resolve.

Once the morning run was over, it would be time for a quick coffee and come back to handle any afternoon call-ins in the same way. Have lunch, then repeat for evening/night call-ins.

During the few months I was doing it, most of the time, that was handled by maybe 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Some days it was all handled before lunch, and very occasionally by the time the coffee break was available. Very variable because there are days when folks just didn't call in as much. And there were days it was crazy, particularly when there'd be something like a bad flu run through local schools and the parents would either catch it, or need to take care of their kids.

But, usually, the afternoons were either straight up bullshitting with the ladies in the office (not flirting or messing with, just swapping healthcare war stories), or helping with sorting out patient intake and/or prioritizing staffing for new patients. A new patient means you either shuffle staff around, hire new caregivers, or break it to the bosslady that someone is going to need overtime until the other options could happen. Since I knew pretty much everyone, I was good at figuring out who would be a good pick for a patient's needs.

A few times, I did some of the initial onboarding for new caregivers. Get them the employee handbook, introduce them around, talk about expectations, that kind of happy horseshit.

Tbh, I liked it most days, but not as much as patient care. Don't think I could have done it for years or anything, but as a temporary thing, it was nice.

See? Totally different daily routines and work between industries.