The stupid stuff I did at work

Some of you might not know it, but I am no more working full time in the advertising agency that I used to. I am a free lancer now – with way too less stress and lesses work. I’m living my dream life, yes! I mean working from home alone, making my own coffee every time I need it and not having anyone to blame a bad performing campaign on is kinda fun sometimes. No, really. um. Okay. Not really. But the love fills up all kinds of voids in my life now. So, its a dream life.

So I have a brand new schedule now, as opposed to the 10 to whenever-the-work-gets-over timing. Some days I am busy as a bee, but some days I have so much time to kill that I cant think of anything to do with it. I used to kill some amount of time when I was a full time working girl as well but none of the ‘then’ techniques seem to work in my ‘now’ situation – which brings me to my topic – The Stupid Stuff I Did At Work to kill time. Here’s a list of things I used to do to kill time while in the office. Some are the good old tricks from ancient times and some are invented by me. Some need no skill whatsoever, while some require meticulous planning and excellent maneuvering. Here’s hoping these will benefit some of my less creative friends –

0. Games – from the all season hit solitaire to the more advanced LAN games. This used to be a trick in the early 2000. Sadly, it is no more a trick now (that why it is numbered zero) – it is a professional suicide now. Don’t do it. Don’t play games in office unless you are in the IT industry. Those guys are allowed to, I am told. (I hate those guys)

Spend a lot of time by the coffee/tea vending machine. Examine cups and frown, then shrug and carry on. Once in a while demand on changing the milk powder or coffee brand because you are allergic to it. Once or twice, claim to have seen cockroaches inside the machine. (Just FYI, those machines do have cockroaches in the milk powder and sugar slots. Check it for yourself.)
Take a notepad and scribble all the catch phrases your colleagues say all the time – remember they must be relevant to your JD. A few examples from my list were “Do you think the client will buy this idea?”, “We need a revolutionary ad this time!”, “The client doesn’t know what he wants”, “This brand needs to be reinvented” blah blah. Just keep writing. You’ll look busy, it is damn entertaining and if someone leans in to read it, he’ll suspect nothing.
Ask your admin guy to take the backup of your data on regular basis. This is good, healthy and an innocent time killing trick.
Open and excel sheet and without naming it , just start random calculations on it with some big numbers. To add the ‘reality’ touch, do different type of calculations like percentages and fractions and oh yes, you can even do what I did this one time – make a table of random numbers and then make a colorful pie chart out of that table. After long minutes of staring at it and changing colors, give it a generic title – like ‘The Market Leaders’ or ‘The Market Giants’.
Pick up a jaded, done to death topic and start a discussion with your office spokes person. The office spokes person is a person who thinks its his right to voice his opinion on every matter inside the office premises- from what clients to take and who to hire and fire, to what should the boss wear. There’s always one in every office. This trick requires energy and you cannot do something you want to do instead, but it sure kills time.
Go to the conference room or any secluded place with your laptop, telling everyone who cares to listen that you are on a tight deadline and have to think of a new, innovative and exciting idea for a client or something. This works every time except for when your boss walks in to see the progress so far. For this situation, I suggest you Google a few lame ideas already and keep them handy. Also, if there is a white board in the room, draw some intricate looking line diagrams or an algorithm with generic terms and labels. This method need planning.
Then there are the very basic tricks like talking on the phone, pretending to talk to a client and walking out of the office or inside a empty room, going for ciggi breaks even if you don’t smoke, spending too much time in the washrooms (works only if you are a girl), ‘accidental’ laptop crash (you know what I mean, *wink*), etc etc etc…

Actually, I have forgotten a few tricks, what a pity. But yeah, I can tell you this – whatever you do, just makes sure you do it whole heartedly. No point doing it otherwise. You have to enjoy it, not be scared of it, you know? I’ll update more pointers and please suggest me if you have an exceptionally good work-all-the-time kind of a trick.

I’ll wrap this up quickly as soon as I flaunt my latest award. Yay! Thanks a ton to Surbhi from Over a Cup of Coffee for this cute thing and hugs to her for choosing me (Smart choice, must sa

y!Heehee) And there are rules for this award – simple ones like put the badge on your blog with the name and link of the person who awarded it to you And tag 5 to 10 blogger friends. So here’s my award.

I tag:

Sam, Geet, Gunj, Tat Sat, Kenny and Darshak

Toodles!

PS: This post featured in Blogadda ‘s Spicy Saturday Picks. Those good chaps at Blogadda loved these tricks, ahem. *wink*

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Post Author: Aditi Mathur Kumar

Author of 2 books. TEDx Speaker. Travel Writer. Blogger. Addicted to Travel & Books. Digital Media Strategist. Social Media Girl. Army Wife. Mom. Curious. Crazy.

15 thoughts on “The stupid stuff I did at work”

akanksha

(June 5, 2010 - 7:21 am)

This comment has been removed by the author.

akanksha

(June 5, 2010 - 7:22 am)

Someone is living the dream!!!! Good to know that:)

Who told you ppl in IT are allowed to play games? They are NOT, but they still do! We find some or the other trick to manage to get what we want even if it is not allowed 😉

The best time pass ever if you're in IT is browsing through the public folders and commenting/reading the conversations going on!

Phoenixritu

(June 5, 2010 - 12:15 pm)

Social networking sites are the best time killers. If your office allows facebook … then all you need to do is just sit and watch the feed move downwards.

A colleague can sleep with her eyes wide open! I really hate her

Congrats on the blogadda pick

Dee

(June 6, 2010 - 3:39 pm)

Damn funny! Keep writing girl.

Long Roads

(June 6, 2010 - 3:41 pm)

Lol. It's good u r no more working full time now 😀 Write moreeeeee!! Hugs!

Jincy Thomas

(June 7, 2010 - 8:38 am)

Cool post – typical Adi Crazy. I too have a lot of gyan to give on this topic, but I'm still working – so wait till I leave this place and then I'll mail u my list 😀

C YA!