I’ve never had an office job and I’ve always wondered what it is a typical cubicle worker actually does in their day-to-day. When your boss assigns you a “project”, what kind of stuff might it entail? Is it usually putting together some kind of report or presentation? I hear it’s a lot of responding to emails and attending meetings, but emails and meetings about what, finances?

I know it’ll probably be largely dependent on what department you work in and that there are specific office jobs like data-entry where you’re inputting information into a computer system all day long, HR handles internal affairs, and managers are supposed to delegate tasks and ensure they’re being completed on time. But if your job is basically what we see in Office Space, what does that actually look like hour-by-hour?

  • Thisiswritteningerman@midwest.socialEnglish
    6·
    23 hours ago

    As a manufacturing engineer, I’m mostly in an office when I’m not actively dicking about on the production floor or talking with my production operators. Most of my desk time is

    1. Answering questions from people who aren’t me about my manufacturing lines: specifications, output, inputs, could I do experiment XYZ if they sent me info. Subject Matter Expert is the term the company uses. Debatable if it’s accurate, but it’s the expectation.
    2. Answering stupid questions for people who could absolutely open an app or walk and look in person but would rather be handed the info.
    3. Collaboration with other employees: be it Quality as to what hoops I need to jump through to do something, providing process data relevant to a manufacturing defect they were alerted to, pestering other engineers to see if they’ve done anything like what I’m up to because it’s a good shortcut, or trying to work out how to use a system I’m unfamiliar with.
    4. Tracking output metrics: Management loves the same numbers tracked 5 different ways and having them reported to them constantly.
    5. Meeting prep: either making a slideshow, crunching data to present, updating a project tracker (see above), or reading all the relevant emails associated with the meeting because earlier I super just skimmed them for anything I was required to do urgently. 7: Tinkering on things at my desk: familiarizing myself with new equipment/parts, testing an idea out of scraps/easily sourced parts before I ask our Tool and Die team to draw up a design for something sturdier/more expensive, or rooting through boxes for things I inherited relevant to that manufacturing line when I was assigned to it.
    6. Messaging folks on teams: lunch plans, thoughts on recent events, or even just sending memes, gifs, ASCII middle fingers to people I like. General screwing around.
    • Baylahoo@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      20 hours ago

      This sounds very familiar to what I do, but I also make the hoops you have to jump through because I am the aforementioned Quality that you speak of.

      • Thisiswritteningerman@midwest.socialEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        We’re making medical product, and are 13485 and 9001 regulated. It’s concerning the number of times I’ve had to fight with supervisors because I deemed it important to loop Quality in on my changes and made a task take longer and they didn’t agree with the choice.

        • Baylahoo@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          3 minutes ago

          Lol do we work for the same company? It’s crazy seeing people claim they care about patient safety and then turn around and attempt to skip every safeguard that was put in place for the sake of patient safety.