> Having nothing to do at work is its own form of torture. If you have to be available and connected, or much worse - physically in the office, for the full normal work day, it is torture. Once you've gone through the ceremony of getting ready for work, commuting, and being the building.. you might as well have something to do.
This is 100% true. And the main reason is probably the fact you can never really focus on anything here.
You've got no 'official' work, so that can't use up your time. But you also can't go off and do something you'd want to do either, since there's always the nagging feeling of "what if something actually does come through, and I've got to be ready to handle it?"
So you just sit there wondering what to do, and probably end up either pointlessly scrolling through social media, or getting into whatever random unhealthy habit you're otherwise prone to (drink, drugs, too many snacks, etc).
It also likely does a lot of damage to your ability to focus on difficult tasks for a long period of time afterwards, since you're not entirely used to be able to spend hours on a single thing.
I think its more than a nagging feeling of "what if something comes through".
Realistically, work output in our field is notoriously hard to measure.
Having an unproductive year or two or five is not really grounds for dismissal, generally.
However, no-showing, visibly walking in hours late or leaving hours early, being unresponsive on slack/email are easily observed and the type of things that stick out to accelerate your being fired.
This is 100% true. And the main reason is probably the fact you can never really focus on anything here.
You've got no 'official' work, so that can't use up your time. But you also can't go off and do something you'd want to do either, since there's always the nagging feeling of "what if something actually does come through, and I've got to be ready to handle it?"
So you just sit there wondering what to do, and probably end up either pointlessly scrolling through social media, or getting into whatever random unhealthy habit you're otherwise prone to (drink, drugs, too many snacks, etc).
It also likely does a lot of damage to your ability to focus on difficult tasks for a long period of time afterwards, since you're not entirely used to be able to spend hours on a single thing.