Double Duty. One Paycheck.
In which I make personal phone calls from my office
Working full time, for anyone, is time consuming. Typically you spend eight hours, each day, doing work that you get paid to care about. On your off time, each day, you end up doing work that you don’t get paid for, but that still has importance and must get done. And honestly, I find the work that I do in my off hours to be far more important to what I do all day at my desk at my office.
Before I became a mother it seemed like my personal time was super important and valuable to me. But dude, there was more of that free time. Now that I have a kid I have less time and more things to accomplish in that smaller amount time.
(Holy crap, I have a lot of things to do this week. And really all I want to do is read “Twilight”.)
(Say it with me now, “NERD!”)
No matter how I prioritize my time off I still have to do personal tasks to do during my work day. Stuff that I don’t get paid to do, but that I’m still responsible for. I have phone calls to make for a church activity I’m putting together. I have said activity to plan and prepare for. I have possible babysitters to call and line up for this weekend. I have new daycares to call and schedule tours with. I have Father’s Day gifts to research and order. And while I’m being honest, I have blog posts to read (and write). And an e-mail inbox that is filling up by the second.
And I have to do this stuff during the hours I’m at work.
I think most of us try to limit the amount of time we spend on personal things while we’re at work. Am I right? I mean, do we try to limit this type of stuff? Or do we realize that life just goes on whether or not we’re at the office? And dang it, we just have to get it done.
So, I’ m curious to know what your boundaries are. How do you feel about making personal phone calls at your desk? Do you read blogs at work? Do you blog at work? Do you write e-mails to your husband and girlfriends all day?
Or do you sit, fervently, at your desk all day pouring over graphs and charts and work e-mails?
Isabel is a pseudonym for this Seattle-based blogger. She’s been working since the day she realized soda and lip gloss weren’t free. Isabel became a mom in 2006 and continues to work full time, outside the home, since diapers and mortgages aren’t free either. You can read far too much about her personal life at hola,isabel.
If you have questions, anecdotes, or topics for “Double duty. One paycheck.”, email Isabel at holaisabel [at] gmail.com.
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I’m honestly at work right now.
My job is very boring at times (it’s just the nature of my position), so if I wasn’t allowed to read blogs or write my blog, I would be completely miserable!
Becky
http://www.stinkylemsky.typepad.com/
[...] also an asking your thoughts on doing personal tasks while on the clock over at SeattleMomBlogs. Seriously, I want to know what you all think about this subject. So head over and leave a [...]
My job has a lot of downtime, so I do spend a fair amount of time doing personal stuff. I even planned most of my wedding from my desk!
But when I do have a lot of work to do, the work definitely takes priority. I still take breaks to do personal things, but I try to limit the amount of time I spend on lower-priority things like catching up with my Google Reader. One of my favorite bloggers once told me that she thinks about blogging/emailing at work like smoke breaks. Just because she doesn’t smoke, why shouldn’t she get a 10 minute break every hour just like the smokers do? Thinking of it that way, approx. 10 minutes/hour of personal stuff seems perfectly reasonable to me.
When I worked in an office I made personal phone calls and emails. I had no problems with that since I was also handling some of my boss’s personal tasks, too. Blogs were blocked by the network. Now, I’m a teacher. I have no time to do any of it during the day. I have kids around at all times and kids are nosy. It’s hard to fit everything into one day.
Talk about a question that must be answered anonymously.
I definitely waste more time at work than I should. If my employer knew, they would not be happy.
I am of the mind that, as long as work is getting done (and done well), It shouldn’t matter if someone is doing non-work related things at work.
My company did have to fire someone a few months ago because she spent (seriously) six hours of an eight hour work day checking out personals, chatting, playing poker, anything but her work, which wasn’t getting done.
I do lots of personal stuff on work time, including reading (and writing) blogs, reading/writing emails, making phone calls, and setting up appointments. I feel sort of bad sometimes, but I always get my work done…. so I guess it’s OK. Right?
I think you know my answer to this. Just don’t tell my boss!
Well, I’m reading your blog now and I’m at work… but I do try to not work on my own blog unless I’ve actually scheduled a formal lunch time for myself. Otherwise I’d never get my work done.
I’m a teacher, and when I’m at work, I have to be “on.” I get 30 minutes of duty-free lunch and 45 minutes of “planning” time. That’s when I get to go to the bathroom, have something to eat and maybe call the Mr. after I finish doing other work-related tasks (y’all, really–what ever happened to the Paperwork Reduction Act? There was something called that once, right?) There is absolutely no time to write or read blogs, and even if there were, our network blocks all “social networking” sites. *Sigh.*
Thank goodness it’s summer.
like some of the above commenters (is that a word?), i, too, am a teacher and thus have little time during the day to complete personal tasks. what really frustrates me, though, is that many businesses seem to expect you to be able to make/receive calls during the day and/or go to appointments during school hours.
“thank goodness it’s summer” — indeed!
Because of stress, I quit my previous job. It’s just so crazy to wait paycheck after paycheck and you’re working excessively for these people who don’t really pay you well.
I can feel your frustration on this, I too have become a Mom on 2006. It drastically changed everything, my lifestyle, my schedule and the way I see life.
Sigh, we all deserve a looong vacation and a great spa to add that.
I work in a field where I bill my day out in 6 minute increments, so I have to account for all my time, which is a pain. I do check my email and call my husband during the day, and that I sort of just let slide, since I dont spend time socializing with coworkers or things like that. But when I blog or read other blogs, I have to count that time against my day and either work later or work a bit at home to make up for it.
I am the queen of blogging at work. Uh, well I used to be anyway. I think my employer must have gotten wind of it and thus dumped on me more work then any one human is supposed to have.
I try not to do too much blog reading at work, but I’ll make calls (because I’m almost always at work through business hours every day of the week…when else can I get prescription refills and book repairmen?). If I’m out on an errand for work and am near a place I need to stop for a personal errand, I’ll stop as long as it’s super quick.
I justify it to myself by thinking about all the work stuff I do on my own time.