Boredom

September 4, 2018 – It’s Tuesday after a long weekend. My weekend was “extra long” because I took Friday off too.

The extra long weekend made it more difficult to get up this morning. I lay in bed, staring out the window, trying to convince myself to get up. I thought about calling in sick. Then I remembered that we have a big meeting tomorrow and my boss probably might not appreciate me being sick the day before. She might need me to do something.It’s 1 hour until end of day and she hasn’t asked me to do anything yet. Well….maybe tomorrow? Dare to dream.

The truth is she doesn’t need me. She doesn’t use me. I’m more of a “shared resource” for the rest of the office. She only needs me to PDF the quarterly board materials and send them out. She only needs me to attend the meetings to take Minutes. That’s about it. That adds up to about one week of work per quarter. The other 11 weeks I’m just hanging around – doing my own thing. Today that was surfing the net and getting caught up on online news.

I’m not the only one. Not that I’m finger-pointing. The person who runs our billing process sits on Facebook or online shops when she isn’t working – which adds up to about 18 of 20 working days. Her manager told me she is trying to get overtime. He knows she isn’t doing anything but won’t do anything about it. We’re trying to identify cost savings at work. That’s money that is spent sitting surfing the net. We have two customer service reps who call in sick at least once a week. The department survives without them. So do we really need them? Nice of me to offer up other people when I’m sitting here doing the same thing.  Who am I kidding? They could save 2/3 of my salary too. I maintain that they don’t need me. They need “somebody” but not me. I’m not trying to get myself pushed into the unemployment line. However, sitting around doing nothing is not my favourite pastime. It’s hard. Boredom sucks. I try to come up with projects to keep myself engaged and busy. I ate my way through the day before I started my diet. I don’t even have that now. I’m starting to write more. Something to pass the time.

But how do you propose that? How do you say “Hey. You can save X number of dollars by taking a hard look at what you really need.” Everyone is too busy just keeping the ship afloat. They don’t notice, or don’t care to notice, that there is some deadweight onboard (myself included). I sometimes wonder if they’re in denial or they’re leaving the mess for somebody else to clean up.

I sit here, in boredom, biting my tongue. I resist the urge to go into my boss’s office, close the door and say “Look. Do us both a favour and lay me off.” It’s what I’ve been thinking for a while. It’s what I’ve been hoping for a while. As much as it hurt to be unemployed, I don’t know if I can sit here much longer. Boredom is my worst enemy. Timing is everything. Definitely can’t do it today and definitely can’t do it tomorrow. Why ruin her day?

Then there’s the other side of the coin. I can’t just afford to move from my job to unemployment. I’m broke. So I can’t just wave my arms and say “Pick me!” without suffering financial hardship.

I remember reading somewhere that rather than “announcing” something you should just act. The actions will speak louder than your words. Rather than going in and saying “I’m bored. I have nothing to do. I have no meaningful work. I’ve enjoyed it here. I’ve been able to learn a lot. But….it’s time for me to move on.”, I should just do that and then let her know when I’m close. Announcing won’t change the outcome. She isn’t going to ask me to stay. She isn’t going to give me a raise. Nothing at all like that. It would probably be met with “Sorry to lose you. Good luck.” Then I’d probably be asked about the job search on a regular basis.

I keep hoping that it’s a phase and that things will improve. Somehow I think that boredom is more the norm and not the exception.