Do you have a boring Job? If so How boring is it? How do you cope?

No. I don’t.
In fact, it’s something of a treat.

I have a job that can be boring at times. I look for busy work to fill the gaps or ask the managers for tasks that can fill the gaps. My brother was telling me about his job, and how he looked around for things to do to stay awake. His job is second shift and when everything is working fine he has nothing to do.

So while your hefting the loads repeatedly, are you free to think about other things or would that be dangerous to others?

Sometimes being a stay at home mom for a toddler can be the most mind-numbingly boring thing imaginable. You’ve got someone that wants and needs your utmost full attention for long periods of time, and when you play with them, it’s very repetitive and slow paced. I have read the first two pages of “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” (her favorite part is when the caterpillar POPS out of the egg) for half an hour. That’s a lot of time devoted to two sentences.

I get through it because there are lots of times that are fun and overall it’s amazingly rewarding. But there are lots of long stretches where I swear it feels like an hour and a minute hasn’t gone by and I’m praying for nap time to come early.

I love my daughter to pieces. And I’m not a martyr mom who claims that I have the hardest job in the world or anything. But there are some really darn boring as hell stretches of time that go on now and then.

I’ve had boring jobs and they just drove me crazy. I always ended up finding a job that was challenging and quitting the boring one.

I always had challenging and interesting jobs. I would have gone mad being bored for 8 hours daily. Granted, I didn’t earn huge salaries in academia but I had a wonderful time.

Can you listen to books or educational files such as “How to Speak Italian” on an MP3 player while you labor?

(You mean repetitiveness. Repititiousness is not yet a legitimate word.)

@gailcalled Sorry about not using the correct word. No excuse for that. Thank you for the suggestion, I don’t dare to listen to anything that diverts my attention from my work where I do a lot of multitasking. There is also zero tolerance for any mistakes.

@corniche Thank you for your answer.

@lloydbird I’m so happy for you. HA!

Been self employed for thirty years. Parts of my job are incredibly exciting. Parts of my job are incredibly boring.

My job is incredibly busy (teaching) and there’s always something that has to be done and the kids are never the same from one day to the next—that part is fun. But there is…so….much…. deathly boring repetitious paperwork that I literally get nauseated with dread when they come due. Example: every 9 weeks I have to write about 210 progress reports in one day, every 4 or 5 weeks I have to review and rewrite an IEP (18–22 pages of legalese) on top of my daily and weekly paperwork. Most of the paperwork is just for documentation and files, nothing more. Unless the parents sue the school, the papers I work diligently on will be shredded 5 years after the kid graduates.

whimpering… I just remembered I have a complicated IEP past due.

@linguaphile I absolutely feel your pain. If you are like me then you can see how at least some of the repetitiveness can be eliminated. That would same time, money and our mental wellbeing.

I have identified areas in our computer system (at work) that could be streamlined for efficiency. Also there are several quirks/bugs in the computer programs that cause me much added work and time. The problem areas could be corrected I was told but it would cost too much money. Oh well as long as they continue to pay me then I will be their good little robot. At least as long as my sanity holds up. HA!

I have the opposite problem – my workload is too light. I try to study, but the long hours under fluorescent lights staring at a screen get pretty irritating.

Your tax dollars at work :).

A lot of people would think my job is boring – I work in customer service but not on the phones – I mainly deal with customers queries by letter or email. Simple cases like change of address are boring and tedious but there are usually more difficult cases that require investigation and those help to break up the boredom. As a team, we tend to rotate tasks so we’re not doing the same thing day after day.