I work (usually evenings) in a bookmakers
Aside from treating customers with the contempt they deserve, my evening usually consists of watching hollyoaks, the one show, eastenders and on tuesdays river city. I also occasionally read books.

I've perfected the art of serving a customer whilst not missing any of the above shows. Despite the fact I couldn't really give a shit about what goes on in them.
( Slippery Mick ‏, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:25, Reply)

...
I work for a fairly large UK based company, doing stuff with planes. In times past, as is customary in airports, we...

1) ... made a Jackass video. Only about three or four minutes long, but throwing yourself down stairs takes practise.

2) ... went bin surfing - heading out to the aircraft baggage ULD storage area, and... well... surfing.

3) ... went powersliding trucks. More my doing than the others, but I like a bit of lunacy.

4) ... made robot suits out of cardboard boxes and going out in the van wearing them.

5) ... watched porn on the DVD.

6) ... got round the internet filters... and watching porn/bebo/b3ta on there too.

7) ... on the rare occasions of snow, rearranging the bins to have snowball fights.

8) ... drove around aimlessly, wasting diesel, on the premise that we were "checking the runway was still under the van".

9) ... stuck babybells to the ceiling and drew happy faces on them.

10) ... stapled or hide anything anyone left lying about to the ceiling, or in the light boxes.

In fact, come to think about it, we even did other people's work to pass the boredom. Now we have comfy chairs in the office and normally spend quite a lot of time sleeping...
(clearasmud, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:21, 2 replies)

my day..
I try and fill my boredom by reading other peoples email in the company... seem's to numb the pain!
(dildogaggins is trying to lick ones elbow!, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:13, Reply)

Twitter!
Also b3ta
(europe-who, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:12, 2 replies)

Gone
I quit my last job when they stripped the internet access off my pc. Nowt to do when I was bored, which was most of the time. Prior to that it was all B3TA and the like. Apart from that I had a stereo in my workspace so I used to amuse myself by playing the most antisocial toons in my collection to try and upset my boss.
(Mr Steve is jobless and fancyfree!, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:11, Reply)

I work with kids....
i once convinced a year 6 lad that i was a jedi and had a working lightsaber.

He had asked to see my powers and lightsaber, but i said that on completion of JediSchool and recieving my certificates, that i was prohibited from using either of them unless i absolutely had to otherwise i would be kicked out of the order, have my lightsaber confiscated and my hands cut off so i couldn't use the force. Was even funnier when my boss joined in saying she saw my certificates.

He now wants to go, :D
(Daedalus, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:09, 2 replies)

Boss bingo
thanks to crackhouseceilidhband for the memory jog

I had a boss when I was a research scientist really loved all that buzz-word jargony talk. She was a proper loon and even made up her own which unfortunately I can't remember.

She used to call me an a colleague into her office and waffle on on on using her own made up language. We decided to make these boring encounters more fun. So I drew up some "Boss Bingo^TM cards" a card each with a selection of her favourite phrases & words. We always had diaries and notebooks on our laps so they were easily hidden. If we managed to get them all we had to shout BINGO! Managed it a few times she just stopped briefly looked a bit puzzled then carried on

If my current bosses wanted to take me away from the tedium of the endless spreadsheets I currently work on I would love it.
(sittingduck Attention seeking, bullshitting fuck-knuckle, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:06, Reply)

Nothing much
I would say 90% of my loafing is done on the internet.

Other than that I sometimes try to make pretty pictures on applications like MS Word and Excel.

Also I run a kids football team, so sometimes I do some work for that i.e sorting out the squad for the next match.
(porkinator is a Rock n Roll nerd!, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:06, Reply)

Ambulance Bingo
Opposite my office is an old folks retirement complex/village. We bet on how many ambulances in a week will roll up.

It accidentally got dropped into conversation with my nan a few weeks ago. She now plays this with fellow pensioners in her retirement flat... She's brilliant =)
(goodmorningbeautiful, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:05, Reply)

Food
We talk about food a lot. It drives the people around us a bit mad as their mouths water at what

we have been cooking. Three out of the six of us on our team are competent and enthusiastic

cooks. We are even planning a cook-off to see who is the best. (It's me - bloody recipe copiers).

rafter
baz
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 14:01, 1 reply)

The 9 to 5
I swore i'd never join the corporate world of 9 to 5'ing it. But it wasn't the best of times, i was skint and playing my guitar on street corners was only getting me moved on, and the possibility of a criminal record (well, i was murdering David Bowie on the 5th fret).

So, i joined our well-known Health Organisation in the United Kingdom.

How my day pans out:

9.00am
Get in, check e-mail.
E-mail girl i chat with every day.
Reply to e-mail returned.
E-mail her again.
Check e-mails for work.
Play spider solitaire.
Do a little bit of work (typing sounds busy)
Write on my blog.
Finish rest of work.
Photocopy some stuff.
Check e-mail again. E-mail girl.
9.15am
Go to the loo, play Tetris on phone for 10-15 minutes.
9.30am
Twiddle thumbs, browse sickipedia and b3ta.
Check e-mails.
Complete piece of work that has just arrived in my inbox.
Print copies of letters.
Print envelopes.
Twiddle thumbs.
Seriously consider going to the toilet to either masturbate or play some more Tetris.
Do neither.

12.30pm
Go down to second posting.
Check e-mail, reply to girl.
Try to find desk under paper.
Work like a dog.
Don't take lunch.
Check e-mail, reply to girl.
Get hungry, eat biscuits.
Eat lots of biscuits.
Mmm tea.
Make up posters for gigs.
Waste resources.

3pm
Jump on a bus, go to third posting.
Check e-mail, reply to girl.
Type up a few letters.
Do some banal filing.
Try to find soul.
Realise soul has been sold for a paltry £8 an hour.
Cry a little.

5pm
Consider going home.
Realise things still to be done.

5.01pm
Go home. Watch How i Met Your Mother.
(Schumann makes awesome quiches., Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:58, 7 replies)

How slow can a clock go?
Despite working in a busy company, after a restructure 3 months ago I still dont have a proper job. The one time I tried suggesting I had no work to my boss I got into so much trouble I wanted to cry/quit/stab.

So now I sit here day by day going madder with nothing to do.

I have a screen that faces the office so I have to be descrete. I spend all day reading random websites as much as I can with complicated spreadsheets open to look like work. For fun I go to the toilet and sit in there for an hour at a time playing on my iphone.

I was off sick once and no one noticed despite me being out of the office.

I asked yesterday if I could have some more work from the department head yesterday and got told that there may be something for me to do in March.

Boredom and madness have now taken over but I get paid too much to just walk out and have no idea what other work to do.

To make it worse I commute 2 hours to London and then 2 hours home to be bored for 8 hours.

No funnys here, but it was something to do for 10 minutes.
(Wooden meal is. Or is he?, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:58, 3 replies)

I used to work part time for a small buisness
It was run by a mate of mine,and it was usualy us and 2-3 other employees and as anyone who has worked for a smallish buisness knows, there tends to be periods where you're as busy as hell and others where there is sweet fuck all to do. Activities we dreamt up during the quiet times included:

*office chair jousting (I beleive there was talk of setting up a tornament at one point)

*Compiling a zombie/alien/robot emergancy plan with a veiw to including it in the company handbook.

*Attempting to create a sort of air cannon from jelly sweets, ductape, an air compressor thingie and a plastic tube. (Didn't work, sadly)

*Manufacturing a substance known only as "goo" by setting light to out of date sweets

*Forklift surfing (Attaching a wheeled office chair to the back of a forklift truck via a rope and.... well, you can guess the rest)

*Seeing if it would be possible to sneak into the office via the warehouse without being spotted on the security cameras (Calling up and distracting people from the monitors by pretending to be an irate customer is "cheating" apparently)

*Setting up massive epic pitch battles on Red Alert 2 via the company network

(in our defence, we did work bloody hard a lot of the time....)
(Fredz A graveyard of hopes, a dump of ambition, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:54, Reply)

http://www.sporcle.com/games
YOU WILL NEVER BE BORED AGAIN.
(The Oscillating Gibbon is eating curried squid, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:48, 4 replies)

The Baen Library
www.baen.com/library - you can download complete SF novels in RTF format, so you can read them in Word and appear to be studying some documentation. I'm several books into the Honor Harrington series.
( The Light in Chains don't touch the Pope's boner, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:47, Reply)

I just think about sex a lot.
That seems to make the time pass quickly.
( girlinthehole, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:37, 4 replies)

In my last job
during a low eb, I dozed off for an hour. No one noticed or cared. I felt refreshed and able to sit and read Private Eye for the rest of the day.

Before that job, I was asked to provide First Aid cover for a Bowls contest. I slept in the August sun for most of the two weeks I did it and only administered first aid to my self when I fell off my road bike on the way there one day.
( Rev. Jayneflakes Buy my book, I need the cash for drugs and hookers, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:34, Reply)

Where do I begin...
Well let me first say that I actually enjoy my work. I have some great colleagues, varied enjoyable work and a whole host of interesting customers to pander to during my working day. But some days, not everyday just some days, I just really cannot be arsed to do any work - and I mean ANY work.

Those of you who love to do sod all whilst at work know that work avoidance is a skill that takes some time to learn and a hell of a lot of time to perfect - but is absolutely necessary to avoid bollockings. I think I have perfected it beautifully, even if I do say so myself.

A typical day where I do fuck all:

Start at 9 but due to my partner starting at 8, I am in early. This is where the hankering for avoiding work really starts to grow.

Check gmail
Check lloyds
Check natwest
Check HSBC
Check gmail
Read b3ta posts
Check gmail
Read BBC front page
Read BBC technology page
Read BBC science page
Read BBC health page
Check gmail
Click refresh a few times (wishing for an email)

9:00 comes and work starts.

Load up outlook
Sort out emails that URGENTLY need to be sorted and NO MORE.
Load up internet explorer again and minimise
Go for a wander to the warehouse
Chat for half an hour to the warehouse staff
Pick up some samples and wander back to the office
explain to colleagues how they are all twats and I had to sort something out hence me taking so long
Check gmail
Check b3ta
Scan read new emails in case they are urgent or from boss
Colleague tells me that my phone is on do not disturb and I need to answer it as the boss is calling
Check gmail
Look at b3ta image challenge
Have a long satisfying shite whilst browsing web on phone
Wipe 3 times for good measure.
Toilet wont flush so wait for 10 mins to refil
Toilet flushes - thank god but the stench is unavoidable
Back into the office
Check gmail
Read new b3ta again
Phone a friend for a while and find out he is off work.
Speak to boss and get afternoon off
Wander into operations and have a chat for a while
Go back into office and its now home time
Turn off PC and go home
Log onto b3ta and read the previous challenges best (im on there woop!)
Start posting a reply in the new challenge.

As you can see, this is actually today - I did the sum total of bugger all work and tomorrow I have managed to get a day out of the office doing work related stuff (which I wont do either)

I will get caught doing sod all one day, but until that day comes (or gmail or b3ta gets blocked) I will very much enjoy doing nothing all day.

Length: 3.5 hours before I caved in and half a days holiday.
(Spangulum nailing your mother since 1824, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:34, 2 replies)

fantasy island
I spend my days wondering why some of the ladies in the office, who I wouldn’t flatter with a second glance on the ‘outside’ start floating my boat.

I mean, some of these swamp-donkeys are double-ropey, but, having worked with them all for a while, I find myself thinking… ‘You know what? I probably would, as long as no one found out’ or, ‘Fair enough, she’s got a potty mouth and you wouldn’t want to introduce her to your mother, and she’s worn the same clothes to work every day for about a year, but yeah, given half-a-chance I’d be happy to let her play with my spam-dagger’

Is this just a male perversion or do breast-owners also find themselves fantasizing about less than average looking suitors? Or, worse than that, is it just me???

Mullered
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:33, 5 replies)

Turbo Trundling
I might have done this one before, but if I did then it was years ago, so please forgive me.

In a previous job, the boss wasn't particularly well liked or respected, and used to sod off on business trips for days on end, leaving the rabble to look after themselves.

The workplace was an almost empty industrial unit with a concrete floor, and this proved perfect for 'trundling.' Originally, this amounted to pretending to row your office chair around the room with invisible oars, but it soon evolved into quite an agressive game of trundle football using a plastic washing detergent ball.

When that got boring, we upped the ante and invented 'Turbo Trundling.' This involved opening the big roller door to the car park outside and being towed out at high speed, hanging on to the back of one guy's Yamaha 125. The trick was to let go at the right time and be able to stop before hitting the fence. We didn't always get it right.

I wore out the soles on a pair of trainers in under a month just from braking. As for the office chairs - worn out and broken wheels were the norm. The boss was most upset, as he'd paid for top quality furniture and thought he'd been ripped off. I remember him calling the office supplier round and laying into him for the poor quality of his product. We all felt sorry for the guy because it wasn't his fault, but we still carried on.

Length? I'd say about 25 yards from the back wall of the loading bay to the fence on the other side of the car park.
( Horatio P Lemming, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:33, Reply)

Smoking
I work in a bar sometimes, where we have 3 great games.

1. Spot the inappropriately drunk person. It's 10:30. He's 45 and balding. He's got his shirt off to sing to a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. Should a bouncer intervene? Yes, if by intervene you mean get his phone out and record it.

2. Spot the recently released mental patient. There's a few about.

3. Slag off the slags. If she's wearing a micro-skirt, 3 inch heels, and a sleeveless top in January, she deserves everything she gets. Especially pneumonia.
(bad1dea, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:28, Reply)

Sneaky Bastard
I have managed to get admin access for my terminal, and the internet usage is also unmonitored.

This leads to me doing proper work for the first 15 minutes in the office, and then I start to drift.

Thus, I spend most of my day playing Championship Manager and poker. I also have a window of b3ta minimised, you know, just for variety.

I then go home, having done a full day's work (avoiding).

Only bad point is that I have to always keep an ear out for the boss, but a minor problem. Ahhhhh.....
(Dazzorifik is bored of b3ta, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:27, 1 reply)

do carpenters
get board at work?
( crackhouseceilidhband Fuck off back to Mumsnet, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:26, 18 replies)

My First Job...
..was operating a Rollercoaster at the end of a pier in a well known british seaside resort; I worked in a team of two - one of us took the money in a little hut while the other stood up on the platform (where the kids boarded and disembarked the rollercoaster) operating it. We had to run it ALL of the time, regardless of whether anyone was on it or not, as I guess no one is attracted by a stationary rollercoaster.

So in the quiet evenings we developed a way of passing the time - as the rollercoaster would pass through the platform, we'd run alongside it and jump on quickly for a few laps. This left no one operating it, which as you can imagine was a health & safety disaster waiting to happen. Still, never got caught and never got killed so it can't be that bad.

Nowadays I just fill my 'spare' work time browsing crappy websites and dreaming about Euromillions.
(mcnelson, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:22, 3 replies)

Yes you can
I work in a warehouse and when I'm the only one about I occasionally play gravity roulette , which is where you climb a ladder , hook arms and legs round it and drift away into daydream land .I haven't lost yet and have always managed to jolt back into the real world just before falling .The beauty of the game is that if anyone walks into the yard you can just climb back down and carry on , nobody thinks you've been skiving because you cant' skive up a ladder , can you?
(happyjoy last changed sig on, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:21, Reply)

generally I actually
do work.

I'm a trainee bartender.
When things get a little slow, I take the coffee machine apart, clean it thoroughly, and put it back together again

I usually burn the lamps around the room mainly because I'm a bit of a pyro and I like lighting them. Our lamps burn with paraffin and always light with a slight "voomp".

When I'm REALLY bored, I get all our straws out, count them, make sure there are even numbers of all of them, and that there is every colour, whack a rubber band around each colour group of straws and then put them all in a glass for later.

But generally I'm too busy taking orders and clearing tables and making drinks to do any of that.
(Poppet some assembly required., Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:19, 1 reply)

A cautionary tale
It is probably not wise to bring your hobbies into work. Especially if this hobby is to copy and distribute pornography of a specialist, and frankly illegal, nature.

Alas, in my days in the Ministry of Cow Counting (which made the national press over the lengths the staff went to alleviate workplace boredom), the chap from the print room did just that, working prodigious overtime hours to fulfil his need for the foullest scud imaginable.

His downfall was using the franking machine to mail out his handiwork. One package was returned to sender, the Old Bill was called, and our man ended up with an arse like a wizard's sleeve in one of Her Majesty's Prisons.

Stick to office cross-dressing. It's safer.
( Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:18, 4 replies)

The Bohemian Rhapsody Index.
When I was working early shifts on a Sunday in an off-license, it would often a long wait between customers. When all else was done in the shop, I finally resorted to the Bohemian Rhapsody Index. This is the number of times that you can sing the complete lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody between working. Sundays would commonly have a BRI of around 3. I did have one day that had a BRI of 5.
( Matazone has new icons, but is keeping this one, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:14, Reply)

I spend my days
trolling the internet for misspellings of simple words like BOREDOM.



:)

*EDIT* My work here is done.
( chickenlady b3ta's very own Elizabeth Taylor, Thu 8 Jan 2009, 13:11, 4 replies)