I mentioned at the time how George Costanza would be proud. Of course I'm referencing a memorable episode of Seinfeld where George takes an office worker job and proceeds to do absolutely nothing throughout his entire work day because, basically, there was no supervision. In fact, with him in his tiny, windowless, castaway office it was implied that basically nobody at the company knew he was even there.
I've had other positions in the past which emulated the same work avoidance culture. There's Barum's when I was barely 16 years old, hired on as a part-time stock boy for what was then called a dry goods store. I used to hideaway in one of the upper story stockrooms of the building hoping no one would call me out and ask me to do anything. Of course, that tactic wasn't so successful for the long-term since my bosses soon caught on to that and basically fired me.
Next was Wrentham. (Skipping Hojo's here since, let's face it, whether I was dishwashing or posted on the fountain, I couldn't hide away from my duties for very long.) At Wrentham though, plenty of opportunity to just chillax on the ward, ignoring duties for several hours, and standing to attention only when a supervisor would walk in, but all my coworkers were in on that and the clientele we were working with weren't about to actually fink on us, were they?
Blackstone Valley, virtually everything I did as Recreation Coordinator was fun anyway, so not even a real incentive to shirk my duties, but some of the office work part, meh, of course, that would get me in trouble eventually after a year of doing that stuff.
Cranston, the nursing home, Amego as Direct Care. Again, since these were all Direct Care and, unlike Wrentham, did have verbal and somewhat aware clientele, there were only intermittent opportunities for slacking off. Of course I worked it in when possible, taking a few folks out from the Cranston group home and just bringing them home to chillax for the afternoon is one example.
Management at Amego was again unsupervised and my truly first experience of the George Costanza Style of working, identified above. Heck, I even deemed it okay to drink a few beers from my coffee mug, on the job, naughty me! But that job too, due to that behavior and a general lack of management savvy, led to the infamous queen bee review and subsequent boot.
Ah, let's see, where are we now... Well now we come up to RIARC and the management stint at Gaskill. Again, I showed up, but was I actually doing the "walk" to match my "talk?" Let's just say I was a good talker, for at least a while, then the demotion and placement in the overnight position at Elm. In that position, my other overnight coworker (who worked the nights I didn't) and I, lasted for years there sleeping the majority of the shift away, yet never acknowledging it anyone, including each other, though, wink-wink-nod-nod, we knew.
Fast forward to the entire career in call center management and frontline duties and a total lack of opportunity for getting away from the job tasks due to the visibility of the position and the position duties themselves being so customer-facing, and we have to go all the way to 2008 and the aforementioned hacking I did to the dialer software.
Then there was Lakewood, where I was actually the model employee of an overnight caregiver. I stayed awake, I did all the duties, I volunteered for extra duties, I did them with a smile, and bent over backwards to be the perfect staff. But, of course, there was always the fact that because of our large amount of built-in downtime, there was the question of whether, with the understanding of management, we could peruse the internet on our personal computers for hours on end. In all the eight years I was there, that question was never officially answered. My guess would be NO, that would not officially be allowed. But it was one of those things that, I think, unless Helen or Susan or even later on Jake, were total idiots, they had to know that it was going on.
And then this all brings us to here and now. Right now I'm at "work" but actually I'm in my bedroom, sitting at my desk, writing in my blog. It's too early for me to have many duties, but even once I ramp up, I can see the writing on the wall already. There're huge spaces of time between appointments, meetings, etc. There's no way that the work, on the face of it, adds up to a 40-hour week. This is totally a position of creative time framing. There's no one looking over our shoulder, there's no real supervision, there's no requirement for turning in a time tracking sheet, there's even wiggle room in how much interaction we have with our clients on a regular basis. Right now, I'm doing an actual one to two hours per day of real hands-on or book training and the rest is just...up to me.
Other than meet and greets, interdepartmental meetings and publicity meetings, all the paperwork can basically be done from home. And even after all that is said and done, may as well kick back at home because there's nothing else to do. Except, of course, remembering to clock in and out appropriately on the cell phone, to make my 8 hours per day.
I'm still a little nervous wondering if somebody will call me and say "Hey where are you?" But if it hasn't happened to the other two workers in my department, and there's no evidence of that for years, my next worry is only how far will I take this? Will I go full on George Costanza, take the thick Penske file, drop it on the desk, and lazily watch the hands of the clock spin slowly, slowly 'round?
EDIT: And now, after a quick lunch and after making a quick one hour appearance back at the office for "show," I've scooted back home. But not before stopping over at ABC. So it's 3:00, I'm home, but on the clock, an hour and a half before my shift is done, sippin' on some cold, sweet, pre-mixed tropical drinks. I'll be drunk before quittin' time.
Even George Costanza hadn't sunk to this level of depravity.