Underworked and Overpaid

Entry-level positions and internships usually conjure up images of boring, exhausting, menial tasks like getting coffee, sorting files, or making copies. In some companies, however, entry-level workers may find themselves with a lack of tasks to do at all. Too skilled to be hired just to make coffee and copies, but not skilled enough to take initiative in team projects, new grads sometimes find themselves floating in work limbo, quickly completing their few, low-skill tasks, constantly bothering managers for more work to do, and mindlessly wasting away the hours in between.

At my last internship, I often found myself browsing the internet and reading blogs while waiting for my supervisors to come up with something for me to do. I wasn't the only intern in my department, and sometimes I wondered if they really needed all of us. My husband, who has a full time entry-level position, says he usually has about 2-3 hours of real work each day which he has to spread out over the 9-hour work day. Going to his supervisors for more work usually leads to a wild goose chase of sorts, as he is passed along from one team member to the next, trying to find someone who has a task in a low enough skill level for him to do. Some of our friends say that their managers resent them if they complete work too quickly, as it means the manager has to do more work himself in finding and delegating new tasks.

While getting paid to do nothing sounds like paradise, a work day filled with mindless distraction, or a deliberately slow working pace, can be more exhausting than one filled with normal tasks. The hours crawl by slowly, and the monotony and boredom of the day can leave a worker's brain just as fried as a stressful work day does.

This kind of work atmosphere can also leave an employee with a lot of questions. Is my position really needed at this company? Is the company going to realize I'm not worth their time and money and fire me? How often should I ask my boss for more work? Am I bothering my boss too much? Why am I being paid to do nothing? Why did I do all that hard work in college just to slack off at my job? Could I be using my abilities to their full potential somewhere else?

Another question this has made me ask myself is whether this is a generational issue, or just a generations-old cultural standard in some workplaces. Is my generation, with its computer proficiency and preference for quick, concise, Twitter-like interactions, so good at multi-tasking that we can work circles around the pencil-and-paper generations before us? Or did our managers come into the workplace with the same eagerness and quick turn-around that we have, only to be told to slow down by the generation of managers before them, continuing the cycle of slow-paced productivity? Or are the managers working at breakneck speed themselves, and it's really just a matter of low-level workers having a smaller number of tasks available to them in the first place?

It seems that underworked, entry-level employees at least have a few options regarding their situation. They can continue along at this slow pace until they have learned enough to be more valuable to the company, they can try to use their free time to increase their workplace skills on their own, they can talk to their supervisor about coming up with more tasks or learning opportunities, or they can look into employment at a different company that more thoroughly uses their skills.

Nobody wants to be burnt out by overworking themselves at their first job, but it seems like such a waste when eager, optimistic, non-jaded college grads are stuck in an office with nothing to do all day.