the art of seeming busy OR "Excuse me, I believe you have my stapler?"

Gotta say...it's not as easy as it looks. To seem to be working on your work-work (that for which you get a monthly paycheque) and actually be surfing the various sites supporting your newest personal project or all those detailing a blow-by-blow description of Paris Hilton's ins-and-outs from prison. I've also been idly surfing my text messages and getting rid of old ones...checking my hotmail inbox incessently, listening to my old voicemails and finally posting to my blog again! All the aforementioned activities are especially hard to do when you share a small, often humid office with 2 other people. Cause you cannot (or at least I feel I cannot) work fully on your personal administration just in case someone quickly comes over to look at what you are doing (especially if that someone is the boss) or scans your screen as they get up to go to the bathroom...it's ok to idly be looking at gossip websites (or in the case of my office mates the cbc news or the latest conspiracy run amock in Germany) every once in a while to take a break from work-work, but to actually be working on something else seems wrong - would be perceived as wrong.

So the day invariably ends up being wasteful - for you and the company you work for...you get lazy - cause you're bored and end up neither creating more work-work projects or doing the many on your own personal to-do list when you get home, as you are literally exhausted from all the time wasting you did that day.

This week I have been doing a boatload of wasting time. Really, I have done all the work-work I can, even extra stuff. Is it my fault that there is no work for me to do at the moment? I think not. Shouldn't that be a manager's problem? I am really a responsible person and very conscientious - but I actually don't feel all that bad about all the time wasting I have accomplished. There! That's it! It IS an accomplishment - phew! I have not been wasting my time...I have simply been propogating the office environment - to break the continuum with the admission of time wasting would help no one. THANK GOD! 2.5 hours and counting to the weekend...