Boredom at work

Oops.. This is a little awkward but I have a small confession to make: I am extremely bored at work lately. Finance should be at the height of its busyness as we just had a financial year end on 30.06.07. Everyone at work seems to be busy except me... Maybe it's because I am not doing anything exciting at the moment. Looking at the calendar, darn! It's another month-end approaching. Month-end again?

My Financial Controller has resigned end of last week and my poor colleague who's just returned from maternity leave has unfortunately been designated our new leader for the timebeing. Both are busy with the preparation of our Annual Reports. Both busy, except me. What am I doing wrong?

So what does one do when one is bored at work? Surf the net? Probably a little surfing is productive because you "exercise" your mind and your fingers - though can't exactly make you lose weight! Read a book? Hello? They actually pay you to work or the least you can do is pretend to read the financials instead of a trashy romantic novel?!

During these surfing exercises, I did manage to come across some suggestions on the internet to ease your boredom at work:

1. Send emails to the rest of the company telling what you're doing to do eg. "If anyone needs me, I'll be in the bathroom."
2. Put a chair facing a printer, sit there all day and tell people you're waiting for your documents to print
3. Put decaf in the coffeemaker for 3 weeks. Once everyone has gotten over their caffeine addiction, switch back to espresso :-)
   
4. Send emails to colleagues (other bored losers!) who will respond
   
5. Drink stupid amount of water - it makes you pee more often
6. Fill desks with papers - warning: papers overload can be a dead giveaway though...
7. Wear the confused look - that's probably how you look when you are working!
   

Alternatively, you can do things which are productive using all the brain and office have to offer while you waste time eg.

• Perk up your documents using clip arts to sparkle up dry (cough) documents making it more interesting read
• Set up Outlook to receive your personal mails too!
  
• Use speech recognition and never be lonely again
• Practice your powerpoint techniques
• Create new email signatures
• Consider a career change using the Resume templates to jumpstart your career?

I am not trying to promote a better use of boredom - honestly! I do love month-ends because that's my busiest and the most productive time of the month (excuse the pun and no - it's not that time of the month) . I have my slow days too - sometimes, some are harder to get through than others.

Well, when all the above fail, I have one more possible solution: Eat. The only action that doesn't arouse the boss's suspiscions that you are not doing at any work! Well, if they notice if you have put on weight, I guess that's a sure sign that

• (a) under tremendous level of stress makes you eat a lot more therefore you could be doing lots of work or
• (b) you are not working to your full potential because you spent too much time eating!

What do you think?