Busy Work

Nothing Terribly Interesting, but Awfully Important.

Occasionally, in my never-ending quest for the elusive full-time job, I get a variation on the question of "busy work." How do I feel about it, is it okay with me, etc?

It is almost as stupid a question as my least favorite interview question of all time. Here's why: unless you are fabulously wealthy and powerful beyond all conception, it's highly likely that busy work is just a part of your life. (Note that I am defining "busy work" as separate from "make work," which is that evil and unnecessary task that someone gives you just so you have "something to do." Busy work is just tedious stuff, often administrative, which is needed to keep the wheels of whatever machine you labor for rolling.) In my daily life at home, I have checkbook balancing, laundry, and general tidying-up which count as busy work. In my freelance job, there is keeping track of hours, billing, and monitoring payments. It is busy work, the lot of it, but entirely necessary.

So, if such administrivia is a necessary part of life, why ask about it? Granted, there are slightly fewer of these tasks around when you have administrative help, but woe to the person who doesn't know how to fill out a Fed Ex form if that help is sick or assisting a higher power and does not have time for you. You'd better wrap your head around the concept of coping yourself pretty darn sharpish if you want to get the job done.

In my last full-time job, I once even heard someone moan about doing their travel expense reports. He was a friend, so I looked at him funny (if he were not a friend I would have been more diplomatic - see what friendship gets you in my world?) and asked him why on Earth he should complain about this task. After all, the regular work of our jobs entailed "relationship management," which is work that is always open-ended. You are never finished in your quest to make sure the customer is happy, and they could get very unhappy tomorrow, next week, or five minutes from now, so you'd better have a good line of communication open. With such a never-ending task in front of you, I asked my friend, isn't it nice to do something which is not only completely finished when you hand it in, but you get money later? Busy work in that situation was a welcome change from the ever-shifting status quo.

Therefore, off I go this morning to have a strategy meeting at a client's. By the end of it, I am sure I will long for some soothing busy work.

Posted: Friday - May 06, 2005 at 07:33 AM | |