Hi,
I started my first full time position in an IT Business department of a big company two months ago. I'm mostly in office since this is my 'learning' period. I would have no complaints if I would actually learn something but what I usually learn is how to prepare a report (we have bunch of reports nobody actually reads) on MS Excel or prepare a presentation that looks like any other one. Anyways, my productive period is usually 2 hours then I got 6 hours completely free. Normally I don't care this is such a nice thing but in order not to get any complaints I have to look busy. I literally read everything on the department's website 100 times. The only thing worse than work is pretending to be busy. If I would work in these 6 hours that would be still okay to me, since I feel so bad not working. I can't stop thinking if someone realizes that I am actually doing nothing I would lose my job, or get punished or not to get my bonus. I feel so bad since last week, my veteran colleague wrote me an e-mail saying that 'since you're new it would be a nice information we can take 30 minute break in 8 hour work day otherwise you have to arrange it'. I usually stay in toilet longer than I am supposed to since I don't want to go back doing nothing, I assumed that she took a notice on them. This is not the first time I got this feeling, during my internships and my part-time student office experiences I felt the same way.
Every time I look around everybody seems doing something, everyone I know working in the same type of jobs are complaining about how busy are they. So there could be several possibilities for me:
1- These people are lying
2- All people except me are stupid so they spend their whole day on the same work I completed in 2 hours
3- I am doing something wrong, like not taking initiatives (I hate this concept though I mean why would I take one) or understanding what should be done without someone assigning to me
4- We're in a simulation so that is why everyone but me seems always busy in default
I hate that capitalism makes me feel useless or lazy or not valuable by not being busy enough, or I have to pretend to keep this useless job to afford basic things. I feel like I spent my potential into useless things, I have no contribution to society. I spent years for trying to get in a good school and get a good education but in the end I have no qualities besides knowing Excel which is the easiest program on earth. I don't understand how essential everyday workers like cashiers, waiters, janitors are paid less than me who's working in a most basic office job, how we are more valuable more in this society than these people. So yeah that is why I want to learn your experiences. And it would be nice to get suggestions about how to get out from this useless job, how to be useful for society, etc. There is no way I am going to do this for the rest of my life.