Only Two Hours of Timewasting Per Day? Surely Americans Can Do Better

The new slack:

In the 1990s, I worked as a freelance writer in-house at a major mutual fund company in Boston. Because I got paid a handsome hourly rate, if there was nothing for me to do, I either didn't come in or got dismissed early. I was surrounded by people with "writer" in their titles: "Senior Writer," "Associate Writer," etc. Most were in their twenties.

Here is how the workday of a typical male member of that department began. Appear at 9:00 a.m. with cup of coffee, sweet roll, and newspaper. Sit at desk, eat sweet roll, drink coffee. Retire to bathroom to sit on the throne, read newspaper -- thoroughly. Wash up thoughtfully at the sink. Return to cubicle, check phone messages. Return personal calls. Catch up on the latest from late night TV or the local club scene with fellow workers. Sigh. Look around. Start work.

America Online and Salary.com released the results of an on-line survey earlier this week that revealed that Americans wasted, on average, more than two hours a day a work. "The top time-wasting activity was personal Internet use," said a story in Monday's St. Louis Business Journal, "with 44.7 percent of the respondents indicating [it] was their top time waster. Socializing with co-workers was the second-biggest time waster, followed by conducting personal business at work, spacing out, and personal errands and phone calls, the companies said."

When I worked at the mutual fund company, almost nobody had the Internet. I can imagine what the corporate communications department looks like nowadays.

These jobs are actually fairly rare in my experience. I and most of my colleagues routinely work 10-hour plus days, usually working straight through breakfast, lunch, and occasionally dinner. There's simply too much to do.

And since that's a big part of why we're wiping the floor economically with the French and Germans, that's a good thing.

Speaking of which, shouldn't you be working?