What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

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What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby LaoWai » Sun Apr 08, 2018 9:04 pm

http://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2564-what-if-your-job-paid-you-to-do-absolutely-nothing.html

The latest auto-biographical Cracked article is all about a teacher who had to endure one year and two weeks in a jail-like atmosphere. The classroom her and her inmates were confined to didn't even offer an Internet connection, and when they started stealing WIFI, the bastards even banned social media. Even worse, they had to sit in that hell-hole for whole school-days at a time, with only evenings, weekends, and vacations off.

The average stint was three years! Just imagine three years of your life spent getting paid full salary for doing anything you wanted, including sleep, for forty hours a week with no homework or grading. They didn't even give them busy-work to do or anything--not even a mandatory "Where's Waldo" book or anything!

Shit, I'd be stuck making a salary to sit and read for forty hours a week, then go out in the evening, instead of working, then spending my evenings reading for free. Or I'd have to, like, get paid to paint or write or learn something new. Truly, this sounds like a nightmare experience. We should start a campaign of some sort to raise money for Kelly so she can afford the psychologist's bills that are sure to result from this traumatic experience.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby cmsellers » Sun Apr 08, 2018 10:56 pm

If I was making as much as I was doing TESOL or as a grad student, I'd look for new work, because that's not enough to live comfortably on in the US.

If, on the other hand, I was making a teacher's salary and a teacher's classroom hours, and if I was allowed to read, write, and draw (which it sounds like they were, I'd take that deal) in a heartbeat. Spend six and a half hours a day reading/writing/drawing and then get summer vacations off? Where do I sign!?

I spent time in a Turkish immigration detention center, and this sounds like basically the same deal as it was after the US embassy sent someone to talk with them (it got a lot less bad after that), except you can prepare (the worst part was all my books were on a nook, which wasn't allowed, so I couldn't read), you can go to the bathroom unsupervised (I think), and you get to leave on nights and weekends.

OTOH, if I were required to sit there and do literally nothing for hours (except daydreaming, obviously), I would quit after the first day of it.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby 52xMax » Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:42 am

This is already the case for many teachers in Mexico on all levels of education including college. They're on strike for months out of the school year, often for ridiculous reasons such as refusing to take competence tests, and since they shut down the schools completely they don't even have to get out of their house other than the occasional protest at political rallies, until it's time for elections again and politicians cave for almost all their unreasonable demands including full retroactive pay.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby NathanLoiselle » Mon Apr 09, 2018 1:24 am

You mean like an iron worker?

Ha! I slay myself.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby iMURDAu » Mon Apr 09, 2018 12:10 pm

I once had a job with incredible amounts of down time. I read a bunch of books, put hundreds of hours into Advance Wars on DS, on days it snowed I would bring my DVD player and hook it up to the TV the camera DVR was hooked up to. Hey it had multiple inputs. The DVR doesn't need to be displayed on the TV in order to function.

To be fair I did have permission to bring books, games, and on expected super slow days the DVD player. I also kept the place spotless and organized. This was around the dawn of the smartphone so wi-fi and internet were not things I had access to at work.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby SandTea » Wed Apr 11, 2018 9:27 pm

I don't see how "sitting in a room doing nothing" is all that different from most jobs. The jobs most people have are in no way mentally stimulating. And, if all you need to stay sane is bullshit mental busy work, that should be easier if you're left alone.

I wouldn't compare it to solitary confinement but some part of me does think that maybe those teachers who hate it might just not know how to spend time alone with themselves without someone telling them what to do every minute.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby LaoWai » Fri Apr 13, 2018 1:16 am

SandTea wrote:I wouldn't compare it to solitary confinement but some part of me does think that maybe those teachers who hate it might just not know how to spend time alone with themselves without someone telling them what to do every minute.


Maybe this goes a long way toward explaining why school contained so much pointless busy-work.

Teacher: "Read chapter one of a book today and write down five new vocabulary words from the selection, then use each in a sentence."

Student: "Um, but the book is 'Flowers for Algernon,' so you know...the narrator's sort of mentally handicapped."

Teacher: "Just pick five words at random, then."

*Student proceeds to use "I," "a," "the," "in" and "on" in sentences, receives full marks for the day's classwork.*

All this time, I thought my teachers just hated reading and viewed it as punishment.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby Krashlia » Fri Apr 13, 2018 3:44 am

iMURDAu wrote:I once had a job with incredible amounts of down time. I read a bunch of books, put hundreds of hours into Advance Wars on DS...


Loved Lash, and Sonjas theme song was Aristocratic as heck. Hated that level where you had limited days and had to fight on both screens.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby iMURDAu » Fri Apr 13, 2018 12:11 pm

Sorry, I meant Days of Ruin. It's the best in the series imo.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby Krashlia » Fri Apr 13, 2018 3:08 pm

Ah. Never played that... But, Isabelle(?) Theme is cool.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby 52xMax » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:53 pm

Krashlia wrote:
iMURDAu wrote:I once had a job with incredible amounts of down time. I read a bunch of books, put hundreds of hours into Advance Wars on DS...


Loved Lash, and Sonjas theme song was Aristocratic as heck. Hated that level where you had limited days and had to fight on both screens.


Grit and Eagle were the best solo characters. Colin and Sasha made the best team.

iMURDAu wrote:Sorry, I meant Days of Ruin. It's the best in the series imo.


I only played it a little as the game mechanics seemed a bit wonky. I liked the post-apocalyptic vibe and liked the addition of cars and especially bikes, but I still prefer the original series.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Apr 14, 2018 9:05 pm

We're so far off topic and imo it's the only game in the series that has anything approaching balance. Other Advance Wars games can become a task of who builds the OP unit first.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby Kate » Sun Apr 15, 2018 10:17 pm

"One teacher in Kelly's room managed to get online, and he signed up for a Facebook profile under the name of one his students. He added a bunch of other students as friends and then ... spammed them all with game invites. Specifically, he sent requests about a vampires vs. werewolves game, because the kid he was impersonating liked Twilight. When students realized the account was fake, he impersonated a different kid. "Then when he got bored of that, he would change Wikipedia articles to be factually wrong." "

What. This is insane. How does an adult decide it's okay to appropriate one of his students' identities and mess with his other students? Can you imagine all your friends complaining about what you said on facebook and finding out some jackass made a fake profile impersonating you to spam them all? He essentially bullied this kid. And then when that failed, went on to bully another one.

Beyond that kind of messed up tidbit, this sounds pretty great to me. I'd definitely use the time to write, play video games, and do homework for online classes for a higher degree. It sounds like the teachers had the resources to remain mentally stimulated and challenged as long as they would just avail themselves of them and had any kind of ability for independent study. Then again, I have met people (some of them were even smart people) who have absolutely 0 ability to direct their own education and time, and I guess this would be hellish for them.
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Re: What If Your Job Paid You to Do Absolutely Nothing?

Postby Crimson847 » Wed Apr 25, 2018 7:27 am

They weren't allowed to sleep for long, and the interviewee admits it was "amazing" when they were able to.

"[Being able to sleep on the job] was pretty amazing," says Kelly, "until the administrators checking in put a stop to it."


In any case, the article notes that this "reassignment" was perceived by the teachers in varying ways--some were pleased to have the extra time to themselves, while others were driven slightly mad by the prolonged isolation and confinement. That's pretty much what I would have expected. I would also expect measurable differences in personality between the pleased minority and the batty majority. Most notably, high extroversion would make the lack of social contact extremely stifling, while introverts would probably react with something closer to relief.
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