What Is The Greatest Waste Of Your Time

Trying to get any warranty work done with a voice you can't understand. Home warranty service policies seem to be at the top of the list. I guess they can talk at 200 miles an hour but my ears can only hear at 100 mph. Sorry, I missed half of what you said.
 
The time I spend worrying about stuff I can't control is the biggest waste of my time.

Over the years, and so contrary to my nature, I have gradually been able to waste less and less of my time.

I'll know I've "arrived" when I don't give a hoot about much of anything. :D
 
I am a biologist. Greatest waste of my time is the admin work I have to do.
Examples: "Bloodborne pathogens training (I'm qualified to teach Microbiology), computer security (Taken the same course almost 20 times @ 5 hrs each), Privacy Act training (4 hrs annually), Diversity training (5 to 8 hrs annually), Timecards (Until recently, done electronically and on paper), Travel (even if required/assigned, requires 3 levels of approval, paper and electronic.) I was asked to account for my admin time and it came to 16 hours per pay period!
 
BearBio, I hear ya. Back when I was a working stiff, my company required its employees, one and all, to annually take a number of short, online courses with quizzes. Compliance training.

E.g., "Is it okay to bribe foreign government officials? a) Yes, b) No, c) Maybe." Or, "Is it okay to hit on colleagues for sex? a) Yes, b) No, c) Maybe."

Total waste of time.

Like everybody else, I'd let 'em stack up until close to the deadline, and then spent hours ploughing through them. I can't think of even one instance where I learned something useful.

My theory is the corporation made us do the "training" so that when an employee screwed up somewhere, and got fined or sued, it could say, "Not our fault! We told 'em not to that!"
 
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Back when I worked as a maintenance tech at the RubberMaid Commercial Products factory, it was meetings, I always hated being forced to waste production time sitting in a meeting.
All I can think about is how much I could be getting done while sitting there being forced to listen to management jibber jabber 'bout stuff that doesn't even concern me.
After that ya gotta crank up the machines and the plastic heaters then wait for the temps to come up before cranking up the extruder. Then it takes a few cycles to get usable product out of the plastic molding presses.
Wasted time, more wasted time then wasted product and material just so management can feel important 'bout themselves.
 
My gripe was the required yearly Ethics training for all employees - except those that were exempted for a variety of reasons - every one of those exempted were top level management. And of course, the diversity and affirmative action classes.
 
Superlatives are difficult for me to pin down. When you ask the most, best, worst, top, #1, etc etc, I don't wish to commit to an answer.

Certainly, nothing I find here in the pages of this fine forum makes my top-20 "Greatest Waste of My Time", but with that clearly stated, I can say for sure that it's a waste of:

--time
--energy
--bandwidth
--patience
--screen area
--phone battery when applicable
--cellular data when applicable
--oxygen, as I take deep breaths fighting off the annoyance

...when posters quote entire messages to add a simple one sentence reply. It's worse when the quoted message is long, has many parts, has many different thoughts, takes a long scroll... but it's godawful horrendous when it's pictures, multiple pictures, large pictures, etc etc.

The recent thread where someone asked about experience with leveling a house foundation was extremely interesting and one poster shared his story and added pictures of the job progress and it was a fine addition to the thread. And then at least two other posters quoted his entire post with pictures to add their own reply to the end, just mucking up the entire thread.

Beyond the above listed annoyances of this lazy, unskilled nonsense, it drags down the forum software and servers and forces ever single link in the chain to work harder -- and not only for no benefit, but for the net result of making the discussion more difficult and for more annoying for absolutely every member to read and enjoy.

I've been on a couple forums that give low-level moderator access to a couple active members that log a lot of forum time, especially at odd hours, and gives them the title of Forum Janitor as they work to edit and clean up this kind of lazy/ignorant posting by members who should know better but for whatever reason, don't.

I'm aware that this post may very well have wasted your time if you have read it. But consider that if one of the ignorant has read it, and learns to post with more courtesy, this one post waste of time may actually benefit all of us.

I can dream, anyway.

P.S. Yes, YOU: you haven't invented a brand new joke on the internet when you quote this entire post and add your '+1!' to it. You might well be the turkey that says "a horse walks in to a bar and the bartender says, 'hey buddy, why the long face?'" It may be cute, but you didn't invent it and we've all heard it.
 
I quit shaving around 1980...

...our yard gets a lot of water and grows like a jungle. It's a constant battle. If you don't eliminate a problem completely, roots and all, in a few weeks it looks like you never touched it. We have a fig tree that has been cut down to the ground, but we didn't dig up the roots. In few years it will be leaning on the neighbors roof.

All this is vanity and chasing after wind.

Ecc. 2:11
 
The wife always got to go some where, when i'm watching my football and basketball games.She can't drive and never wanted to learn.....On purpose if you asked me. lol
 
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OH, and getting e-mails from people too lazy to push "reply" instead of "reply to all"! Or invitations to office parties in D.C. or Portland (I don't even know the guy who's retiring!)
 
Standing in front of the refrigerator trying to decide on what's for dinner.
only to pack the wife into the car and deciding on which restaurant..

Rob
 
Had an "all staff" meeting last week. When it was over, I asked a colleague if that was the 2013 Budget "pep talk", all over again?

Or listening to upper management brag about the accomplishments of others as if they are their own!
 
Humidity !! Hate it, can't stand it for a second. Anytime it's over 65%, it's a wasted day for me. Second is any tempurture over 85.
 
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