What are some jobs with free time like receptionist?

[Deleted]

Become a king or queen, lots of free money and you have to do jack shit for it.

[poser765]

Overnight front desk aka night auditor at a hotel.

I work an 8 hour shift, and of that, I spend 3 hours working, and that's on a really busy night. Most of them are more like 2 hours of work, and I even use THAT term loosely, a lot of my "work" consists of pressing a series of buttons to bring a report up on screen, then printing that report out and putting it in a box. After all the reports are printed out, we put them in a big envelope then put it in a box. Other than that, my work consists of making coffee(between 12-1 am and then at 5 am) and putting out a water jug of lemon water, restocking the market(our hotel has a little snack area, ie, we have one of those glass doored soda racks like they have in gas stations and a small candy/chip section), answering phone(usually to either transfer someone to reservations or to put in a wake-up call) and delivering check-out slips.

We have a PC with high speed net access in the back, a refrigerator and microwave so I can bring food or drink(as well as having access to the kitchen area if I wanna say, fry some bacon or cook something in the oven), and a big screen cable TV in the lobby area. As I am considered the manager on duty during the night, I'm allowed to not only use the kitchen but am also entitled to a meal at no cost if I wanna fix something we have there instead of bringing my own food(or ordering a pizza, as I sometimes do)

When I was hired I was told that as long as I took care of any customers and did all the stuff on the night checklist they didn't care how I spent the rest of the time. I was actually specifically told I could use the PC in the back, could bring a laptop and play games or watch DVDs, could watch the big screen cable TV in the lobby area, could read or do homework, or whatever else I wanted as long as long as I stayed awake, stayed on the property, didn't drink alcohol, and didn't break the law. And I make $10 an hour doing it...a friend of mine who works at a higher end hotel doing the same thing makes $12 an hour.

I almost got a job as a night auditor when i was in college. Seemed like a hell of a deal with all the free time to study or procrasturbate as i needed. It just paid so lousy though so i passed.

[Maelle]

Is this some kind of thread for people so keen to shirk work they will train for a job just so they can get paid to waste time... I don't even....

[Theodon]

Information System Specialist, Network Admin, Systems Admin, basically alot of IT jobs have a lot of downtime in a well maintained environment. As a Systems Admin, I spend about 80% of my time browsing the forums and then about 5-10 on long term projects and 10% on fixing general help tickets like "my printer stopped working" or "Im locked up in this VHost" or "I need permissions for this file"

I'm finding my experience as a system admin quite the opposite. I start work at 9:AM and work solid until lunch break for 30 minutes, then work up until 5:00PM without having time to really just stop and do nothing without work piling up. I get plenty of those "My printer isn't working" calls as well as many different other calls. How big a place do you work in to get so much free time?

[Collegeguy]

Security guard or fire department contract watch.

I got paid $11 an hour to play video games basically.

[Stormcall]

I almost got a job as a night auditor when i was in college. Seemed like a hell of a deal with all the free time to study or procrasturbate as i needed. It just paid so lousy though so i passed.

$10 an hour is better than most hourly jobs you'll find around here. I mean, it's not a lifelong career, but if you're a younger person working while they're going through college or whatever, $10 an hour with hours of time to study/do homework is better than the $7.50-8/h most places pay here. Servers can potentially make more money but their pay fluctuates on business at the restaurant and generosity of the customers. I've seen servers work a 10 hour shift and go home with $120(so more than they'd make as a night audit) but then the next day they work the same shift and go home with $70 or $80, so it kinda evens out.

[poser765]

$10 an hour is better than most hourly jobs you'll find around here. I mean, it's not a lifelong career, but if you're a younger person working while they're going through college or whatever, $10 an hour with hours of time to study/do homework is better than the $7.50-8/h most places pay here. Servers can potentially make more money but their pay fluctuates on business at the restaurant and generosity of the customers. I've seen servers work a 10 hour shift and go home with $120(so more than they'd make as a night audit) but then the next day they work the same shift and go home with $70 or $80, so it kinda evens out.

hm, maybe i was just offered a job at a shitty franchise. They offered me 7 and hour which at the time was just at minimum wage. i went and delivered pizza instead making 12-15 an hour AFTER gas.

Still think it would be an awesome job.

[TJ]

The security at my dad's work have lots of free time, when it's night time they have to walk around the site and lock a few doors which takes about half an hour at most I think and then after that they sit in the gatehouse "monitoring" the cameras. Since it's a very rural location next to nothing ever goes on so they basically do what they want, don't see how that's work tbh, I'd do what I do at home and it'd be called work xD. They get paid around 18,000 a year which isn't too bad, if they get promoted they get over 20,000 also.

I'd quite like a job with downtime, not for the full 8 hours or w/e but a few hours would be cool I think, obviously I haven't had experience in a job like that so I can't say it first hand. Also depends on where you work since some are strict with things like that and have web filters to stop you going on anything good :/

[Deleted]

[poser765]

The security at my dad's work have lots of free time, when it's night time they have to walk around the site and lock a few doors which takes about half an hour at most I think and then after that they sit in the gatehouse "monitoring" the cameras. Since it's a very rural location next to nothing ever goes on so they basically do what they want, don't see how that's work tbh, I'd do what I do at home and it'd be called work xD. They get paid around 18,000 a year which isn't too bad, if they get promoted they get over 20,000 also.

I'd quite like a job with downtime, not for the full 8 hours or w/e but a few hours would be cool I think, obviously I haven't had experience in a job like that so I can't say it first hand. Also depends on where you work since some are strict with things like that and have web filters to stop you going on anything good :/

you know I look at it like this. First off, I am not opposed to working. With that said they we spend way to much of our waking life at work. It is my life...not my employer's. Yes while i am at work I will work, but in my experience the jobs where i've had down time seem to leave me a much better state of mind when I am not there. nothing pisses me off more than a job where you get in trouble if you are idle. I hate busy work. If my work is caught up let me read a book. This isn't the bloody 19th century and I am not indentured.

I recently had a job like that. I hated it. Wake up go to work, come home, eat dinner, relax for two hours then go to bed. There is no life there...the only time to be ME was when i would try to cram life in on the weekend. Screw that.

[lordmatthias]

I used to work at the helpdesk for a university. I generally had stuff going on, but most of the time it was imaging systems, resetting password, or installing software on systems. I played wow/watched movies 80% of the time I was at work, as long as I promptly helped people when they came in my boss didn't care what I did as I always got the stuff done that he asked.

On the same note, I now work as a Desktop Engineer for a private company, and although I do have some downtime when I can browse the web, I don't have time to play video games etc... But I now have a lot more responsibility and the pay reflects that.

[TJ]

you know I look at it like this. First off, I am not opposed to working. With that said they we spend way to much of our waking life at work. It is my life...not my employer's. Yes while i am at work I will work, but in my experience the jobs where i've had down time seem to leave me a much better state of mind when I am not there. nothing pisses me off more than a job where you get in trouble if you are idle. I hate busy work. If my work is caught up let me read a book. This isn't the bloody 19th century and I am not indentured.

I recently had a job like that. I hated it. Wake up go to work, come home, eat dinner, relax for two hours then go to bed. There is no life there...the only time to be ME was when i would try to cram life in on the weekend. Screw that.

It's funny because you speak my mind, honestly couldn't agree more with the last bit.

[poser765]

It's funny because you speak my mind, honestly couldn't agree more with the last bit.

it's really sad, but so many people tend to look down on you for that. It's being lazy, or having a bad work ethic. I would love to be rich, but frankly the motivation and dedication is simply not there. My family and free time always...ALWAYS come before work.

[apepi]

Being a librarian has a quite bit of off time, besides the paperwork, keeping up with the books, tend to patrons, and keep the place clean, it has nothing to do.

[daniel9696]

Car Salesmen. I work at a dealership that mostly specializes in used luxury cars (late model lexus's bmw's etc). We sit around and chat while waiting for a customer, one guy brings his laptop in and plays SWTOR until one rolls up. It's a pretty laid back job. Not too much work involved. You get to drive basically every car on the planet, before I took the job I had never driven a Mercedes, now I look at s550's like they're nothing. It's funny cause when a friend points at a M5 on the highway or something i'm sitting there like "i've driven em they aren't that great..."

Some dealerships will even let you get a demo car (if your good enough at your job) which means your pretty much driving one of the inventory cars until it sells and then you get something else. Great if you want to put your tahoe in the garage and drive around in a newer camry or accord to save on gas.

And no, we're not all crooks and liars. Im pretty straight up with my customers, always offer to print a carfax, don't try to hide anything, quick to tell a customer "you don't want that car" if i know its a piece of shit. Pretty much the worst thing that ever goes on anymore is something like a car will have a check engine light on, and you know its a o2 sensor or something that isn't a bad deal at all we might clear the code because its not serious, and when a customers in front of you their looking for any reason they can pick to not buy a car. Its not a crooked job like most people think, sure i've met a couple of stereotypical used car salesmen, but most of us are honest.

As for pay some dealerships will pay you a flat rate, some won't have a flat rate and will pay you like $200 for each car you sell, some will give you up to 30% commission on the profit on the car with a $200 minimum. Overall I love my job, not the best money i've ever made but it gets me by and it's laid back and i'm around the things i love. (and when tax season comes and everyone gets returns you can make a fortune )

[D_K_night]

As others have said working in an IT department of a non-IT company gives you a lot of spare time. I work in a relatively small company and our department consists of 5 people for ~200 employees total. We're also the general tech department, meaning if it's plugged into an outlet we're the ones fixing it.

But even so I've got 2h a day doing nothing. And for those time I either browse the web, or improve my scripting skills. I just always have CMD open with color a4 and a few man pages. Any non-IT coworker thinks it's some complex IT thing.

But be warned:
It's still a demanding job. Because if shit hits the fan it REALLY starts getting ugly. Our parent company managed to crash our network which corrupted our primary fileserver as well as the backup, completely killed our spooler and had us working 60 hour weeks for nearly two weeks.

The sparetime also has it's downsides. Because at one point or another you WILL get bored, and simply playing some games/reading a book might not be possible depending on your workspace.

You will also be blamed for every single thing not working on something electronical.

Can't cope with going from XP to Win7? Your fault.
Office 2010 applications look different than 2003? The program sucks and it's your fault.
Deleted an important folder? Your fault.

Yup. Everything here is spot on.

As an IT worker I can definitely vouch for some of the strangest(?) passive-aggressive type behavior from users whenever things are not functioning well or when system performance is slow - whether the cause be due to the backend or otherwise.

Years ago when I worked as helpdesk at a law firm, we ran a Novell shop(good ol' days eh? Novell!), and IT budget was stretched tighter than a torture rack. We simply had to make do with the aging workstations. But oh boy I would get real gems like these:

"WHY IS THIS happening? Why is this so slow? You know, you are wasting MY time!" funny thing while the lawyer reamed me out, when he turned to give me a sideways look, he was grinning. I took that as, he's voicing his displeasure, but he doesn't really mean the harsh tone. He seemed almost shy too.

"You know, my SON works for blah blah company. He's the director of IT there...way better than you. I bet he makes more money than you too."

"you really aren't as good as you might think you are. I see no reason why you can't just speed up the system and not waste my time. oh by the way, I have a computer at home...I just have a quick question..."

[freeti]

Car Salesmen. I work at a dealership that mostly specializes in used luxury cars (late model lexus's bmw's etc). We sit around and chat while waiting for a customer, one guy brings his laptop in and plays SWTOR until one rolls up. It's a pretty laid back job. Not too much work involved. You get to drive basically every car on the planet, before I took the job I had never driven a Mercedes, now I look at s550's like they're nothing. It's funny cause when a friend points at a M5 on the highway or something i'm sitting there like "i've driven em they aren't that great..."

Some dealerships will even let you get a demo car (if your good enough at your job) which means your pretty much driving one of the inventory cars until it sells and then you get something else. Great if you want to put your tahoe in the garage and drive around in a newer camry or accord to save on gas.

And no, we're not all crooks and liars. Im pretty straight up with my customers, always offer to print a carfax, don't try to hide anything, quick to tell a customer "you don't want that car" if i know its a piece of shit. Pretty much the worst thing that ever goes on anymore is something like a car will have a check engine light on, and you know its a o2 sensor or something that isn't a bad deal at all we might clear the code because its not serious, and when a customers in front of you their looking for any reason they can pick to not buy a car. Its not a crooked job like most people think, sure i've met a couple of stereotypical used car salesmen, but most of us are honest.

As for pay some dealerships will pay you a flat rate, some won't have a flat rate and will pay you like $200 for each car you sell, some will give you up to 30% commission on the profit on the car with a $200 minimum. Overall I love my job, not the best money i've ever made but it gets me by and it's laid back and i'm around the things i love. (and when tax season comes and everyone gets returns you can make a fortune )

How do you become a car salesman? How much money do you make on average per month?

[freeti]

Security guard or fire department contract watch.

I got paid $11 an hour to play video games basically.

How did you get the job as a security guard? Is it easy to get?

[Deleted]

How did you get the job as a security guard? Is it easy to get?

Can you read, write and sign your own name? You are qualified.

Also, what is your obsession with being so lazy in life? If thats your goal just stay at home and collect welfare.

[Deleted]

I have a job as a door supervisor and I do security on the odd football/race days. Not sure what you need free time in but on football/race days I get paid to watch football, and watch horse racing. The door supervisor job isn't that hard either, sure you have to fight now and then but its pretty easy, and you get to talk to lots of women.