Tips For Passing Time

[TDenverFan]

Has anyone else here ever worked at a job where you have long periods of doing nothing?

I've been working at a grocery store as a cashier for about half a year. The managers and such are all very friendly, great place to work, but I often wind up bored.

When customers are coming through, it's not too bad. However, there are often times when there are no customers coming through and it gets very boring. I'll clean the conveyor belt, organize the candy/misc. items on the shelf, and that's about it. Anyone have good tips for passing the time in situations like ths? Thanks!

[Gotmadskillzson]

Re: Tips For Passing Time

Other then play movies in your head or talk to yourself in your head, there isn't much you can do since technically you can't leave that area.

I cashiered a few times up in the front at a Super Walmart. Hated it.....Super Walmart at least the one I was at had non stop traffic in the front. First 3 days of the month was the worse.....

Cashiered in Electronics most of the time. I liked that better because at least I was able to walk around the department, which for that store consisted of 10 aisles. So I wasn't bored looking at the same small area like you be up in the front of the store and I had 5 other co workers in the department I could talk to, go to the bathroom when ever I wanted.

[Dirty Turtles]

Re: Tips For Passing Time

Yes I have. At my old job, everything was fairly slow-paced most of the time. One of the positions required that you take samples of the product off each skid we produced. Each skid held 6 unloads of products. Sometimes those products would take 20-25 minutes each to come off the line. The tests took 5 minutes if you knew what you were doing, thus you would work 5 minutes every 2 hours.

If you were in the machine running positions, you obviously did a little more work (maybe 10 minutes an hour), but you still had a lot of downtime. If you were in the material handling positions, you worked the most when helping unload the machines, but when you were preparing products for shipment out of the department, you could do 15 minutes of work every 2 hours.

I passed the time while doing tests but playing video games, watching TV, sleeping, etc. We didn't have supervisors from 5 pm until 6 am and on the weekends, so we could do whatever we wanted. While working the machines I'd play DS, read, listen to music, or do crossword puzzles. While working the material handling portion I usually just surfed the Internet or watched TV.