Nothing to do at work

[joshdick]

I'm in Drexel's co-op program, so I began my first programming job this Monday. The first day was fine. After filling out paperwork for HR, I met with my supervisor, and he gave me an assignment. He was available that whole day for questions.

Early Tuesday morning, I completed my project, and I wanted to let him know, but I couldn't find him, so I sent him an e-mail. Not having anything else to do, I surfed the Web and played Minesweeper a bit. When he dropped by my cubicle late that afternoon, he sternly informed me that "we don't play games here" and that surfing the Web is only allowed during lunch hour. He spent a minute or two looking at the output of my program and said that the output looked like it might be correct and that he'd find something for me to do.

I neither heard from him anymore that day, nor yesterday save an exchange of hellos in the hallway. Had I not been on my way to the coffee pot at that exact moment, I wouldn't have seen all that day. I haven't seen him at all today.

I have no idea what to do. I'm not supposed to be visiting Web sites or playing games, but I've nothing else to do. I've been spending most of my time hanging out here at cprog since I figure I could at least make a case for why I should be allowed here.

I'm losing my frakking mind. I can't take the boredom. All of yesterday I just sat in this cubicle for eight hours doing nothing, and the same is turning out to be true of today. Sure, I'm getting paid for my time, but that's not nearly as soothing a thought as it should be.

What would you do?

[PJYelton]

Why aren't you seeking out your HR? Keep hounding him, not only will it keep you occupied it'll also make you look eager to work, a great trait to pass off to a supervisor. If he shows up tomorrow and asks what you've done this week and you say "Nothing" it'll look bad, even if it was his fault for not giving you work.

[ober]

Been there, done that, josh. I went to Kettering where I co-oped with the same company for 5 years. The first 2 years of that were an utter waste. I spent my days doing stupid data entry assignments or updating an AutoCAD model of the companies' electric grid (it was an electric company).

My boss, his boss, and the others around rarely had much for me to do, so I ended up spending time creating slideshows in AutoCAD with flying saucers to keep me from going insane. I also played around with creating an intranet website that never really took off (mainly because it was about me and how bored I was... didn't really have anything to do with the company).

I'd say your boss is being a bit of a prick telling you that you're only allowed to surf during lunch, but I've seen stranger web limitations.

Get yourself a book or practice programming something. Find something that someone else does manually and try to automate it. That's how I killed time where I worked.

And just as a side note, eventually they sent me out with some of the techs and I ended up wiring boxes and digging trenches for PVC and stuff like that when they couldn't find better work for me to do.

Being an intern blows... it's how you handle it that determines how good of an experience it may be.

[Govtcheez]

Ask other people for stuff to do. Work doesn't have to come from your immediate supervisor; even little crap work looks good, as long as it doesn't interfere with your normal work. Sometimes when I've got nothing better to do I see if our secretaries have really low priority stuff - that way I'm still working, but I can toss it aside if anything more important shows up.

You could also ask your boss if he's got other stuff you could do when your main project is done.