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This post is purely for selfish reasons but I feel it may benefit other IT personnel on Spiceworks now or in the near future.

Lets be honest when it comes to IT there are times when there is absolutely nothing to do, I hope I’m not the only one…

Now I could just play games but when I’m in an office environment I feel the need to maintain a professional attitude on the PC at all times. I haven’t been told I can’t play games but I wouldn’t ever anyway.

Personally when I have nothing to do:

I play around with Sublime and make websites from scratch (Which don’t get published just thrown into another New Folder(283 :wink: )), do some networking research to get a better understanding or just catch up on the latest news.

I guess what I’m asking is what do you do and what do you suggest I can do that is fun but professional?

58 Spice ups
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Go talk to people, go find their problems, fix those problems.

35 Spice ups
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Browse Spiceworks Forum

Play some Minecraft

…whoops, then another ticket comes.

7 Spice ups
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I follow the threads on the Spiceworks community.

16 Spice ups
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I do a lot of browsing Spiceworks, I also read up on loads of different technology news websites. Apart from that I probably spend too much time on reddit.

I’ve found even though it isn’t fun, going through our documentation and updating it is well worth the time spent.

16 Spice ups
6

Perfect world: documentation all the time

Real world: Spiceworks, dick around on the internet, play with potentially useful things which don’t end up working

29 Spice ups
7

Browse SW. Find something to answer. Answer it.

If that doesn’t work I head to the Water Cooler.

There are also a ton of webinars out there to watch.

5 Spice ups
8

Kind Sir, where is this land of which you speak? Noticketville? Fantasyland? :0)

15 Spice ups
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I gotta say I do like browsing Spiceworks, it’s a fantastic community!

8 Spice ups
10

Haven’t had that day yet. If it ever comes, I won’t know what to do.

5 Spice ups
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The land of only 50 - 100 users and efficiency when I receive a ticket :stuck_out_tongue: Today was quite a busy day actually but some days I get the tickets in the morning, sort the majority by lunchtime then get one or two stray ones in the afternoon. Everyday is different though.

7 Spice ups
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I do love browsing Reddit but the sort of content on Reddit half the time isn’t suitable for an office environment unfortunately xD I mostly do Photoshop requests on Reddit but we don’t have Photoshop at work :confused:

2 Spice ups
13

Browse through Spiceworks, or surf the web. Working for a smallish company there isn’t always fire drills which makes the job a lot more relaxing compared to working at a hospital where I was always moving.

3 Spice ups
14

There is never a time when there is nothing to do, this is when you must seek out problems. Just walking around the office the other day a user’s screen was all pink (bad monitor), she didn’t say anything because she liked it, ugh!

5 Spice ups
15

Sort cables…sort my desk…sort emails…Ask colleagues if they need any help.

4 Spice ups
16

That’s quite funny, I do go around the office but it’s not the biggest place in the world. Whenever I walk around the office I do get approached quite a bit with problems but we have a ticket policy no matter how big or small the problem is it must be logged on a ticket, just in case we need to look back in the future. I will happily fix the problem there and then (If I’m not on my way to another job) but when I get quite a few at once it’s hard to remember all the issues. If I see someone struggling I will help without asking for a ticket but shouldn’t really.

There are only 2 IT guys me and the manager and I’m slap bang in the middle of the office area (1 of 3) so alot of people lean over and ask for help.

3 Spice ups
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Are you really going to act like EVERY cable in your office/server room is properly managed? Get to work.

13 Spice ups
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The day i have 0 tickets, is the day i get worried. Although, usually to fix that i just got to walk down the hall a few seconds before i get the familiar “Hey i have a QUICK question for you.”

That being said, i tend to browse tech articles, read Spiceworks, and occasionally answer questions on here when i get a chance.

3 Spice ups
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Cables sorted, desk clear, emails arranged with rules and filtered automatically :confused: I don’t ask unless they look like they are struggling or I can physically see an issue.

1 Spice up
20

Yep that old chess-nut, quick question turns out to be a half hour discussion on why they don’t like how our system works or something similar. I’m happy to help but if it’s longer than 10 minutes and it’s something needed to be done server side I prefer a ticket. If that makes sense, not alot I can do on a users computer if it’s a server issue etc.