Where your tax dollars go

So, as most of you may know, I am recently employed at a government agency in the west coast, and my life is undergoing drastic changes: Being sober on thursday night, getting up at 5:20, having less than 10 drinks at a bar, etc. Anyways, after being employed at said agency for a month now, I've come to realize that it is indeed hell. Now you might say, "Oh wow Bob, great choice with engineering yet again, you must be out of your gourd with all the work you have asshole." Well, I've come to find it's quite the opposite. The first two weeks here were just orientation which consisted of getting us set up with healthcare, internet accounts, retirement accounts and the like, while also teaching us of the history of the agency. I found this all well and good, very boring, but a necessary evil, I was sure it would pick up after, Jesus was I wrong. For the first week my workday consisted of four things: walking by my mentor while he looks at projects at the site, surfing the internet, reading reference manuals, and lunch. You will realize that none of these options is actual work. The only two that resemble work are walking by my mentor, which is just observing him work, and reading reference manuals, which is just busy work because they have NOTHING for me to do. Reference manuals suck...DONG. They describe processes that I have never seen before, so I am forced to imagine these machines doing god knows what, and I end up just dreaming of unicorns and figi. It's essentially reading in Italian: you kind of get a few of the words, but at the end of the day it's an entirely different language. So every day I ask my boss if he has any work for me, and every day he comes back with, "well...no, but you could read this manual!" Fuck. That. Shit.
Now at this point you might say "well Bob, you've always been lazy and shied away from responsibility, this should be great for you!" Sure, it would be great, but it goes on for 8 HOURS EVERY DAY. A man can only read so many reference manuals, and after checking mgoblog 10 times from 730 to 1130 I decided it was enough and devised a plan to add a key 5th element to my days...sleep. My cubicle is back in a little corner of the office, one opening, very little foot traffic due to the wall it is adjacent to. I found that with my back to my opening, there is no way anyone could see what I was doing, so I started putting my manual in my lap, resting my legs on the filing cabinet and doing whatever the hell I pleased, most notably napping.

Now as you can see from this picture I enclosed, asshat across from me probably thinks im just reading this manual in comfort, trying to make the best out of this situation, but what he doesn't realize is that the pages don't move. I probably sleep for 3 hours a workday now. Even when my mentor comes to get me when he wants me to tour the site, I just wake up and turn around, fresh as a krispy kreme, and no one's the wiser. When most people tell you about their job they're like "yeah, i just got this job, it's great, i don't do shit, i just microwave hot pockets," or some shit like that. I can tell you the government does not want hot pockets. I literally dont do SHIT. I have not done any work yet after working in my department for 2 weeks. I have done nothing that helps the government at all, no paperwork, no designs, NOTHING. I read, i follow, that is all that is required of me, so let's do the math! I have been working here for 4 weeks, and on friday I will receive my 2nd paycheck, together totaling just under 9 grand after taxes. Half of those paychecks paid me for my training for two weeks, if you can call it that. As i mentioned, all this thing did was set me up with all my accounts. So there's half gone, im left with 4500 for the last 2 weeks. Now with these I would say 2 hours of my day is spent touring the site with my mentor, blankly staring at people doing shit. So if i have about 4500 left, and I have an 8 hour work day, about 1125 is gone for blank staring. Then I have about 2 hours spent surfing, mgoblog, bbcnews, and espn. Same fraction, same deal, another 1125 goes to me keeping up on the news. 1 hour a day goes to actually reading these manuals, because I get bored of reading the same articles online, so I do end up reading these things. 1/8 of 4500 nets me getting paid 562.50 for reading manuals...great, productive. Let's get into the nitty gritty; As I said I spend 3 hours a day sleeping, so this comes out to 1687.50 for sleeping. If I spent 30 hours sleeping for the past two weeks, it comes out to me getting paid 56.25 per hour of sleep...AFTER TAXES. I find this to be astonishing. I literally stay up late at night just so I can sleep at work and have something to do. I hate my job. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.