When I spent time in a cube, I was always trying to sneak a little reading time in (when I was done with work! I swear! I swear!). I just came across Read at Work, which disguises every poem, short story, or novel in a work-appropriate Windows environment. No one will ever know. Make sure you open some of the stories in their Powerpoint versions. Hilarious.
June 26th, 2008 at 7:36 am
What, no Excel versions?
I have been known to work on VB-coded games at work (you can find Battleship, Minesweeper, etc. online and I try to recreate them) But it’s still coding, so it’s kind of like practice.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
When I was younger I temped for a while and one assignment was at a law firm answering phones is a closet, I swear to god I was sitting in a closet, well the phone NEVER rang, but I sat there. The second day I brought a book because there was nothing to do when I was sitting there… and I was let go. The woman, a horrible control freak, said I was getting paid to answer the phone not read. Ahhh the life of a temp.
June 26th, 2008 at 8:59 am
ck, perhaps this will be a calling for you? (the Excel versions)….
jacqueline, I got in trouble one time for studying spanish at work. At a job where it was necessary to know spanish. At a job where I was paid to take spanish classes. At a job where I was done with my daily tasks. This explains self-employment, I guess….
June 26th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
The key is to find the sites that are in plain text with no illustrations, and alt-tab is your friend.
Or have a buddy (ahem) who writes and likes you to read her work.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
DailyLit.com rocks mightily for this.
CC
who isn’t done with her work, actually.
June 27th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
OK, Daily Lit works differently in that it emails you the book in mini-chapters. You get one every day and then click at the bottom of the page to get sent the next installment immediately. I’ve been reading George Eliot’s Middlemarch this way on the job for a month. I’m almost done.
It’s not as fancy as readatwork, but it works.
June 28th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I like the mini-chapter idea too. For those of us who like daily reading.