To tell you the truth, this kind of thing happen a lot in a 'internship situation got wrong' environment.

i don't know where the OP come from, but there are countries where it's the goverment (read, your tax money) pay for the internship. sometimes goverment pay to the company, sometimes through tax deduction. The problem that lead to this is a) education people lack of touch with industry people (and sometimes, the main cause of this problem is the government regulatory body itself). b) the industry itself is in the "no experience = no job", and "i'll just poach whoever other company train, with better salary". and since starting salary could be low in certain sector, this is possible.

since neither is willing to solve the problem (university producing graduates that hit the ground running) or the industry to train graduates up to speed, goverment decided to solve the problem half assed way. they went - I'll pay for the internship. you just train them. but the industry, sees the money making opportunity instead of future employee opportunity, start saying "training cost us our time off our project, we need to be compensated". so the goverment not only paying the intership salary, but also paying the company monies, per head. limited to ten per company, and internship of up to 1 year.

so a company have be paid to "train" ten person for a year. there are companies that care. there are companies that don't. those that don't are the one that assign you photocopier job, cofee job, filing job, etc.

without naming names, there is a person i know who read book on the free time. he asked for extra jobs, but:

a) currently there's none, aside the photocopy, filing, make cofee / tea.
b) they will not let you touch the main project, especially when they know the quality for fresh grad, and how out of touch they are
c) they just want you to sit on a chair, so that they can collect their monthly training fee. and that's that.


to OP, actual job is not boring, and you will NEVER have a free time, trust me. Heard of stories of EA spouse? Yeah, that's life. Recently there is a guy quitting MMO development article. And there are comments on that article. That is real job. Trust me, the moment the boss know that you can get a job done, you WILL never run out of job. Jobs you get done equal profit to the company, and who doesn't like profit?

[quote name='GregMichael' timestamp='1306346682' post='4815692']
I'd fire you lot if you were an employee of mine and NOT working

And don't give me the "I'm just waiting for the build to finish" nonsense - LOL !!!

100% productivity is not possible. And for every day I'm goofing off because there is nothing to do, there are 2 days where I'm in the office for 12 hours at a time to support product deployments. If you're doing software dev right, it's not really 9-to-5 work.
[/quote]

Yeah, my 'only working two hours a day' comment is slightly in jest. There are some days where I do mess around more then I work but I more then make up for it with the 10-12 hour days when something critical has to go in. There is a reason why I'm the go to guy when something important needs to be done.

By the same token my office does encourage some messing around. Otherwise there wouldn't be a PS3 hooked up to a 60" TV or the vast array of Nerf artillery sitting around the office. Much the same way that Google has their rec rooms on campus. 100% productivity everyday is going to quickly burn you out.

Channel Wally... www.dilbert.com

Otherwise... Read ESPN?

[quote name='capn_midnight' timestamp='1306347012' post='4815696']
[quote name='GregMichael' timestamp='1306346682' post='4815692']
I'd fire you lot if you were an employee of mine and NOT working

And don't give me the "I'm just waiting for the build to finish" nonsense - LOL !!!

100% productivity is not possible. And for every day I'm goofing off because there is nothing to do, there are 2 days where I'm in the office for 12 hours at a time to support product deployments. If you're doing software dev right, it's not really 9-to-5 work.
[/quote]

Yeah, my 'only working two hours a day' comment is slightly in jest. There are some days where I do mess around more then I work but I more then make up for it with the 10-12 hour days when something critical has to go in. There is a reason why I'm the go to guy when something important needs to be done.

By the same token my office does encourage some messing around. Otherwise there wouldn't be a PS3 hooked up to a 60" TV or the vast array of Nerf artillery sitting around the office. Much the same way that Google has their rec rooms on campus. 100% productivity everyday is going to quickly burn you out.
[/quote]


I agree on that one. Serious burn out will NEVER give you your energy back. No matter how long you rest. No wonder some actually committed suicide.

I want to point out that if you work on your personal projects while at work, your company can legally own whatever you are working on.

Not something that you want to have happening if you plan on selling your personal project later on.

just the tube that everything goes into. The paper towel tube got filled with the raw fluid from the can of compressed air. The pen tube was taped to the paper towel tube to make a tight seal. The reduction in tube diameter increased the stream pressure and made for longer flame shots. I was able to reach about 3 feet with it, which isn't very far but I'm dealing with office supplies here, and they're just lucky I didn't hit up the powdered creamer.

Well there goes my day...

When not really anything to do in work, I usually surf and read comics on http://www.explosm.net/