Boredom on the Job

This introductory-level assignment starts with a basic premise: Work can sometimes be boring. Students are asked to interview someone who has worked in a self-defined "boring" job and document and analyze those experiences. This is a two-part assignment, the first of which is conducted individually and the second in small groups in class. First, students are provided with an interview schedule that they use for their informal interviews with those who have experienced boredom on the job. They are required to individually write a paper in which they analyze the themes pertaining to workplace monotony discovered in their interviews. Second, on the day on which the assignment is due, I divide the students into groups based on the workplace or industry that is the focus of their papers (food service, office work, retail, manual labor, seasonal work, child care, etc.). I have each group compare the employees’ experiences highlighted in their papers and ask them to document recurring themes in workplace monotony in their group. As a class, we then discuss the main sources of monotony in each industry and students are asked to speculate on how each industry may influence particular boredoms and levels of satisfaction on the job. Doing so encourages students to understand how monotony—and responses to it—may be tied to structural components of particular workplace industries.