Comments on: Water-cooler time

Question: Water-cooler time

tfmm — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:09:49 -0800

What is the general norm of "water-cooler time" reported on an 8 to 5 timesheet?

I work in a white-collar, project based profession, so we bill hourly. A small chunk of the day is spent socializing, personal organizing, taking a little longer at lunch, unwinding on Metafilter, etc. etc. A model employee would come in an hour early or stay an hour late to keep things square. I'm curious if most people actually do this or if employers generally see 1 or 2 hours written down each day as "office".

Of course this varies by occupation and corporate culture, I'm just curious about the norm.

By: poppo

poppo — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:21:06 -0800

I would say most people bill that time to their clients.

By: KAS

KAS — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:21:14 -0800

For law firms, I've seen .06/hour increments of "general administrative" ~ generally less than actually occurs. Max usually 4 or 5 of those a day.

By: look busy

look busy — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:30:04 -0800

At my old corporate job where we did not bill hourly, we still had to document every minute of our day. I accounted for some unproductive time by calling it 'time spent filling out this report'.

By: sweetkid

sweetkid — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:30:38 -0800

I make up the time, but I calculate it somewhat generally. I've been wondering this, too...

By: geoff.

geoff. — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:48:29 -0800

5 minutes an hour is how it is calculated here for internal purposes. That is if something needs to get done they generally assume 5 minutes an hour will be "wasted".

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 10:55:14 -0800

Our smallest billing interval is 10 minutes (realistically, 15) so if it's smaller than that, I don't bill it.

By: bleucube

bleucube — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:29:56 -0800

15 minutes here too. In a typical 8 to 5 we get (2) 15 minute breaks, during which spend time at the "water cooler" ie surfing.

By: forforf

forforf — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:36:52 -0800

Not sure about "norm", but when I was filling out time sheets, I'd characterize that time as non-billable (unless the discussions were actually work related). Also, I'd come in early and/or leave late to keep billable hours at 7.5-8 hours of billable time.
Then I got a real job where productivity wasn't measured in time increments.

By: fvox13

fvox13 — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:46:14 -0800

IFAIK, in an 8 hour day, you are legally required to have one hour of break. This usually takes the form of

2 hours
Break (15 minutes)
2 hours
Lunch (half hour)
2 hours
Break (15 minutes)
2 hours

By: Lame_username

Lame_username — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:01:40 -0800

Our metric is that you should not exceed 10%, so we would expect anyone who is paid 40 hours to have not more than 4 hours unbillable. In fact, most people run about lower than that. 4 hours is the threshhold where you have to explain it to someone.

By: echo0720

echo0720 — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:15:34 -0800

It depends on your organization. Unless it's a really long time, we bill it to the client b/c there's usually some talk of project-related stuff in there somewhere...

By: Dreama

Dreama — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:47:48 -0800

Accounting for every minute of one's workday sounds utterly insane. How do you notate trips to the restroom?

By: jedrek

jedrek — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 12:50:30 -0800

bill it to a client, because even if i am chatting with someone or taking a leak i am thinking about the job i'm working on or taking a breather to be able to tackle it better. if i blew half a day starting out the window, i'd write it down as 'research'.

By: koahiatamadl

koahiatamadl — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 13:03:33 -0800

if i am out in the field i charge it all to the client. if i am in the office i normally charge it to whatever i am working on - chargeable or otherwise as does everybody else in my office.

By: galimatias

galimatias — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 15:22:18 -0800

As a former consultant and project manager, I'd expect an employee to have about 2-4 hours a week of administrative or "office" time, which would be non-billable. Everything else is billable. Bathroom breaks, the need to take a phone call, talk to the boss, converse with another employee, etc. are all considered an element of doing business in any organization and as such are billable. I don't want an employee spending 45 minutes at a co-worker's desk chatting, but 10 minutes here and there are essential for developing a good working rapport that facilitates better cooperative project work down the line. To me, even though something might not be directly productive project work, if it adds to the business culture and has some type of positive impact on the client, than it should be billable.

By: mediaddict

mediaddict — Sun, 13 May 2007 12:58:15 -0800

Consider that every minute spent on a project is not equally valuable. The moment when you get that great idea which improves everything is worth much more that the hour spent formatting a report that will only be scanned quickly. Yet you bill them all at the same rate. If that downtime helped create more eureka moments, why should the customer not be billed for it? (I'm assuming you are not just doing mechanical grunt work day to day.)