Quote Quoting PADriver13
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Obviously you have never run anything. She is being paid by her employer for that time. Find me a single employer who says "I'm ok with my on-the-clock employees staring at the wall". I understand your point about waiting to greet someone or to answer a phone, but I'm sure there are other things to occupy her time while on her employer's dime, no? I'm reminded of working in retail, on those snowing days when NO ONE came out. I was a sales guy, so my job was to "wait" until customers wanted to buy something. If there were none, I was expected to clean shelves, vacuum, maintain stock, make end stock more presentable, file paperwork, follow-up with previous customers, and the list goes on, and on, and on. I've never had the pleasure of working for someone who was ok with me wasting time at their expense.
You have no idea what my career history is but maybe we can make some sense out of this by the career history you have volunteered. Surely in your time working in retail, or at least in visiting retail stores, you have seen cashiers at register stalls at grocery stores or other big box stores. Their jobs are to stand behind the register and check people out. When they do not have a customer in line they do not leave their register to do work elsewhere in the store. They may clean up their register but they rarely are put to task to do anything else because the store wants them to appear ready to take a customer. In that downtime while they are waiting for a customer, they may talk to one another or simply stare vacantly at the wall. That same scenario exists in many other positions where people have a significant amount of time in their position waiting to work.