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Business|I Have a Light Workload and I Simply Can’t Handle It
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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/business/how-to-be-underemployed.html
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By Max Read
July 5, 2026
Send questions about the office, money, careers and work-life balance to workfriend@nytimes.com . Include your name and location, or a request to remain anonymous. Letters may be edited.
Struggling With Not Drowning
Dear Work Friend,
I began a new job a little under a year ago, and I really don’t have enough to do. I’ve let my supervisor know that I have bandwidth to take on more projects, and he’s done his best to give me some, but on many days, I find myself at a loss. When I’m working remotely, I use my time to walk the dogs, do laundry, run errands, etc., while still meeting and exceeding expectations for my role, but I don’t feel good about it or fulfilled.
My previous job was the opposite. There was always more work than I could complete, a sense of constantly putting out fires, doing just an adequate job on things. The burnout was real.
My husband tells me I should be grateful and quiet and take advantage of the free time I have, given that my first performance review was strong, and that my colleagues all seem to have a similar light workload. But I’m struggling! Should I begin looking for another position within the organization that might be more challenging and fulfilling? Should I bring up my concerns more strongly with my supervisor? Or should I learn to accept and take advantage of a light workload, a great team and generous benefits?
— Anonymous
Your husband is right. If you’re really so bored at work, surely there are some websites you could browse, high school acquaintances you could lightly stalk, arguments you could start on social media, short-form videos you could consume? Wouldn’t that give you a nice sense of fulfillment and accomplishment?
I’m kidding (sort of), but I do think your spouse is onto something. You’re meeting your obligations, fitting in with workplace culture, have asked your supervisor for more responsibility — and have received direct feedback that you’re doing a good job. Why are you so eager to make your life harder?
Yeah, it’s good to be a go-getter, and to pursue meaningful work. But my guess is that the problem is not that you’re “underutilized” so much as that you’ve lost sight of what “the right amount utilized” looks like. As you know, overwork is a direct route to burnout, and a strong organization and good manager will allocate tasks and determine workloads to avoid it.
Your experience being overutilized at your previous job seems to have primed you (and your nervous system) to expect a taxing workload and pervasive tension, to the extent that you maybe associate “career fulfillment” with “unceasing labor,” if not “constant anxiety.” In which case it must be kind of bewildering to not be totally stressed out all the time!
But imagine how much more fulfilling — and much longer — your career might be if you had the capacity to relax at work, recharge your battery and walk a dog or two. (I’d bet your husband, who was probably acutely aware of how strained and anxious your previous job made you, is basing his advice on the same instinct.)
None of this is mutually exclusive to pushing your supervisor to assign more work, or seeking out a new position that gives you a bit more of a challenge. As I said, it’s good to be a go-getter. But I’d think of those as secondary business to your main tasks: one, your actual job and, two, getting out of your own way to enjoy a less stressful life.
A Bully’s Blunder
I’m a recent retiree who worked for decades in a unionized role for a big company. While I found the work challenging and rewarding, and the work group mostly good folks, I had a bad supervisor who was disorganized, tactless, prone to gossip and a bully.
Last week, my old shop steward and another union member found themselves at a cafe sitting next to my old supervisor, who didn’t seem to recognize them. The supervisor and a colleague were carrying on a full-voice conversation in which they repeatedly used unprintable language to refer to their direct reports; they said we waste time, work until we’re too old and should take our union benefits and retire already. They bragged about “managing people out the door” and reviewed the medical situation of a recent retiree.
The shop steward’s description of this event has gone out to a union email list with several hundred members. But none of the supervisor’s reports is willing to take the lead in addressing this behavior. H.R. has the supervisors’ backs, and they are largely unaccountable.
Can you think of any appropriate recourse?
— Anonymous
I think the important question here is: What do you want to accomplish? Sanction? Removal? Public apology? Public embarrassment?
From your description, the supervisor really committed only one potentially actionable transgression: discussing a colleague’s medical situation. If this conversation rose to the level of inexcusable privacy violation, presumably your union has an established grievance process through which a complaint could be made and some kind of formal resolution achieved.
But otherwise, “bitching about co-workers in public” is not really a crime (I mean, I assume; perhaps your contract contains a “no trash talk” clause), and I’d think union members in particular should be wary about setting a precedent that proscribes complaining about colleagues. (In, say, a letter to an advice columnist.)
I’m not saying, “Get over it,” precisely. I don’t think there’d be anything wrong with letting him know, person to person, that he was overheard and that his direct reports all know in detail what he thinks of them. Embarrassment might be the best punishment for what is ultimately more a violation of etiquette than anything else.
But given how uninterested your comrades seem to be in pursuing a complaint even about the potential privacy violation, I’d guess that this was less a new frontier for this supervisor and more a confirmation of what you guys already know: He sucks! In which case I think the best recourse for your former colleagues would be to document the conversation now and save it as ammo for a situation where the kind of general outrage you’re describing might make for good leverage — like, say, the union’s next contract negotiation. As for you, no matter how much you may still hope for comeuppance, the best recourse would be to enjoy your retirement and not waste it seething at a bad old boss’s rude behavior.
Etiquette at the OB-GYN
I’m an experienced nurse practitioner in gynecology. In general, I have no problem when colleagues see me as their provider, and I don’t feel uncomfortable providing them with sensitive exams and care.
I recently started a new job, and I’m now acquaintance-level friendly with all the providers in the office. (I’m closer with the supervisor, who encouraged me to apply for the role.) I’m due for a Pap test. I could seek out care at another office — but I work five days a week, so that would entail taking P.T.O. as well as paying more, for insurance reasons.
Is it weird to show up on one of my new colleagues’ schedule as a patient? Do I ask them if it’s OK? I barely know them! Is it more or less inappropriate to see my supervisor? She has provided me care in the past, but that was before she was my boss. I truly don’t care who does my Pap; I just don’t want to make anyone else uncomfortable. In my experience, everybody who works in this field feels the same as me — happy to get or give care to whomever — but I don’t want to assume. Is this topic too niche?
— Anonymous
No topic is too niche for Work Friend, but some topics are a bit outside this particular Work Friend’s experience. For assistance here, I called Dr. Robin Metcalfe-Klaw, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Baltimore. “It’s a totally normal conundrum to think about,” she told me, but in this case there’s a pretty normal answer: See your acquaintance whom you’ve already seen in the past. If you’re feeling wary about seeing a supervisor, there’s nothing wrong with seeking out a different caregiver. But since she has seen you before, she seems like the most straightforward option, and is unlikely to be put off.
“In the field of women’s health, we’re used to dealing with sensitive and personal matters, both physically and emotionally,” Dr. Metcalfe-Klaw said, and the professional norm is to see colleagues, especially in cases of routine care like Pap smears. Rather than worrying it’s an awkward burden, consider that “it’s kind of a compliment to your colleagues” to seek out their care: “You’re letting them know that you trust them.” (And what would it say about your practice’s quality of care if you took P.T.O. to go somewhere else?) As to how to make the appointment, Dr. Metcalfe-Klaw suggested giving a casual heads-up in person — “before they walk into a room and see you half-dressed.”
A version of this article appears in print on , Section BU, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Sometimes a Light Workload Is Too Light. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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