It really varies too much between industries to give a single answer. Someone at an insurance company is going to be doing something vastly different than an accountant, and they’ll be different from an architect (though only part of what architects do is in the office).
That being said, office work for the average worker, as in a salaried or hourly worker with a fairly rigidly defined job description, is usually going to be paperwork, even though there’s not always paper involved.
It’s taking information and moving it around, in one way or another.
As an example, one of my exes worked for a company that handles employee benefits, investments, and other services to other companies. Lets say a worker has an IRA, gets a nice insurance policy, and there’s a pension fund.
Her job is to take data from the company that contracted with the company she worked for, enter that data into the system in an properly formatted way, run calculations, then trigger the appropriate funds being moved from one account to another. No meetings unless something goes wrong. It’s all day data entry and management.
Now, before that job, she worked at a tax service under a CPA. She would get actual paper back then. Receipts, forms, and look for deductions for the client, then print out the church correct tax form, have the client sign it, then send it off. She would finish one, then start the next, all day long during tax season. Off season, she would be receiving accounting records from clients and entering them into the system of the company she worked for, and process things like withholding.
Pretty much, neither of those jobs required leaving the desk her entire shift.
Now, my best friend runs a department at a community college. He leaves the actual desk frequently. There’s meeting with his superiors, meetings with his underlings, meetings with vendors, budgeting work, orders, policy decisions, disciplinary decisions, and the list keeps on going.
My best friend’s husband was a flunky at architectural firm. When he was on a project, his job was drafting designs per specifications given to him. It required doing some oh the work, meeting with the architect, then changing anything per their decisions, or finalizing those plans. From there, once plans were ready to be used by someone to build something, he would essentially coordinate between contractors and his office to troubleshoot any snags with things like permits, supply issues, etc. So it was usually a lot of desk with work over a few weeks or months, then weeks or months barely at a desk, but still mostly in office.
Myself, I never had a long term office job. But, during recovery from a work related injury, I was pulled into the office of the home health company I worked for. My injury precluded patient care, but I was okay for light duty.
I was placed in staffing. I would roll in early, about 6 AM, and check for any call-ins. That would be employees needing to have their case covered by someone else for whatever reason. I would call other caregivers based on availability, proximity to the patient, and hours already worked. The last one was to avoid overtime unless absolutely necessary.
The software used, I would type in the name, and their details would pop up with their address, phone number, and current schedule. Same with the patient.
The first step for me was always to check the patient’s location, because that let me filter out people on the list as available by proximity before anything else, since I would have to just go down the list. I’d enter a name, check the location, and decide who to short list. Once I had the short list, I’d verify they were not going into OT, and start calling, with priority given to employees that had requested more hours.
Most of the time, a call-in would take fifteen to twenty minutes to resolve.
Once the morning run was over, it would be time for a quick coffee and come back to handle any afternoon call-ins in the same way. Have lunch, then repeat for evening/night call-ins.
During the few months I was doing it, most of the time, that was handled by maybe 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Some days it was all handled before lunch, and very occasionally by the time the coffee break was available. Very variable because there are days when folks just didn’t call in as much. And there were days it was crazy, particularly when there’d be something like a bad flu run through local schools and the parents would either catch it, or need to take care of their kids.
But, usually, the afternoons were either straight up bullshitting with the ladies in the office (not flirting or messing with, just swapping healthcare war stories), or helping with sorting out patient intake and/or prioritizing staffing for new patients. A new patient means you either shuffle staff around, hire new caregivers, or break it to the bosslady that someone is going to need overtime until the other options could happen. Since I knew pretty much everyone, I was good at figuring out who would be a good pick for a patient’s needs.
A few times, I did some of the initial onboarding for new caregivers. Get them the employee handbook, introduce them around, talk about expectations, that kind of happy horseshit.
Tbh, I liked it most days, but not as much as patient care. Don’t think I could have done it for years or anything, but as a temporary thing, it was nice.
See? Totally different daily routines and work between industries.
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