To be or not to be, that's the question

What do you do when you don’t have much to do at work?

I think I like this job as much as I hate it.

A project has its life cycle, and hence the peak and low seasons. During the peak seasons, I would not be able to rest too much. Sometimes I even have to stay up till the small hours of the morning to coordinate testing activities. During the low seasons, though, I often need to surf on the net for the whole day. I feel especially useless at these times. And when I get more and more used to the job, I get more and more efficient so the workload is becoming less and less.

Surely I can tell my bosses that I have nothing to do, but that means in the peak seasons I would be much worse off. So, what should I do?

Being a Christian, I believe that I should be diligent and trustworthy. But isn’t there a saying, “promotion is punishment”? The better you are, the more jobs you would take from those not performing. So, you end up doing 2 to 3 persons’ work, while those slack people can just sit there and wait for the next pay day. Worse still, your boss would push the bar higher and higher for you, so that you never reach his expectation and he never needs to award you with promotion or pay rise. That’s the aim for bosses, isn’t it, getting people to be more and more efficient while paying you less and less?

This is a true dilemma for me. I would like to be honest and right in my job, but on the other hand, not be “punished” by more workload that drives me to the limits, and threaten my health.

Lord, please help me in solving this “mystery”!!