That's pretty much any manual labor job. My first boss was an Army Vet (I think it was the Army. He didn't like talking about it much.). He literally told me that it doesn't matter if there is nothing to do, just make sure you look like you are doing something. It was the greatest advice I've gotten from a boss. The higher ups won't chastise/fire a guy that looks like he is working hard, they'll chastise/fire the guy who has finished what he was supposed to do and all they see is him lounging around. You don't know how many times I swept the floor each day just to look busy, because 95% of the time, my day had nothing exciting going on and consisted of signing for stuff while my boss was off making deliveries of equipment and supplies, repainting A-Frames every 3 weeks, repainting and unpacking gangboxes whenever they got back, organizing and reorganizing the same shit over and over again because contracting foremen who came to pick up shit from the warehouse would always make a mess of things and not clean up after themselves, pulling individual weeds from a large parking lot and sidewalk (he didn't like using weedkiller because it would kill the surrounding grass), pulling stuff for orders, and repairing and detailing company trucks and vans. Plus, almost all the office people treated the warehouse people like shit. My boss said it was pretty much the military but with only 10 hour shifts, a little less bureaucracy, and no real punishment for doing something really bad other than maybe getting fired.

Honestly, I really liked that job. If the tediousness, higher ups treating you like shit, and waiting around are the worst parts of non-combat military life, I'm used to it and wouldn't bother me that much. I've been thinking of joining the Navy when I graduate from college in a year and a half (a lot of Navy men and Marines in my family) a lot recently, so it is good for me to have a better idea of what I'm getting myself into.