What am I paying you for?

Once upon a time ... 

I had a job as a DBA. It was your typical Monday to Friday, business hours gig. 

When I started there, the system was a mess. Constantly going down, slow, no decent backup/restores happening, nor indexing, check DBs etc ... 

After a few months, I got it all under control, and even scored a payrise ... the kind where the boss calls you in and just tells you you're getting a raise because your efforts have been noticed. 

Fast forward a few months ...

The boss comes down to the IT room (on the ground floor, of course ... how stereotypical) ... 

I'm standing around doing nothing, except shooting hoops with the toy basketball hoop. 

He looks at me and says "what am I paying you for?" 

I look at the SQL CPU .. it's low. Backups worked, everything is humming. Did he want me to break something just so that I had something to do. 

That was when I really came to the realisation that DBA work was not for me. I did my job perfectly, but still had to turn up every Monday at 9am to do nothing!