« Quoi faire » en attendant l’intervention ?

This article will examine the question of waiting at work based on an empirical study led in a fire station. Contrasting with studies focused on the malaise linked to interventions, this analysis of the real work activity leads us to open the « black box » of time when firefighters are not on an intervention in order to consider this time not as an opposition to the intervention but as a real working time. Taking into account the works on the issues of the meaning at/of work, of the care and material culture, this study shows how the strategies to adapt to the waiting clash with the techniques of the body of men at work and with the material and symbolic construction of a masculine professional culture surrounding the intervention and thus triggering a malaise at work.