You Got Mail…
I commute, like 100s of 1000s of people every day into London. I use the train. In theory I could drive. It would probably be quicker but since my place of work doesn’t have a car park (not for us anyway), it would cost me just as much as my £371 a month train fare, plus petrol and extra servicing and all that good stuff.
I don’t really enjoy the daily grind into work, but at the same time – I like the fact that I can read, or listen to music, or masturbate furious to the shock and aghast of the other passengers.
I’ve kinda covered all this before in other blogs, but what I wanna do here is talk about email.
Thursday evening on the way home there was a guy sat across from me. He started the journey messing with his Motorola ‘Razor’ phone (surely this years I-Pod... I.E. not actually that good but they ‘look nice’).
Then, he then grabbed his laptop from his briefcase.
I noticed he had an Orange Data Card. One of them 3G wireless internet cards. Now – here’s the thing. I’m with Orange, and at times their normal 2G service sucks (like when I’m sat at my desk and on the train), so I would imagine that their 3G service is not going to be any better.
This guy spent about 50 minute getting dropped connections, pulling the data card out of the pc and slotting it back in to reset it, moving seats (when the train started to empty) to try and get a better reception, and on, and on, and on. He gave up about 3 minutes from the last stop.
Because he was moving around I could see that he just had outlook open, so I guess he was trying to pick up his email.
And here’s what I really want to talk about. Since when did work time extend to include the journey into work, out of work, and evenings when you should be with the ‘kids’.
Don’t get me wrong. If I need to do extra, I do it. However I seem to manage to self schedule well enough these days that I can get most things done in my working day.
You can’t move for people with Blueberries (or whatever, you know those stupid phone email things) and laptops. Actually – in that same evening a guy nearly missed his stop and ran off the train with his laptop precariously held in one hand, seconds before the doors nearly snapped it in half. I thought that was pretty funny.
So really. Ask yourself. At 7:30 in the morning, do you really need to read the email that arrived over night? Is it REALLY that important? I’m still waiting for someone to look up from their laptop and shout, “MY GOD THEY DID IT! THE US OFFICE FINALLY A: MADE A DRUG THAT CURES CANCER, B: FOUND A WORKABLE SYSTEM TO CURE WORLD POVERTY, AND C: A DIET PILL THAT ACTUALLY CURES THE PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS FOR OBESITY AS WELL AS DROP THE WEIGHT IN JUST 2 DAY!”
You know – I used to be a work obsessive back at the old gig. I’d check my work mails first thing, drive into work, work, drive home, check emails all night. Guess what – I think that made me worse at my job. I didn’t have any distance from it. It gave me no perspective.
I know all jobs are not like that. I know that work these days is harder and more competitive. I know that people use their jobs as a means to try and forget the state of their personal lives. Maybe I shouldn’t care so much. It’s up to people what they wanna do with their lives.
It just struck me as I watched bemused at the Orange 3G data card guy, I wonder how the hell we did business when we only had the postal service.
Nic.
3 Comments:
haha! I need a job in your profession.
Last place I worked, I used to do 13 hour days, get paged to and from work, had to log on from home and was called all times of day and night - including weekends.
No wonder my health burned out. Of course, in Aussie, if you aren't part of the public service, most companies think they own you (like a slave).
Hope most companies in the UK let me work 9-5 (or something similar).
Oh, and the US office will never have a cure for poverty. That would be counter productive to the goals of the US Government. :-)
lol - okay... just to put the record straight. I work as hard as I need to. If work needs doing - I do it. I guess as I got better at my job I just learnt what I was capable of producing in a set amount of time. I always over deliver on deadlines :)
UK hours like everywhere are whatever you are pressured into doing by your company.
Personally, I work beter with rest. You run me through a crazy all nighter and my work will suck.
MS wrote about this in one of their project managment books. They worked out that after something like 8 and a half hours, it's actually more cost effective to send programmers home because the work they do after that time limit usually needs re-doing.
Something like that anyway... I'll have a search and see if I can find info on it.
Nic.
Yeah, many peopel often comment on that. It's something Scott Adams mentions as well in the Dilbert Principle - aka people burn out if they work too hard and too long etc etc.
It's only natural - yet in Aussie they have no concept about that. The joke being that Aussie Capitalism is where you have two cows, you sell one, and try to milk the other for four times the milk - you wonder why it dies! :-)
There are going to be rolling strikes in Aussie now because of the new industrial relation laws they are trying to bring in - bascially, they will be able to sack people without giving a reason! And sack them on the spot! They wonder why their is industrial action starting! Stooopid Government! I will be so glad when I am out of here! :-)
Post a Comment
<< Home