Slashdot Mirror
Blackberry Owners Chained to Work
seriouslywtf writes "New survey data suggests that Americans are split over whether Blackberrys are chaining them to work. While people who own Blackberries feel 'more productive', those with Blackberrys are more likely to work longer hours and feel like they have less personal time than those without. A Director of Marketing Strategies who owns a Blackberry pointed out that many employees feel obligated by employers who have handed out the devices. 'While being always on in a social context is a natural for young people, many of those in the 25-54 age group with families and corporate jobs are struggling with work-life blending. There is a need for the mainstream workplace culture to offer ways to counterbalance.'" Is the constantly connected, often mobile nature of the modern workplace a good thing, or not?
I have a blackberry. I do not have any audio/vibro "you have mail" announcement enabled (nor do I on my desktop computer's email app). When I get home at the end of the day, guess what? I stop looking at it! Wow! What a concept, huh? But wait, what if it's really urgent? Well, then the blackberry makes a ringing noise and I talk to the person on the other end. Translated: If they really want to get hold of me RIGHT THIS VERY MINUTE, then they'll call when I don't answer their email.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Because for some reason bosses think they have a right to your leisure time, and there are enough weak-willed employees giving in to them already to make you look bad if you don't answer the damn blackberry when you're not at work.
A Director of Marketing Strategies who owns a Blackberry pointed out that many employees feel obligated by employers who have handed out the devices.
From the impression I get from all the PHB's out there, that's kind of the idea.
Wizard Needs Food, Badly
The people I see with the biggest problems of Blackberry dependency are the ones who set the alerts to ring/vibrate for every single communication. It's terribly annoying to have a conversation with someone and see that person turn away because they have a new email.
I have my blackberry set with a custom profile for no alerts whatsoever except for phone calls and SMS/PIN. That way, I choose when I want to do work, but it won't otherwise bother me.
I don't care if the company gave them to you or not. When you are ready to be uninterrupted, turn it off... and your cell phone. Esp. on weekend I do not want to be bugged, I check messages once in the afternoon before and after heading out to do "my stuff" for the day. I get chained enough with extra contract work from time-to-time... when it's down time, it's down time. Your corporate assigned blackberries, PDAs, laptops, pages, and other gizmos will not make me respond any faster. (Exception: pager when you are officially to be "on-call" for a very *specified* period of time - except I am rarely on-call ever, but some people are on a regular basis)
. . . but there's also the quality of communication between blackberry owners and everyone else. At first I was offended when I'd get these short and terse emails from my family and friends with blackberries, but then I realized they have to type on that tiny keyboard.
Even when people are at work during work hours, I get a little concerned when I see my boss head into the men's room still typing on his.
Is the constantly connected, often mobile nature of the modern workplace a good thing, or not?
Not. I'll work late hours, within reason, when whatever project I'm assigned to requires that I do so, but I refuse to be at anyone's beck and call 24/7. (Probably why I'm single, but that's another story).
I plan on going to a bar tonight to have a couple of beers - I'll have a designated driver - would it be a good idea for me to answer a work call or respond to a work email if I've had one too many?
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
how much of the gains in productivity reported by the federal reserve are due to precisely this; businesses wringing extra, unpaid, work out of their employees.
i let it run out of battery, i forget it, i don't use it. but i'm not climbing the ladder, i'm just sitting here watching the wheels go 'round and 'round.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
1. My dad has one and hates how he feels "tied to his office."
2. A co-worker was very annoyed when her husband was checking it for mail while on vacation. A desire to "see if it can be skipped across the Pacific" was expressed.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I have a Treo. I shut it off, or don't answer it, when I'm not working.
In fact, I rarely answer it at all.
I don't see how the availability of cell-phones means that anybody should be able to reach me, at any hour of the day, regardless of what I'm doing.
Fucking grow a set, people. If you don't like your job, move on. If your job expects you to carry yoru blackberry 24/7, and you don't like that, move on.
Your options are only as limited as you choose to make them. Well, mine are. You're probably a fucking retard who's lucky his uncle got him that job as "computer guy".
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
There's no way you can lump 25 - 54 year-olds in the same "age group". And anyway, I think 25 to at least 30 year olds are more likely to be "always on" than not.
PDA's too. I use a Windows Mobile 5.0 - based device and yes, it does chain me to my work. I almost always react to an email. Sometimes this involves me replying from my PDA, or depending on what was sent to me, actually getting on my laptop and doing something more than just replying. The wife isn't happy and she is right when she says that when I PDA says jump, I actually do jump. Thankfully though I dont always jump and have learned that it is OK to let things wait until the next business day, or start of the business day, depending on when the email came in. I need to get to a point where I turn my device off outside of working hours. But then, that would defeat the purpose of having a PDA, wouldn't it?
My blackberry get's turned off when I get home. IT get's turned on in the morning when I leave for work.
I am in charge of it and I command it. I was asked once by the director of marketing why I did not answer his email he sent sunday at 5am. I said, I have a life outside work and my blackberry is off on weekends and nights.
He gave me a look like I had murdered a bag of puppies and walked back to his office.
It's your choice if you want the device and your job to own you 24/7
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I have disliked the passive aggressive corporate culture for a while. Change the work environment culture! Sorry to be complaining without a solution.
I have a Blackberry for work, as do many of my peers. Most of them work tons of overtime and feel that their Blackberry runs their lives. But not me. I work efficiently and get everything done within regular working hours and rarely need to deal with my Blackberry at night.
Don't blame the device. Blame your job.
In Freemasonry, the 24-inch gauge (or ruler) is used as an emblem of the 24 hours in the day. We are taught that we are to divide this time in three parts, with 8 being for refreshment and sleep, 8 being for the service of God and our fellow man, and 8 "for our usual vocations" -- that is, our regular job. While we understand the realities of modern life, the model of "8 for sleep, 8 for work, 8 for service" is a good one that keeps proper balance in our lives. The move to more and more work eats away at that balance, and imbalance is the source of most of our ills.
BTW, if you're wondering where "family" is in that model, we tend to our families in the 8 we reserve for service. Service to our families is the source of our strength.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
What are you talking about - work/life balance?
*posts from a BlackBerry Pearl*
The opposite of progress is congress
It's called a power switch. When I don't want to check email, I don't do it. Anyone who is bullied into doing so by their employer either has no cause for complaint (it was their choice) or should seek new employment. Personally, I find my BB to ADD to the time I have with my family; I'm on the road a lot, and am able to keep up on email so when I get back to my home office a the end of the day I don't have to send any time catching up.
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
Which is it?
Headline: "Blackberry Owners Chained To Work"
Lede: "New survey data suggests that Americans are split over whether Blackberrys are chaining them to work."
Either don't answer it if your busy, or be creative, go to the mall, or a movie. Answer your email constantly and just say "Sorry you must've just missed me I stepped out" and have a personal life during work. :)
Now the man no longer controls me.
If it's important enough to phone me, you better do it when I'm at work.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
If you allow your Blackberry or whatever PDA/Smartphone you have to become nothing more than an extended leash, then yes, that is what is going to happen. Myself, I'm the sole IT guy for a small business. I've recently picked one of these up to reduce the time I have to spend in the office - or, more precisely, the time I have to spend coming in to fix whatever blew up. I'm hoping to reduce the times I have to make the half-hour drive into work just to spend an hour or less in the office and drive a half-hour back home.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Seriously, work-life-balance only works if both parties to the deal understand it. And a lot of companies, bosses and other parties on the employer side don't. They're under pressure from investors, their bosses, etc. to turn a profit this quarter, and fuck five years down the road, by then we'll have moved our shares elsewhere.
Responsible use of resources - no matter if natural or human - is only important if you're interested in long-term viability, i.e. sustainability. If you only care for this quarter or this year, then raping it for what it's worth is the rational way to go.
As long as we as a society haven't decided where to go with this dilemma, it'll hit most of us in our work lives.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...I'm available almost 24/7 on my cell phone, if they need me. However, my employer and coworkers have a good sense that when you're not on the job, you're not on the job. That goes for vacation time, weekends, days off and working late alike. The mobile office is good when you set limits as to when, even if it's not to where. If I work from home one day, I still "clock in" and "clock out" and between then I work, I don't like half work, half watch TV, play games and surf slashdot and so when I have time off I don't feel like I should be half working either. However, it's infiniately useful when you're really screwed up one side and down the other to pick up the phone and say "Hi, I'm really sorry for disturbing you at this hour, but I need your help." If they abused that, I'd simply not answer the phone. E-mail is a nice extension to that as in "Can you take a look at what I just sent you?" but unless I hear about it otherwise it's things that can wait until next business day, and I never expect answers faster either.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I'm a doctor in Norway. I left the States and my sad life of 100+ hour work weeks, Blackberries, and nasty, aggressive, unionized nurses about four years ago. Now I make as much money as I did in the States, work 37.5 hours a week, have 11 weeks off a year, and do not own a pager. When I'm not on a shift, I don't even think about work. I have time for things such as slashdot, writing, and learning another language (German). As an American citizen, I am obliged to pay taxes to the US, not Norway, so I get to keep much more of my money at the end of the year. Life is great! Now if only I preferred blonds over brunettes...
About a year and a half ago, I threatened to strike if I didn't get a Blackberry. Having a Blackberry gives me much much more freedom and I don't understand why some people are so against them.
Having a Blackberry gives me a competitive edge against my coworkers and let's me get things done and out of the way so I have more free time after work. I typically spend anywhere from 2-4 hours a day in meetings. They are hard to avoid in the corporate world, but I still have a ton of work to do. My Blackberry allows me to get some of that work done while not actively participating in whatever meeting I'm sitting in so I don't have to go back to my desk and spend hours answering email. And if I do have a ton of email to respond to, I can still leave at 5PM and answer them on the train ride back home.
It also lets me go run off to take care of personal business while still in contact with work, so if something does come up I can respond to it immediately.
That being said, I do not have the email indicator turned on. The only exception to that is email from my boss. That's ok though, since he rarely emails me. Usually its important, so I like to get that notification.
Overall, it does make me more productive. It also allows me more freedom to work where I want and when I want, all the while still being productive in the eyes of my management. You don't have to be tied down to a desk or computer all the time to get the same amount of work done.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
The types of jobs where a blackberry would be largely useful are the types of jobs that generally require longer hours and more stress- the people who can afford a non-company provided blackberry probably are the ones who work harder as well.. and if the company provides it, then you're working somewhere big enough they can demand a lot of you. This is a statistic laden with problems.
My wife is a "Black Norwegian," which is a person descended from some of a Spanish fleet that went aground off Norway a few hundred years ago. A few of them managed to wade ashore and wound up 'incorporated' into the population. Opthamologists can spot these people due to the shape of their eyelids which are somehow 'tighter' than normal. So brunette Norwegians do exist, and I'll bet not all of them (like my wife's family) have immigrated to the US. So don't lose hope.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I find my BB very freeing. I have had many leisurely morning cups of coffees on my way to work, secure in the knowledge that nobody is looking for me and that no emergencies have arisen. Same on weekends. My *job* chains me sometimes. The Blackberry simply puts me on a (much) longer leash. My options are either wait by the computer for an email, or go about my day with my Blackberry by my side. I can tell you which I prefer. Now, before a thousand people feel the need to point it out, I recognize that there is a problem with my job here. But as a corporate attorney, it's a problem I volunteered for. I knew when I took this job that I was going to be dealing with people who need (or at least think they need) answers yesterday. However, they pay me well for the usage of my time and at least, so far, I'm happy with the trade off. But the Blackberry? Best extension cord ever.
Do these people just feel more productive, maybe because they're using a "business machine" like the Blackberry? Productivity measurements are standard metrics of US workers for at least a century. Have these Blackberry users actually increased their productivity since before they got the Blackberry? Compared to any increase gained by their coworkers who didn't get a Blackberry? Compared to coworkers with a Blackberry who don't feel any more productive?
Workers whose productivity doesn't increase even when they get expensive technology investments like a Blackberry aren't reliable people to ask whether they're more productive. Working longer hours isn't productivity: often it's a decrease, leaving more to get done in longer time, when fatigue, resentment and just arbitrary final cutoff times decrease productivity.
If they're less productive, and feel more productive, then they'll want more pay, though they produce less, and cost more in IT costs. How about a real answer to this question, instead of mumbo jumbo about how Blackberries "feel"?
--
make install -not war
...survey results showed that those who owned a Blackberry were, in fact, more likely to work long hours than those who didn't. 19 percent of Blackberry-owning survey respondents reportedly worked more than 50 hours a week, compared to only 11 percent of the general population. Could it be that a higher percentage of blackberry users are either in support roles or in management positions that require more time to be put in? I certainly work more than 50 hours a week, and frankly I'd rather be tethered to my blackberry than a laptop for on-the-go meeting requests, questions, etc.I work for the state. They pay me even when I'm NOT working. Like now, for instance. ;-)
What are you, a powerless weenie? Turn the fucker off. Good Lord. If you want to "blame the man" on this one, look in the mirror for the one to blame.
No one has really mentioned the positives of having a blackberry. I must admit it does tie me to work sometimes, but I work for a nursing home. Uptime is very important for our 30 facilities (medical records, admissions, etc) and Solarwinds is very nice to tell me when I have an issue with a circuit, server, or whatever. Random requests from end users or bosses can wait untill 8:00AM.
We can't say from this that Blackberries cause people to work longer hours, etc. Just that the same type of people who are likely to work longer hours are also likely to have Blackberries. Could be that those are the just the jobs that are likely to require one, or that people who are already workaholics are likely to jump at the chance to extend that.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Take your salary and divide it by all those hours. If it comes out below minimum wage, treat them with the respect you would accord any common criminal. If it comes out less than what you expect to make (on an hourly basis) in your industry, considering those hours as overtime, kindly point this out to those who express issues with your lack of availability during unusual hours. If you can't adjust your required "on" hours so as to achieve a fair hourly wage, you should already be looking for another job. It's as simple as that, with possible exceptions for "stuff that really matters", such as doctors, paramedics, and military personnel. The former knew what they were getting into, and unlike e-mail from Brad in Marketing, those calls really are important.
Some above have suggested turning it off, or turning off notifications. Fine, if that's what you want.
The point is that these electronic leashes now provide you with the choice to be always connected, somewhat connected, or only connected when you want to be. How you use them is up to you, or up to the jerks that demand that you use them. With increased power comes increased responsibility.
Users have options (unless your company has locked them down) to configure the things to be as annoying or as silent as you want.
Those of us around you have to put up with the choices that you make. Be polite to us, because I always hate it when I have to tell someone that I thought their electronic behavior was really annoying while I was {listening to a seminar,attending a class,reading in a silent room, attending an important meeting}.
These things and the conversations they inspire are another argument for gun control (aren't there times when you wish you could just shoot the idiot talking in the back?).
A co-worker has a Blackberry. He gets a lot of heck because he turns his off and put it in his desk drawer before he leaves work for the day. When he's off the clock, he's off the clock.
Perhaps this is not so much the blackberry per se, but rather a demographics thing. ie. People who get blackberries on corporate accounts are more likely to be the type doing 24/7 comms. Before they had a blackberry they'd have been doing 24/7 phonecalls.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think the basic problem is the phrase "work/life blend". I'm sorry, work is work, life is life. The two are mutually exclusive. Work pays me for a normal workday 5 days a week, and reasonable emergencies and after-hours work considering I'm salaried. I don't see employers offering unlimited paid time off so people can meet the demands of life, I fail to see why they should expect me to take unlimited uncompensated time away from my life to meet the demands of work. That, after all, is what most of the people using the "work/life blend" phrase mean: how does the employee juggle his schedule to accommodate what the employer wants. I have a simple answer: I juggle it based on how much my employer's willing to pay for my time.
And that's not an empty position. I've left two employers in my life over this. Oddly, in both cases I ended up getting more money and significantly reducing my workload as a result. I'm not afraid of doing the same again. Fortunately at my current job that's not something I'm having to deal with.
When you're off work, and not supposed to be working:
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I did **once** go in at 4 am with a batch of freshly baked muffins. People were walking about like zombies or lying around on their desks waiting for a build or test to complete. Hollow shells. Come approx 9 am they all went home completely stuffed and slept until about 3pm when they came back to work still half-zonked to work another overnighter of almost zero productivity. In the mean time, I did a normal 9-5 and achieved quite a bit. I then biked home at a civilised hour and played with the kids etc. Came back the next morning fresh and ready to engage!
It is well understood and documented that you often solve problems while doing something other than sitting in front of a computer. Take a dump, have a shower, go fishing.... You need the balance to be a productive worker.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I once went through a tedious interview with AT&T wireless for an architect position. I was shocked that the three other architects I interviewed with all responded to the "what do you worry about most?" question with "more layoffs!" They were among the most senior employees.
Of course the job included a "free" cellphone. The really funny part is that personal calls weren't free. I could only imagine the absurd time-waste tedium of sorting out my work calls from my personal calls and filing some sort of expense report.
I didn't have the heart to tell them that I don't carry a cellphone before declining their offer.
My Treo has this thing called a "power button". I can turn the radio off, and calls go to my voice mail. Do Blackberries not have this basic feature?
(Yes, that's a stupid question. This is a stupid problem to have.)
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I am looking for work in a professional role. I'm a recent graduate with not much experience in work past the stereotypical student jobs. I've contemplated asking about expectations re Blackberries during the interview process (by the 2nd or 3rd interview anways). Has anyone been successful with this strategy ... are employeers generally honest about their expectations on this matter? I'm concerned that I'm going to be stuck answering blackberry e-mails during after-hours and not being paid. Even if paid, it takes away from the life-work balance.
d =16260125)
And for those of you who turn off your Blackberries, have you informed your work that this would be the case? Did you have a separate communication method when the shit really hit the fan?
Though I wouldn't mind, using an idea from an earlier post of mine, answering Blackberry messages while at the beach in the Office: http://ask.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=198407&ci
There are a lot of people who voluntarily take on lots of unpaid overtime. They sincerely believe that this will get them ahead, put them lower on layoff lists, get them higher raises, etc.
I'm a staunch 40-hour guy, and have yet to be laid off from this particular job, for 5 years now, where there are a lot of people like that. I suppose if I'd worked 70 or 80 hours a week, I might be making a few percent more, though. If you work that out per hour, I'd be way better off doing a side job with that time. Oh, there's stock options, though; I shit you not, when this employer got bought a while back, I stood to gain $4000 before taxes from my 4.5 years' worth of stock options. I'm sure that would have been good incentive to work 50% more.
I'm not worried about layoffs. My job will go to India when it goes to India. There won't be anything I (or anyone else, right on down from the CEO of the company) can do to prevent or delay it, so why bust my ass trying?
I never got it fixed
People at work have asked me for the number, jokingly, for followup for tech support questions. My response? "Sure, call all you want, I seldom pick up." No one ever calls.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
many employees feel obligated by employers who have handed out the devices
With whom does the fault rest here? The employers, or the idiots who make themselves available 24/7 at the whim of their workplace?
People, do us all a favor, and stop putting up with this bullshit. Just say no. If enough of us do it, "on call" will go back to a paid status (yes, "back" - Companies used to pay damned good money to have trained monkeys available at 3am).
It really disgusts me that people often tell me they need to actually "go away" on their vacations, or they'll get called in to work. Hello, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot? Stand up for yourselves! "Sorry, Dave, that third margarita looks damned good right now, so I'll talk to you when my vacation ends, on Monday morning. Beach? No, sitting in my living room, five minutes' drive from you. Buh-Bye."
As for whether or not you can "get away" with that - Yes, you most certainly can. Just do it right from day one, rather than giving in a bit at first to make yourself look more useful. Deluding your employer just sets you up for unhappyness later - Let them know right where you stand on such issues. A decent employer will even respect you for it.
Not to say I wouldn't honestly help out my coworkers, if convenient for me... I have gone in at bizarre hours to deal with emergencies - And damn well comp'ed the time the next day. But I do that at my pleasure, not as a condition of employment.
If responding off-hours became a requirement of the job, we'd have a problem, and they would need to find someone else for the position. And no, paying me more would not count as an option, because I work to live, not live to work, end of discussion.
6. ???
7. Profit!
The people who fail to manage their work-life balance are the same that never make manager (or become terrible bosses).
If you can't manage your own time well, how can you be successful managing others'?
I think that whole exempt/non exempt salary vs hourly vs slavery desperately needs to be reexamined in our society.
If every manager had to pay an hour of overtime for every question he asked by blackberry, text, or cell, after office hours, there would be no problem! Most would figure out real quick what is really important and what can wait until tomarrow. I don't care if the answer takes 10 seconds, they have to pay an hour.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
As a newly minted business owner I do feel, at times, chained to my BB - Answering emails in the bathroom in the morning, while at lunch & at home - Whats funny is that I go through phases, sometimes I put the BB on my nightstand, put it on silent and do not look at it again till I wake up in the morning to take a shit There are other times that I am answering emails while eating dinner, playing with the children, 'conversing' with my wife, while driving....Having 'resources' overseas compounds the problem...but I'm making decent money! /heh
So prior to the days of blackberries, they couldn't reach you by another on-demand interactive medium, say, ummmmm, I dunno, maybe, errr, the *telephone*??? There is nothing inherent in the technology that creates the social obligations. It's solely the discipline involved in using the technology.
Having greater enabling technologies for when you need responsiveness isn't a bad thing. Not realizing that there are limits, and applying them appropriately, *can* be a bad thing. (It's similar to the whole wonderful Unix flexiblity thing; it gives you the mechanism, *not* the policy. Yes, you can hang yourself with C pointers, Perl syntax, Unix cryptiveness; but policy and discipline can prevent all of that)
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
While people who own Blackberries feel 'more productive', those with Blackberrys are more likely to work longer hours and feel like they have less personal time than those without.
People who work harder on their careers at the expense of personal time tend to progress further than those who take an easier path and put personal time first.
Blackberries [at least initially] were a tool for managers and the most critical infrastructure staff as most companies wouldn't pay many hundreds to buy the hardware plus the service costs for the average employee to check email on the toilet.
So, one explanation is that people who were already obsessive about their careers and already obsessively shackled themselves to work anyway are the ones who gained Blackberries to simply maintain an existing destructive behavior.
Whilst it's easy to assume that Blackberries allow working out of hours and people are forced to work longer hours because they get a Blackberry, another explanation is that people get Blackberries because they're the kind of people looking to work longer hours (or at least stay obsessively aware of things which equates to the same thing).
It's easy to make the assumption that, because there's a correlation between A and B, there is the causation that A must clearly lead to B. It's just as possible that B actually leads to A. If B is a bad thing, we need to be careful not to assume A is thus the cause of a bad thing and therefore just as bad if not worse - it may just be that A is simply yet another symptom of the bad thing (B) itself.
It's kind of like saying, "People who stay in bed all day are much more likely to have the flu." The easy assumption to make there is that beds somehow lead to the flu. Easy. But totally wrong.
Blackberry and "Smart Phones" are very handy for staying in touch between computers, but I've found that most people who use them fall into 2 categories:
1) Work-o-holics
2) Over-connected technogeeks
It's rare to find crackberry people who can strike a balance between work and personal life. If you're one of those people, that's great. If you're not, it's probably because you're letting work penetrate your inner sanctum.
Speaking of which, I'm logging off. I'm home with my lovely wife.
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
I wonder if this is related to the recent findings that people who work longer hours and feel like they have little personal time are more likely to buy Blackberries?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I always give everyone my emergency number ...911
I'm not trained or equipped to deal with emergencies, these people are.
All else can wait until my normal working hours start.
Many years ago, a wise man said to me, "I could have have a different job every day and never miss an hour of work." And so it has been.
My wife's boss finally convinced her to get a blackberry. Her rationale to my wife was that when she wants to check her meeting schedule for the following day, it takes 10 minutes to boot up the computer, and once it's booted up, you wind up spending an hour on it.
With a blackberry, you can just look at your schedule, respond to an important email (who wants to respond to unimportant email using a small device?), and then put the thing away.
So, she's getting a blackberry. We'll see how it goes.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Less than 100 years ago it was found that a 8 hour workday and breaks, lunch for workers raised and not lowered productivity. Today I see all kinds of abuses of workers at jobs, circumvention of all workers rights through contract labor and not permanent jobs. It seems to be a status thing more than anything else with companies giving no thought to the effect on the business itself, much less recyclable workers.
Honestly I had the same problem for awhile and I didn't even own a Blackberry. Just my e-mail and home phone were enough in order to violate my "off time" from work and make my home feel like my workplace. When I go home I expect to do just that: BE AT HOME. Go to a club, play some games, have dinner, you know all the things that people like to do in the Sims. I found the easiest way to remove yourself from your work when you leave work is to NOT let them e-mail you, don't give them your cell phone number, and only have them contact you if it is an absolute DIRE emergency (I'm talking life and death here). I made this blatantly clear to my last workplace and if they dared violate it they caught quite the earful from me. To date they've only called me at home once and when I get home now it feels great. Biggest suggestion I'd make to anyone who feels like they're chained to work is stop letting your work get in touch with you over anything less than someone just lost a limb and you personally need to apply a tourniquet.
"Just a fox, a whisper."
I don't about the rest of you, but the couple emails I reply to, off the clock every day, give me that extra ounce of job security. I have pretty much created the "oh shit, what are we going to do if we fire him" factor for myself by replying to emails at all times of day.
Even still, having it at work makes me fully accessable during my actual on the clock hours. But, if I reply to an email here and there off the clock, that is more free time x2 the next day.
I have no problems with secret societies, even those that are vaguely sinister, but the key is to remain secret. I see people wearing rings, t-shirts, even tattoos of that symbol. I don't really care if you drink human blood, but why do you act all secret and then talk about it all the time?
The last of my friends to get a mobile phone is a lawyer who had no intention of being able to be contacted at any time and had no work responsibilites that extended after hours.
However - if you have any responsiblities that extend after hours and your workplace has given you one of these things so you can fulfil those responsibilities it is irresponsible to turn the things off. It's also irresponsible for people to contact you on them for work trivia instead of things you are expected to do after hours. I don't want some cretin ringing me up when I'm driving to try to talk me into "lending" them some MS windows install disks to use at home but I do want to know if there is a foot of water in the server room.
Gah, ignore this if you're not a native speaker of English, but if you are, you're a fucking moron. What's so hard about correctly congutaing the regular verb "to get"? Is your stupid Blackberry causing some sort of a moron tumor?
Along with many others who have commented, I believe that dicipline is the most important thing to using these products. If you are assigned "Emergency Dudy" as some were at my company (salaried employees), then you should probably keep the thing on. If you don't really need it, go ahead and turn it off. It just feels better to be disconnected for a bit.
I should take my own advice...
As soon as you are asked to come in, ask if they really want someone who has just imbibed two alcoholic drinks to be on the clock.
[speaking with thick rrrrrusian accent] In capitalist USA Blackberries OWN YOU hahahahahrrgh!!!
Maybe it's just that people who work long hours like to have Blackberries?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
I've had a crackberry for a few years and in my view the best feature is the timed off / on!
Mine turns on at 8:30 and off again at 17:00. So am I bothered? No.
If I need to mail or receive somthing in an emergency - I turn it on again. So easy.
I have a blackberry.
I have on call time.
When I am on call, I am available as I can make myself.
When not, I have many other things I do. Have sex with the wife. Stroke my cats. Go sailing.
Blackberries aren't good to answer during sex. Their ringing alarms the cats, and they're useless offshore.
I have made it abundantly plain that when I am out of the office and not on call, that I am not going to bother staying in coverage, near a computer, and sober. The boss seems to cope.
I never turn off my Blackberry.
Mainly because there is some simple functionality in it that means at 7pm it turns off automatically and doesn't wake up until 8am the next morning. Even then, after 6ish I generally exercise some restraint on whether I read the email when it arrives or not (more often than not I don't bother).
This is almost as silly as the "Powerpoint dumbs down presentations" argument that is occasionally trotted out. If people are stupid enough to shackle themselves to their device or produce crappy presentations then that is the fault of them and not the technology.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Just as long as I got overtime for it.
Yet another example of why we need an IT union. Someone's sig says "IT workers are the teamsters of the 21st century."
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
UK figures show that, on average, employees put in an amount of unpaid time over the period of a year that is equivalent to working for free up until Feb 23. That date every year is "Work your proper hours day" when employees are encouraged to do just that. Trade unions usually also take the opportunity to nag employers to stop taking advantage.
y /
http://www.worksmart.org.uk/workyourproperhoursda
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Make up your mind... is it "Blackberries" or "Blackberrys". Using both in the same blurb is just irresponsible.
When your boss calls you as your woman is doing, ummm, things to you. Yeah that killed the moment. THANKS JIM! *grumbles*
My blackberries do not rule my life. They grow wild behind my house and are only pickable in August-September, which means 10 months of the year I don't have to concern myself with them at all. I also only pick when I am at home and the weather is nice and my kids pester me for them. I never pick at night because I don't want to lose an eye or perforate myself if I fall off my "picking-plank". My productivity has however now decreased also in May - June because I planted a strawberry bed with 8 different varieties. The blueberries will take 3 to 4 years before they yield fruit.
http://fromthemorning.blogspot.com/2007/02/i-dont- want-blackberry.html
I'll stick with my paper planner. It doesn't beep at me when I'm relaxing.
[FromTheMorning]
If they have to PAY you for ever single hour you work...they will think twice on interfering with your free time...
I emphatically agree. I think the most important aspect is knowing that you are not in a race for promotion, because you work for someone else (myself, in my case). It removes most of the politics from the equation, of which lots of overtime is really a manifestation.Really -- I'd wager that most people don't work overtime because they love their jobs so much, or because they honestly want to "put one in for the team". They work it because they're trying to keep up appearances -- either that they are responsible enough for that next level position, or that they are "more dedicated" than that other guy, who's competing for this year's bonus/raise/promotion. (In the latter regard, it's sort of a prisoners' dilemma.)
Being a contractor frees you psychologically, as well as physically getting you out the door on time. Now that I've experienced it, I'd be loathe to work any other way.
From TFA, ". . . survey results showed that those who owned a BlackBerry were, in fact, more likely to work long hours than those who didn't. 19 percent of BlackBerry-owning survey respondents reportedly worked more than 50 hours a week, compared to only 11 percent of the general population."
So, tell me, did the crackberry cause them to work more? Perhaps those who already worked more are the ones who adopted crackberries.
To accurately assess whether the BB increases workload, the survey would need to compare BB users to non-BB users doing the same job.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
If I were Mr. Blackberry user, I'd adopt what I call the Dr. Pepper schedule for checking email: 10, 2, and 4. (Some of you youngsters may not remember the old Dr. Pepper labels. See here for an example). Three times a day ought to do it. If it's so important that an immediate response is necessary, they'll call instead of sending an email anyway. Of course, I don't use a cellular phone while at work but for email that policy seems to work fine. As usual, YMMV.
I carry a pager for work. It was a requirement for my position. Since I don't have a backup (that's much help to most people, anyway), I've been "on call" since forever. However, I don't wear the darned thing when I'm at home. It sits on the desk in the den where, if it goes off, I can still hear it. There are times when I don't take it with me. If I want to go out for a 2-3 hour bike ride, the pager stays home. (After all, it's not like I'm going to be much help if someone pages me while I'm 10-15 miles away from home on a bike.)
Now there's one group of folks at work who were issued cellphones in lieu of pagers. They feel like thay can't go to the bathroom without having it with them and turned on. One member of that group was amazed that I a.) didn't have a cellphone for work and that b.) I didn't want one. Why? Well, for one the group with cellphones seem to relish having their little cellular ball and chain. I sincerely believe that they think their only worth to the company is being available 24 hours a day. They also seem to enjoy being in "crisis-mode" much of the time. I guess you look real important when you're putting out a fire while talking on your cell-phone. You absolutely cannot have any sort of productive meeting when these folks are in attendance as they're interrupting the flow of any discussion whenever their farking cellphone goes off and they need to excuse themselves to answer the damned thing. (Or even worse, take the call in the meeting for all to hear.) It's especially bad when they're the ones who called the meeting.
Slight aside: Some years ago, I was working in a bank where one of the senior developers, when needing to make a change to a production task, would send you an email marked "Urgent". (By then, I'd already adopted the 3X/day email checking schedule so a so-called urgent email was considered an oxymoron.) Then, perhaps 10 minutes later, she would leave you a voice mail telling you that she'd sent you an email. If you hadn't responded to her voice mail within a short period, usually less than a typical bathroom break, she'd page you. More often than not, she'd show up at your desk no more then five minutes after sending the page and stand over your shoulder while you copied her vital code changes over to production. The hell of it was that her urgent production change would, nine times out of ten, fail in some spectacular way and she'd be calling you at 11:00 PM to reverse the change and possibly wind up working with the night support crew to do a restore from tape. That just might explain why I have little desire to make myself available electronically 24 hours a day. People abuse that availability. (I thank $DIETY this was before the widespread use of cellular phones.) Systems? If they go down, I still respond but just because some bozo wants to work until the wee hours or all weekend and couldn't be bothered to work out an arrangement, in advance, for any support they might need? Ha! My manager will have a little chat with their manager.
Note where I said "If you're off work, and not supposed to be working".
If you're SUPPOSED to be on-call, or available 24/7, yeah, leave the damn thing on.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Well - there's being on call and there is also responsiblity for dealing with the unexpected on rare occasions. If the organistation is large enough to have 24/7 contact lists to cover everything then it's fair enough - but if it's small enough that a critical flaw in something or an accident will really create chaos on Monday morning if it it not dealt with sooner and you have responsibility for that area then it is best to act responsibly and not cut yourself off without warning for a couple of days. As I tried to point out before - it is also up to anyone with your contact number in this situation to act in a mature manner and not bother you with trivia just becuase they can't get a paticular bit of paperwork done at the last minute instead of having to put in extra time on a working day.
Well, if they are paying you $50/hr for your normal 7am-4pm work schedule,
anything outside of that is triple time - $150/hr.
If you are accepting anything less, your company is getting a free ride at your expense.
Personally I have never found it enjoyable to donate my time and money (one in the same) - to Multi-million dollar transnational corporations.
What is a couple hours of delay worth to your corporation? $1,000 $100,000 ? $1,000,000?
It is so important it needs done right now, than it is so important they can pay top dollar for it too.
Don't worry - they can pay it - so politely demand it.
Or find a better place to work that wont screw you.
You're life is finite. You're time on Earth is limited.
The corporation is 'immortal' - so it should make sure you get well paid to keep it alive.
No grave stone says "If I Only Had Spent More Time In The Office!"
Respect. Get Some.
Again: If you're in an organization that small, it's usually understood that you're on call 24/7 for massive emergencies. Therefore, it in no way violates my notion of "If you're off work, and not supposed to be working".
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!