Slashdot Mirror
How the Smartphone Killed the Three-day Weekend
An anonymous reader writes "As we in the U.S. settle in for Memorial Day weekend, this article points out how our cultural addiction to technology is making it less of a vacation than it used to be. 'The average smartphone user checks his or her device 150 times per day, or about once every six minutes. Meanwhile, government data from 2011 says 35 percent of us work on weekends, and those who do average five hours of labor, often without compensation — or even a thank you. The other 65 percent were probably too busy to answer surveyors' questions.' Even for those of us who don't have any work to do over the weekend, we'll probably end up reading all of our work-related emails as they roll in, and take time out of our day to think about what's going on — to the detriment of our weekend activities: 'A study at the University of California, San Francisco, found that new experiences fail to become long-term memories unless brains have downtime for review.' I imagine it's even worse for your average Slashdotter, who's likely plugged in to more technology at home and at work. How can we make our employers understand that downtime needs to remain downtime? 'It took labor unions 100 years to fight for nights and weekends off, some say, while smartphones took them away in about three years.'"
What took away the three day weekends is having unreasonable deadlines... and wanting to keep a job.
Has nothing to do with a smartphone.
I dunno what the deal is with people and this crap.
You do it to yourself.
Yes, I have a cell phone, but when I'm off work and not scheduled to work again for awhile, I do NOT answer any calls that I do not recognize for one thing. And those I do recognize, if it is anything but personal related, it goes straight to voice mail. I will check that at my leisure.
I don't do work on MY time. The only reason I do work in the first place, is to earn enough money to live the lifestyle I want, and I do that on my free time. It wouldn't make sense to work all days....or I'd not be able to enjoy my 'toys' and other things money enables me to get.
If you answer the phone for work or are a slave to work...then it is YOUR fault.
You *do* know that most modern phones have voicemail don't you? USE IT.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
That's what unions are for.
If you do it alone, nobody will notice. You have to unionize. Read some history.
These people (including your CEO) are fundamentally incompetent. Vacations were not established to do the workers any good. They were established because people with adequate vacations make less mistakes, get sick less often, have better ideas and higher productivity, etc. and that pays off financially. Henry Ford, among others, realized this, and he was definitely not pro-worker in any sense. But he valued his own profits and sought to maximize them. Reasonable working hours and vacations are part of that maximization process. Your CEO is costing your company a lot of money. Any senior manager that does not know this is incompetent and should be removed as the amateur he is.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
> If you answer the phone for work or are a slave to work...then it is YOUR fault.
Sorta. I've had managers with these habits, and they expect me to keep up with them. When I don't, I'm "not a team player" and "the reason why this project failed" and "up for another performance review."
Not answering the phone one weekend was the reason given as to why I was the only person on my team who did not get a cost-of-living pay raise. It was unreasonable, and petty, and it was the stated reason.
So, when you say "YOU do this to YOURSELF," I gotta respond "sure, but the alternative is for someone else to punish me for not doing it."
You can retrain your boss. It starts with turning off all notifications on all electronic communication means - IM, Email, Texts, etc. If they don't notify you, they don't interrupt your day. These actions change your day from being interrupt driven to actually being productive. I check email 3-4 times a day during working hours, or after every meeting, since I'm already interrupted. Yes, occasionally I'm late to the meeting that was scheduled 23 min ago, so what? If it wasn't important enough to tell you about, it's not that important. This also trains people to stop reacting to everything and to think their personal small emergency deserves immediate attention from everyone.
This approach serves me well, and makes my work day manageable. It also has set expectations of "work" time and "timely" responses. Email is not instant. Neither is Text nor IM. Even phone calls aren't always immediate. It's a good lesson to relearn.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Yeah unions are great. That steel industry sure is kicking ass and the cost/quality of American cars can't be beat!
The Germans and Japanese don't seem to have any trouble building competitive cars with union labor. So either American unions are considerably worse than their counterparts in other countries, or the problem lies somewhere else. The Big Three haven't exactly had brilliant management. In fact, their management has traditionally been crappy and shortsighted.
German workers get paid much more than American workers and even have representation on corporate boards. Yet manufacturing in Germany is thriving and the quality of their goods is among the best in the world.