Thursday, June 01, 2006

What constitutes work?

A question apropos the DPM's croquet. Homing from work is a clever little phrase to sum up all the stuff that workers, especially those in offices, do on company time that isn't really work. Booking a holiday, ringing the gas man, sending personal e-mails, blogging and surfing for pleasure; those sorts of things. Adding in talking about football, cars, the price of fish or baby clothes and all that type of inconsequential time-passing; many people probably only manage a couple of hours real work a day.

Would we be as outraged by a photo of a Daily Mail employee playing solitaire on his computer as they would like us to be about one of Mr Prescott playing croquet? Answers on a postcard please (or a comment would be nice).

6 Comments:

At 09:22, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I think I read some research that said that switching between work and play windows on a computer actually makes the work better, but I read this on an internet message board so it may just have been an excuse! Though it does feel like there is a difference between being in the office and occasionally surfing the net or playing the odd game of solitaire and bunking off altogether to play in the sunshine. (Not that I ever played croquet when I should have been revising. Though my exams were somewhat less important in the grand scheme of things than, say, helping to run the country.) Like I said before, I think the furore over John Prescott is mostly to do with residual anger over the fact that he lost his job but kept his salary (which, incidentally, is more than eight times what mine is).

 
At 09:37, Blogger Hughes Views said...

Welcome postpunkunkle - they don't like it up 'em as Corp. Jones might have put it.

Jenni - work hard and one day you might have a salary as large as Mr P's which is incidentally about a tenth of the average CEO's remuneration. Don't knock people being retained but losing their departments, they bring valuable experience to an organisation. Well that was my excuse for the last three years of my 'real' career....

 
At 09:47, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Heh, fair enough. I've thought of a slightly better analogy now though - it's the difference between a schoolchild daydreaming or passing notes in a lesson (not ideal but she'll still probably pick something up) and not turning up to school at all 'cos it's a nice sunny day.

 
At 23:07, Blogger Hughes Views said...

Beware of analogies - they can lead one to some very peculiar conclusions....

 
At 12:00, Anonymous Anonymous said...

The DMp is elected, in two senses, so I think that's why people were ticked off. People are happy to have the Daily Mail waste their money on lazy journos, but not happy to have their taxes wasted on lazy elected representatives. We pay, he plays!

 
At 12:01, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm sure I meant DPM.. Silly keyboard..

 

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