‘Working’ in your pyjamas may just contain the angst

IWAS brought up in the understanding that a day should be divided into three equal parts – eight hours for working, eight hours for sleeping and eight hours for leisure. I still think that comes close to the ideal division of time, but it is seldom possible to achieve this in today’s rather artificial world.

Most city people spend about four hours a day travelling to and from work for a start. Is this to be included in our work or leisure allocation?

Then there’s the matter of the ideal eight hours of sleep. I know hardly anybody who manages to achieve that. Working mothers stay up half the night preparing their children’s school lunches, getting their uniforms and books ready, making sure their homework has been done and generally setting up everything for an early start to the next day. That’s after preparing the family supper, of course. Meanwhile the kids stay up all night playing computer games.

Dad comes home late after his commuter train has been held up by cable thieves and the taxi drivers are on strike again. He’s too angry to communicate civilly with any of his family.

Everybody spends long hours staring at computer screens, either for work or entertainment or communicating with friends.

What should be eight hours of relaxing leisure with the family often turns into eight hours of frantic panic in preparation for the next day.

We all end up grumpy and ready to growl at each other.

Can anybody be surprised at the amount of road rage and general anger we see in our cities? Maybe some of those murders that make daily headlines are really the result of irritation and anger at the way the world in general is treating us.

One solution would be to encourage more companies to allow their employees to work from home. With modern electronic communications there are actually not many jobs that can’t be done sitting at a computer at home. Think of the traffic congestion that would prevent, and the freed-up parking spaces in the city.

It’s a nice thought, but it depends, of course, on our working population having a real “work ethic”.

What would happen in practice is that people would simply stay at home, log on to their work computer and then go off to weed the garden or walk the dog.

We already have about the lowest productivity rate in the world – and that is with the boss watching. Imagine how little work would get done if nobody was looking.

Maybe it’s time for a new allocation of time: Fours hours of travel, four hours of screen time, four hours of family time, six hours of work and six hours of sleep, (if you’re lucky).

And if it’s Cape Town, only three hours of work on Fridays. That’s the rule in the Mother City.

Last Laugh

Jones was a new member of staff and he sauntered into the office half an hour late. The office manager rounded on him furiously.

“Look here, Jones,” he shouted, “that’s the third time this week you’ve arrived at work late. Don’t you know what time we start work in this company?”

“No, I haven’t a clue, sir,” came the reply, “by the time I arrive here they’re all already hard at it.”