You see, for me, it has always been about the people more than the computers. The computers are merely tools to be used by the people. And the business users of our system recognized me for that ability, and therefore came to depend on me.
One phrase that my boss used more than once in an annual employee review was this: “works with a sense of urgency”. I suspect that was one of those popular corp-speak phrases that managers at this large company sprinkled across the employee reviews for those of us worker bees who were able to get the job done without a lot of fanfare or foolishness.
When the company made its decision in late 2007 to outsource the jobs of hundreds of us worker bees, the whole game changed. And it didn’t just change for that company at that time. No, those of us remaining at work until early ‘08 to train the foreign contract firm’s employees had barely time to catch our collective breath – and perhaps snag another job – before the worst recession of our lifetimes hit.
After failing to make myself more professionally relevant in newer technology skills, I opted to move to a land far away and do something completely different with my life. When I failed at that, I opted to move back here and try to get back into the old grind.
What a shock to move back from a small southern town to a large metropolitan area. I had no idea how different my brain had become during that two years and eight months away. To me, everything here seemed so fast, so angry, so impersonal. This was not my old home town. Where did it go?
I’ve been alive long enough to learn that when everything around me seems completely different than it had been before some event took place, the change has actually been in my own brain, not so much in everything around me.
But to be fair, the “smart” phone became a thing while I was running an accidentally non-profit lodging establishment. It was a thing that changed everything.
As compared with my computer career – where telephones and pagers frequently sounded in the middle of a night’s deep sleep to inform me that my services were required on the job – now it seemed that anyone with any job of serious nature was on 24/7/365 call. In 2012, I actually met two former coworkers for lunch, and not only did they not have a lot of time to linger and chat, they actually each placed multiple electronic devices next to their place settings on the table when we all sat down.
We now fast forward to my actually getting a job here in September of 2014. No, it’s not a job of a serious nature. It’s a low paid clerical job that includes health insurance and seems to be a job from which I neither get fired nor quit. And that’s why I’m still there. Inertia is a strong force in life at my age.
One of my coworkers, also underpaid considering his prior career as an engineer, gets a variety of “urgent” text messages from our boss, who is a woman of my same age group.
This coworker is a Millennial who is a father of a baby girl, and his personality type is like mine – introverted yet fascinated by other people’s behavior. He doesn’t believe that moving faster gets the job done any better. He and I are both fans of the plan, which would be the opposite managerial philosophy of “shoot water on the flame burning highest NOW” – Management By Crisis – which is espoused by the boss and several of her employees.
The boss actually told this young man more than once that he does not work with a sense of urgency. She sees his work style as one of procrastination, rather than one of thoughtful planning and attempting to avert crises before they happen.
My theory is that the everything-everywhere availability of so much communication, especially since smartphones came into being, has caused people to feel that they are not doing their best work unless they are rushing around. There’s a certain adrenaline hit that comes from being so busy you can’t take breaks. It’s a sense of being needed, and everyone needs to feel needed.
This is amped up by the current coffee culture (and I refuse to name that expensive brand that tries to put all others out of business) that pervades my office and probably most others, especially in the morning. My workplace is filled with young people racing around like they’re on some kind of steroids most days.
Is it any wonder there are so many “near misses” in traffic on my commute path, and lots of tragic or fatal not-misses featured in every traffic report in this town at start and end of day?
Is it more important to pay deep attention to what you’re doing in the moment? Well, when you’re over a certain age, it definitely can be a life or death matter when it involves directing a piece of heavy machinery in which you are contained on a road with other such machinery. Those of us who are painfully aware of our own impaired vision and slowed reflexes tend to be careful enough for everyone else (creating our own anxiety).
It is my opinion that a sense of urgency in my life should be reserved for things that really matter: my family and loved ones, including myself. Computers can create a sense of false urgency that is addictive, but at some point everyone needs to decide what his/her priorities really are, and be more true to that than to any boss or device.
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