h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I quite like being a commuter. I like that interval of transition from home to work, and vice versa. Sometimes I wish I worked further a way, so I would have a longer commute. One of the things I like about it is that it's the best opportunity I'll have all day to just give my brain free rein to wander where it will. This can be quite entertaining, especially if you lapse into that state of almost dozing.

Recent ponderings...
1) today was the 98th anniversary of Pearse reading the Proclamation of the Irish Republic during the Easter Rising. A legion of history books and articles will tell you where he did this: "on the steps of the GPO", in Dublin. But the GPO has no steps! It is at street level, and always has been. So where did the "steps of the GPO" meme come from?

2) four poster beds. I designed, in my head, the most amazing four-poster bed. And (half asleep as I was) I genuinely had every intention of building it at the time. I have brilliant fabric I could use for curtains, and also intended building a hidden compartment in the 'ceiling' of the bed.

3) wow. I bet that cyclist was a foreigner! He used his bell to let me know he was behind me! He even waited til the lights change to use the crossing. *And* dismounted to use the pedestrian crossing. He can't be from round these parts.

4) it must be fun to be an oystercatcher and skim through the waves.

5) ooooh, a ferry! Maybe I should just go to Scotland, instead of work.

6) I wonder what date the conference is this year. I wonder if I'll go? I wonder if that librarian's going. She still owes me sixty quid from last year. That should cover a pint or two.

7) that woman's hair is class. I think I'll get a Mohican, and dye it blue.

8) bugger, it's nearly my stop.

I think I might record my commuter thoughts in this thread from now on. I would hate to forget the one that might net me my first Nobel Prize.

Hmmm... commuting here is an altogether different experience.

When we speak of commuting it's in terms of very long drives and some of the worst traffic congestion in the country. The greater Houston metropolitan area is more than 75 miles wide. Typical commutes from the suburbs take at least an hour and a half each way.

And public transport is nearly non existant. While Houston is slowly developing a light rail line, it does not extend beyond the inner city area, mostly between what we call the Medical Center and downtown. There is a more expansive bus network with park and rides locations in most of the suburban areas, they still take hour plus rides and with a couple of transfers, that goes to 2 hours quickly. And this is all still in heavy traffic even with HOV/toll lanes.

In the early 1990's I worked in Houston and lived 35 miles out of town. My commute was at least 50 minutes with light traffic. Today I wouldn't do it. The same commute to day is at least 90 minutes. And traffic is much more stressful. I'd find any available housing within 5 miles of work and bicycle as often as I could.

I use the #CommuterTales thing on Twitter... sometimes more entertaining than others, but I'd love to see your musings.

My commute is just over an hour and a half (depends on how I travel)

At the moment it is:
Car - 10 minutes to my local station
train - 45 minutes from me to Düsseldorf
change to another train - 8 minutes from Düsseldorf main station to the airport station
change to a bus - 7 minutes to the stop near my office then 2 minutes on foot

I have a spiffy season ticket. I have to have 2 actually, one if from my station which lies just outside the area for the trains that I really need, to a station that the train I take doesn't actually stop at 5 minutes down the line

The other part is a plastic credit card affair which can be read by the conductor if they check (a fairly regular occurrence) or on the bus you hold it against a machine which flashes green if it's valid, red if not.

I can travel anywhere within a very large area, any time on any transport (trains, buses, trams and the schwebebahn in Wuppertal). After 7pm and at weekends and on public holidays i can take 1 other adult and up to 2 children (up to age 14) with me. And (the bit I really love) I can also take my bike on any of those forms of transport, which is great in the summer when and I go cycling.

It costs me EUR 180 per month. (plus, huge bonus: my train is a double decker)

What I meant to say is, when I'm studying I use that time to either watch course videos or listen to audios, read the textbooks or do any offline work I can. I used to go by car and was stuck for at least 3 hours a day, time I couldn't use effectively.

So I love my commute. Even more when I'm not studying and am just reading reading reading for 3 hours a day.

Sho, I use twitter, remember. So don't pretend you use that time to study - I know you use that time to call everyone on the train a pack of who eat smelly food and put their feet in stupid places.

Ponderment for the day: European elections. Three seats to be won, four candidates worth voting for. Arguably three, depending on whether I grit my teeth and vote for a party even though they've fielded an unspeakable little shit as a candidate.

*pondering for what use the secret compartment in the four-poster bed is for....* I so want a four poster bed eventually..... one day....

I used to love travelling on train too, though I don't do it as often as I once did (many years ago, I'd be away nearly every weekend, not a massive train trip, an hour and a half or thereabouts, and used to like the just blissing out with headphones on.... which is kinda strange, of course, as there's nothing stopping me doing the same thing, kinda at home,, but one just doesn't ) trains work for me, in this, but oddly buses/coachs just don't

poop - rumbled. In my defence I tweet on the short train and bus-legs of my journey

My commute when I worked at the Drafthouse was one bus, about 10 minutes. Hardly a commute at all really, and I kind of miss a longer one. There was a time, when I lived in the far outer suburbs of London and had to travel to Aldgate. It took me about an hour on the bus, train, and two tube trains. Having so many connections was a bit of a pain but I still enjoyed the journey.

When I lived on the south coast there were people who commuted to and from London every day, a journey that, despite being about four times further, probably took not much longer than my trip from and to the suburbs because the trains were so frequent and fast.

The biggest difference between then and now for those people (apart from the soaring ticket prices) is that back then they'd probably have read a book or a newspaper, tackled the crossword, perhaps written a few notes concerning the coming day's work, or just stared out of the window looking at the scenery. Nowadays though, with smartphones, tablets, laptops, the train journey is just an extension of the work day for many. I think that's a pity, especially on the homeward journey. It's nice to have that buffer between work and home.

When I used to commute it was the other way round Living in South London and travelling to sites around the south. between 1 & 1 1/2 hours is about right.

It always helps if the train had a proper buffet car (sod the Price) rather than the trolley you get today
Morning read Paper, Toasted Bacon Sandwich, Tea contemplate world.
Evening, can of something cold wet and better than 0% but not much.
Put world to rights and chill out before getting home.

Incidentally, here's a picture of the buffer between work and home http://i.imgur.com/MBYgY7q.png

Bit of a gloomy old station that one.

That's Brighton, from the 1983 remake of London to Brighton in Four Minutes.

I thought it looked familiar...

It has changed a lot these days
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Brighton_railway_station_-_Sussex_-_England_-_140804.jpg

How right you are, Gosho. I'll be doing no work on any bus or train. If I still wanted to work, I wouldn't have left the building!

In Sweden, they are trialling a 6-hr working day with no loss of pay, precisely because overworked workers are crap workers, who often do a bad job and make expensive mistakes. Similarly, despite the moaning about the lazy French with their 35-hour week, French workers are among the most productive in the world. For example, see the second graph here - GDP per hour worked, vs hours worked per person: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-hours

Making people miserable even if it leads to a drop in productivity and profit is more to do with Calvinist "misery is good" ethics than with good business practice.

A lot of managers, seem to over-estimate hours needed for aq job... or they're basing it on the hours for the job, being, hours necessary for the job, plus personal phone/internet time, which seems silly... One of the most difficult things in my last job, was creatively filling in my time sheets, as the number of hours I had was over and beyond the work they gave me to do, and I kept requresting more work, only occasionally getting 'leant out' to work with other people/sections at the same firm, which helped with bordum a bit

You're absolutely right, KB. It's a puzzle to me how anyone whose job is to ensure that their business runs efficiently/makes good profits can not understand that squeezing every last drop of work out of people and expecting them to see their job as more important than anything else in their life. How they can fail to understand the lack of trust that employers have instilled in their employees over the centuries since the industrial revolution by exploiting them at every opportunity is also puzzling. As is the current notion that wages should be set according to the price the product can be sold for, rather than factoring a decent living wage into the selling price.

Here's a devil's advocate kind of question though. There was a time, in the early days and decades of the industrial revolution, when people were expected to work twelve hours a day or more, six days a week. Over time the hours were restricted until we got to the accepted working week - 40 hours with weekends off. The the French went down to 35 hours, and now the Swedes are going for a six-hour working day. In what year do you think the working week will shrink to zero?

Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0EthpI4bY8

Shrinking hours a week may be the case for many people, in some parts of the country/world, but certainly not everywhere... A very good friend of mine, at one point, was having three jobs to survive and support his family; nine hours in a bakery, plus evening bar work before going to the bakery, and then fast-food/takeaway delivery work as well, plus taking over child-care of his children, so his other half could go to work part time too... He regularly went a couple days with no sleep, in order to do this, and as its all such low paid work, they could still barely pay the bills I'm always baffled why easier jobs demand higher pay; and I include in such easier jobs, that which I've worked in, which are, basically, no effort, no difficulity and not even physical stuff, yet the harder work, always gets the less pay

There's no reason the working work shouldn't always decrease, but probably never reach zero. As technology increases, it takes less time, resources and effort to do almost everything. Imagine how much effort it would be for me to deliver this message to you in Texas if we lived in 1800. it would take *years*, and probably be prohibitively expensive anyway.

Of course, we need to keep inventing if we want tech to keep advancing and becoming more efficient with natural resources which are finite, so work can't completely stop. But even then, scientific discovery is so much easier now than in 1800, because of the advances that have already been made.

The main stumbling block is that when something takes less labour, it's used to make people "unemployed", rather than reduce everyone's working hours.

As 2legs also says, it's certainly not always a shortening of hours, either. I'm pretty sure (but can't be arsed to search for the figures ) that they are longer on average now in Britain than they were in the 70s or 60s. Especially of you count all the "hidden" hours people work...