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

Only 1 day into the new working year and already the work is piling up like sand dunes!

I have now changed to a job I couldn't give a hoot for, for a guy I really can't take seriously. I work from 8 to 12 and have no compunctions about switching off at 5 to 12 (If I smoked I would probably have one last one) and going.

It's not very rewarding that way, though.

Duncan, are you advocating POOTing everyday, or just more often than not ?
I sometimes need to get something finished (need as in my employer expects), but mostly I manage getting away within a few minutes of my right time.
I must admit, on those few occasions I end up going out the door a couple of minutes early, I feel conspicuous and guilty.
The worst thing that happens to me is the phone rings just as I've closed my PC down.

Well, as most self help groups say: the first step is to recognise you have a problem .
What annoys me is that every project I've ever worked on has demanded some overtime. I once had to work threough th enight because I'd booked a day off for my Birthday - what's the sense in that? The same seems to be true everywhere. If you add it up - if 45 people always leave 10 minutes late then they are doing the work of one extra person.
And when was the last time you took your full lunch entitlement?

Being lazy and inconsiderate for my fellow man, I always leave at 5:30. Unfortunately, that leaves me a twenty minute wait at the train station, trying to read my book in the cold. I am thinking of giving up on my lifetime taboo about drinking alone and start going to the pub to wait.

Well, sometimes you gotta go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came...

It's 19:20 on a Friday evening and I'm not even in the same country as my home

A great pity. I've been very good on POOTing in the last while, and my workrate has suffered equivalently

I suspect it is easier to POOT when no aircraft are involved...I was on the 07:10 this morning and my workrate is suffering accordingly

(O God, TC is back from holiday.)

Congratulations Munchkin!
Commiserations Duncan!

BTW a quite high up chappie where I used to work suddenly started pooting when his wife's son (a great guy of about 23 whom we all loved - he came to visit his stepfather occasionally at the office) .. committed suicide. This so finished off his wife that he just dropped everything and went home at 5 pm. Somehow it worked out.

When I think of the nights I worked (for no extra pay) just to keep to some silly time schedule I'd set myself. (Well - almost, .. sort of on a par with the wanting a day off for your birthday sort of thing).... And what is the point of it all now? The office was completely dissolved and no one cares a sod about it. Worse still was the case of a little old fella, very charming, dignified and eloquent, whose life was devoted to doing the filing in our Hamburg office. He had just left (he was a pensioner anyway, doing this a few hours a week) when the Hamburg office was closed down and the entire archive went into the shredder.

As to my own - and possibly your - situation: Some of the time could have been saved by doing jobs which tend to build up as they occur. (at home it's the ironing, at work it's keeping up a database or doing the filing *despite my entry on that thrilling subject!!* ) This would cost probably 15 - 30 mins a day. Instead of having to take a whole day to catch up on the backlog.

In your case, Duncan, I have very little idea of what you do and probably would have little concept of it. But could you use a secretary or dogsbody? Are you leaving little things that someone else could really do? Or worse still, are you doing them and they're eating into your day? Do you try and allocate your work so that you do tedious little jobs which require less concentration at your low period and high-power stuff when you are running on all cylinders. Or whichever suits you. Your system (physiological) has some kind of a routine. Do you take a lunch break to regenerate? Can you afford to turn down jobs? You've probably thought of all that, but I thought I'd bring these points up for you,... just trying to help...

And : cheer up. You've probably done more than you think. We tend to keep a list in our heads of all the things we've got to do. Instead of patting ourselves on the back about the projects we have completed. And how about devoting a day or a half day to just ticking off all the little jobs that are clogging up your "to do" list - be it in your head or wherever. *Note to self: must try that!*

Boy have I missed this place. I'll never go on holiday again!

I - on the other hand - will be going on holiday in just over a months time, which is at least in part responsible for the build up of work before then. I am very much looking forward to it particularily because where I am going nobody can get in touch so I will be able to relax totally.
This week my mum is in Dublin - which means that my entire family except for me will probably be eating in my favoruite pub etc. this evening
Still - gives me an excuse to do the same next weekend

Go and join them now. That is an order. And give my love to your mum

And I'm on holiday at the end of this week
Actually, if I'd not POOTed yesterday, but done an extra half hour, which I had contemplated, I would have found the error, and then spent a further hour fixing it last night. As it was, I found it this morning, when I felt much more able to handle it. So that all worked out nicely
Oh, and of course you have missed this place, we are all great and I have no idea how I will survive the coming two weeks.

Recently the weather has been helping me POOT, because it is no fun at all cycling home in a blizzard so I tend to get going before it gets dark. Tonight, however, we're off to a pub quiz so I'm treating myself to a taxi home.

Toatl POOT failure today - and probably at least another hour to go

I can feel with you. It hasn't changed for me. There was a job in the paper on Saturday which sounds more like set hours. The Tourist Information office in the next town. That would be nice.

It is all so unfair - those who do work are working double hours and the rest of the population is desperately looking for jobs. In Germany the situation is going from bad to worse. The union just lost the fight for the 35 hour week. In fact the State have even mentioned putting the working age up to 70.

My husband is in one of the Parish Committees and every single one of the other committee members averages a 10-hour day.

You have reminded me of POOTing. Perhaps if I do it I'll get just as much work done and still have more time at home.

Anyway, if today is just an exception for you, you're doing OK......

I have been forcing the POOT thing on account of other commitments (football and running) but in general the work is mad.

I thought there wasn't any work in your line in Dublin - obviously (in typical mother fashion; beware of this TC) I've latched onto the wrong thing to have low level worries about, yet again.
A colleague died yesterday. Has given us all furiously to think about work/life priorities and where the high level worries should be.

I heard, too, on the grape vine that an ex colleague had died. And my uncle died on Friday.

As for over-mothering, I do try and worry only about the serious things. Not even bad marks at school really get me hot under the collar - I'm pretty sure things will work out in the end.