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

This is an excellent PBS broadcast-

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/digitalnation/view/

but my thread title is a canard, a ruse, a related but indirectly directed label.

Gentle reader, my parent company is threatening to give me a Blackberry. *Give* is perhaps the word that bears the unkindest cut of all. A Blackberry would in effect make me a digital slave, at their beck and call at all times. I am in fact a salaried employee with set hours of employment, able to freelance occasionally.

My response? *I have a cell phone that you have provided, I leave it on all day, every day I work for you. If you give me an emailable, textable, net savvy digital studded iron neck collar, I will turn it off when I am not working. Including my meal breaks. Bite me.*

Their response has not been encouraging. Luckily the contract I have with them is almost 11 years old and has yet to be renegotiated. Because of an almost inevitable guarantee of an increase in pay rate, the parent company has put off negotiations indefinitely.

What say you?

If it were me I owuld just take the blackberry and as you say turn it off when not working. Not loike they can do anything about it if your contract is as you describe.

FB

Another example of the process familar to all Marxists whereby Capitalism compels the Bourgeoisie are compelled to extract ever more labour at a cheaper price from the Proletariat. To the barricades, comrades! We have nothing to lose but our 3G connections.

Seriously, though - attidudes differ in different countries. The French actively enforce the EU Working Hours Directive (because it creates jobs) wheras in the UK woprkers - especially contract workers - are routinely expected to 'opt out'. In Korea, they're currently enforcing a 'Lights Out' policy in offices so that over-worked employees are forced to go home to their families. And an Italian colleague was horrified by the concept of lunchtime sandwiches at the desk. They'd go to a restaurant every day. Come to think of it - in my first job we had proper tea breaks in the canteen.

Sometimes we forget - Modern Life doesn't have to be this way.

(Incidentally - rundon'twalk to the Ray Bradbury story 'The Murderer' - I think it's in his 'Golden Apples of the Sun' collection wherein a guy gets so fed up at being constantly in touch that he goes postal and starts trashing communication devices. Quite prescient. I think it was written in the 50's.)

First sentence mangled - I changed a passive to an active.

EtB, I love mangling sentences, especially when like German there are sentences you dangle little bits off the end of.
I remember that story, funny how SF can get flying cars so wrong but other things are right on the money. I think I read that just about the year that our aged English Lit prof (himself a real, live ex-Indian Army soldier) told us that modern automation would mean we should prepare for lots and lots of free leisure time by middle age. Perhaps he was referring to homelessness?

FB, since the little face-to-face no one has mentioned the aforementioned mention. I would consider taking the thing only if I fouled it up somehow (oh, so innocently).
I'm afraid I'm a relic of a bygone era where people were slowly apprenticed, starting at a barely living wage and ending many, many years later as a master of craft. (No, not plumbing but cinematography and photography)- look at those that craft fine films and documentaries, most of the masters are retired but some still shine through. I'm no Master but at the very least I understand the process.
Now they are looking for *Multiskillers* who are, as the saying still goes- Jack of all trades and Masters of none. It's simple enough, would you enjoy a film hosted, written and produced by Sir Richard Attenborough or by Britney Spears? Sadly oh too many are choosing the later even though the *multitasking* involved is just the complete creative process.

I will continue to give my all to my work. But only in work hours for others, my private time and creations are my own.

I now have the damn thing but as promised I turn it off the second I am not being paid. I'm not sure if it's my menacing manner or my six foot one frame but no one has dared push the matter and my land line phone and home email have copies of everything I *must* respond to in my own time. Which I don't. Respond to, that is. Ha.

I know practically nothing about the blackberry - but if it's as sophisticated as it ought to be, can you not somehow turn it against the powers that be instead of just turning it off? I mean oughtn't there be a way to set it up to be annoying to others without needing any supervision from you?

It might require reading the manual though

Wait a teenager might be of help, if there's one about.

Good luck with it

I think I may have a solution (at least it's been working for well over a week now). Recording with sound? Turn it off. Driving to and from locations? Turn it off. In a restaurant? Turn it off. On my own time? Turn it off.

The first is a necessity, the second the law and the third common curtesy. The fourth remains my prerogative.