It has become impossible to do anything without interruption. There's always something that comes along when you're in the middle of something else, demands your attention and distracts you from the task at hand. This must be stopped.
Think about it. You're sitting at the computer deeply engrossed in your work (of course it would be totally unlike you to be doing personal stuff during office hours and on the company's machine, right?) First thing you know, there's a "live update" or some such that wants you to drop what you're doing and restart the computer.
(Is there such a thing as a "dead update" or maybe a pre-recorded update? Probably not.)
You're getting dinner ready. A kid comes in with a scraped knee.
You're sitting down to dinner and the phone rings and it's a telemarketer who hasn't read the latest "Do Not Call" list that you thought you were on.
You get to the best part of the TV movie and at just that moment, three fire trucks, a police car and an ambulance, sirens screaming, and the One Train pass your window simultaneously. Or the power goes out.
Three ancient drivers are driving 30 in a 65 zone, blocking all the lanes. Don't bother honking. They can't hear you, anyway.
Everything is interrupted. One nut case of a boss thought he had a system figured out. He put a traffic light over his office door. Green meant he wasn't doing anything -- or wasn't pretending to do anything, and you could walk in. Orange meant he was occupied but not with anything important, so knock and come in, but "it better be for a good reason." And red meant stay out.
Did it work? No way to tell. Probably he had fewer interruptions in his day than you do in yours.
We were all kind of hoping he'd put an electrified fence around his office and on leaving for the day, forget to turn it off when he returned the next morning. No such luck.
That was decades ago, and the idea seems not to have caught on. But the office traffic light points out that this is not a new problem, just one that's escalating. Or maybe it's not an escalation, just a "surge."
Shrapnel:
--The Oscar shows often run overtime because of long boring speeches of long-boring people, so the Academy of Movies wants to cut some “minor awards” from the live broadcast. This has sparked a revolt by “above the line” bigwig millionaire stars and directors who want the below the line awards to be seen. It’s a smart director who sticks up for “the help,” like editors and hair and makeup types because they can make or break a film.
--Bezos to Queens: Drop Dead. If you don’t knuckle under to Amazon, we’ll take our mitt and bat and go home. Queens to Bezos: don’t let the door slap your butt on the way out.
Grapeshot:
-Jeffy, when it comes to girlfriends, think Spitzer, not Wiener.
I'm Wes Richards. My opinions are my own, but you're welcome to them.®
Correspondence to wesrichards@gmail.com
©WJR 2019
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