Posted 7:29 PM by Anonymous

Clockwatching

Clockwatching is the fine art of trying to appear busy at work without really being busy while watching the clock for the earliest possible opportunity to escape. I don't actually find myself practicing this art very much, but today was one of those days. Since I work in consulting I'm usually trying to meet unreasonable requirements on an unreasonable time table, thus the typical 12+ hour days. Today I got to see what its like to be a regular 8 to 5'er. I strolled in, worked a little bit took frequent breaks, kept some documents open to easily switch to in case someone walked by since I was surfing the internet. It was refreshing, but I couldn't do it all the time; my type A personality wouldn't allow it.

That brings me to my question. What did people do before they had the internet to occupy their time? The internet itself is a fairly recent phenomena but having information available in the sense it is today is even more recent. I would venture to say that there were not any web sites worth frequenting until about 1996 or so, maybe later. So what did all of those people with office jobs or administrative jobs do all day? Our workload most certainly has not changed from 10 or 15 years ago. People still were idle for portions of the day at work. So what did they do, count the dots on the ceiling? I think its amazing people made it through the day because lets face it, plenty of jobs are boring and the only thing saving most people from complete insanity is the internet.