Reminders.

People look at their calendars, twitter, LinkedIn, work emails, private emails along with Facebook and their work colleagues and everything confirms how busy they are and how much better, off work wise, they would be somewhere else. People are getting constant reminders via surveys and polls how much is still to be accomplished, how many places they need to be, how many reports to finalise, how many people to see and bosses to impress, all to be successful and happy. All this reminding, is happening via the social universe and every peace of technology with built in reminders via music, vibration, alarm bells and in the case of the new perfume phones the wafting aroma of your favourite scent.

What all these survey reminders indicate, is how little time we have for the important things in life, how miserable we are at work, how under appreciated we have become and how low enthusiasm and engagement are in the work force. With every survey and report showing the divide between that one great job, and every other crappy 9 to 5, sorry 7 to 7, never any time for the kids and why am I here just to make management look good job, it's easy to see a trend. A trend esteemed pollsters like Gallup are hell bent on building entire departments around, while showing how disengaged we are and what should be done about it.

Having been around prior to the noise coming from the reminder bots I have only one comment, nothing has changed. My first after school job, packing groceries, left me scarred by countless lunch room employee tantrums concerning overtime, psychopathic bosses, not enough resources, people having break downs over late deliveries and the bananas being over ripe. There were so many disengaged people working at that store, it was a wonder anything got done, at least that was my 15 year old thinking at the time. Little did I know that this would become part of the working psyche and provide fodder for management consultants for the next 100 years.

What wasn't available in those lunch room dust ups was the ability to broadcast the feelings and comments and as such, employees that were engaged and who didn't frequent the lunch room whistled while they worked. I'm sure they would have been easily infected by the lunch room rabble, which many consider is happening today on a much broader spectrum. People are working just as hard, just as many hours, for just as little pay as before but so much more informed about how much worse off they are. With a 24/7 steam of information, there is little doubt everyone is aware of how miserable they are, even if they haven't been to the office lunch room in years.

Are employees more disengaged today than they used to be 30 or 40 years ago? Are employees struggling more with office politics, lunatic management, flexible work hours or even equitable pay? The social media universe would have us thinking so but is it just a circumstance of the times and technology we use? It's hard to imagine things are worse than when we sent children down the mines or when the retirement age was closer to the with the death rate.

We all have a choice and if you have a high suckability quotient in your job, if your boss is driving you batty, if you are being passed over for lesser lights, if you are constantly removing knives from your back, then change. Change your job, your attitude, change your life but most of all stop listening to others, via social media, via pollster reminders and via the lunch room rat bags, none of whom know anything about you. Lastly, it's a job, it's work, so man up and stop believing everything you read and just get on with it.


PS. I made up the part about the smellavison phone. Not a bad idea though, huh?