A wonderful idea proposed and soon to be Law in France.
The right to ignore the work related communication through email, and other electronic channels.
Someone should have thought about this long ago.
Right to disconnect
Interesting for sure...I definitely would enjoy the euro way of life as it relates to work vs. here....Before anyone goes apeshit, I'm not saying I hate the good ole USA, just that far too much emphasis, time, etc. Is put into being a success professionally vs. having a balance personally... Christ, here we need a law to do this during the work day.....I get inundated with emails daily.....In fact I check my emails first, then my voice messages....Weird, but it's true......Wonder when that transition took place. I have put limits on myself just to be happier, so no social media, rarely do I watch the news or read the paper....A little npr and occasional talk radio, but that's it. When I here people working 50, 60, + hours, that's too much, especially if you have a family.
Kudos to the French!
I used to work with some slugs that ignored work-related emails while AT work.........
When I worked at Boeing,we had a saying,"forget about work til we punch back in"!
It is only possible if the position is related to Government. In private sectors, if your boss send you a text or email best be replied promptly, even if you're snorkeling off the beach of Hawaii on vacation, if, you value your position and wish to climb the corporate ladder. True story, one gal I knew had to answer here boss's email while honeymooning in Hawaii.
While my wife work for the State and I fully understood the mind set of I'm not in unless I punched back in.
Only if your boss thinks it's okay to ignore communication during breaks.
I also talked to a golfer whom worked at the outfit designing landing gears for aircraft. Boeing is one of their clients.
He said he had lasted longer than his counter parts through acquisition and merger because he did what he was asked without complaining. Carrying a smart phone ( back in the days it started with a pager, then laptop , then smart phone ) is vital, He had 3, 2 from work and one personal.
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Cell phones are the Devil's lot. The human was not designed for such.
Like everything in life, abuse the things which should make life easier is common.
I'll name another high tech gadget which has been abused instead of helping. GPS... I don;t know how many auto accidents could have been avoided if the GPS were used as it was designed - an aid instead of 100% replacement for human intelligence.
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I have a work phone. Yes, I am on it on my off hours. That is the price of working I guess.
P.S. Liverpool beat Man City today. GREAT GAME!!!!!
I've been landline free for going on 7 years now. No more interrupted dinners due to unsolicited telemarketers, not to mention the monthly service fee I'm no longer forking over.
The only area where cellphone use concerns me is while driving. I'm sure there is enough technology available to disable cellphone communications while a vehicle is moving, and I'd love to see that technology become standard.
Of course... there are other nuisances I've learned to live with. I don't get bent out of shape like I used to when the lady in the checkout line is talking to someone on her cellphone, or the rare instance when a cellphone might ring in a movie theater. I think that (at least in my everyday travels and experiences) the cellphone etiquette has improved a lot over the past few years.
I'm also able to text old friends over in England and maintain contact with them on occasion without having to email or spend money to call. It's nice that I can FaceTime with my daughter in the evenings some weeks when I'm missing her... or that I can put in an address on my iPhone GPS and get to where I need to go without printing directions off the internet or having to purchase an aftermarket GPS system. And the bluetooth/handsfree feature enables me to plug in the music I want to listen to, instead of listening to the garbage coming out of the radio speakers via FM and listening to endless stupid commercials.
And I can do those things while being responsible, be it standing in a line at a grocery or behind the wheel of a moving vehicle.
Discourteous and disrespectful people will always be discourteous and disrespectful, with or without a mobile phone glued to their ears. Or, for that matter, social media and a keyboard. Same concept.
Some people just don't deserve the air they breath, regardless of whatever technology they're abusing.
Laws or no laws when I was in business (working for others) they would be ape shit if I did not take their Emails and calls at all times. Same as I would be for those that worked for me.
Fortunately I went into business for myself before the age of 24/7 communication such as cell phones, Email, etc. so landlines were all I had to deal with.
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PA-PLAYA I've been landline free for going on 7 years now. No more interrupted dinners due to unsolicited telemarketers, not to mention the monthly service fee I'm no longer forking over.
The spam calling will invade your cell line, no safe haven there.
I kept the lane line ( not the digital land land served by the cellular means ) for one reason only, another means of reaching out if I need to. Cell service will go down with power outage , and not really able to handle the peak usage. During the 2001 Nisqually earthquake here a 6.3 magnitude, fortunately the center was deep under the earth, still caused some damage and rattled the buildings.
Wife could not get to my cell until hours later because all the lines either were damaged or crashed from the influx of usage.
Worst inventions ever...cell phone and email. At work I'm on the road and I ask these idiots I work with to call me or text me....They completely ignore me and reply through email. Often times I'm runnin and gunnin...no time to log into email and at the end of a 14 hour day I'm not going to either. Then they wonder why I don't anser the emails...once again I tell them to call or text....another email reply. They are afraid to respond one on one....They want to copy the word with email. I get inundated with shit.
They can copy ( c.c. ) the whole office with text also. You'll need to teach them.
Best is not to reply the email until the next day and they'll call you should they have emergency. People , are not that stupid, cunning maybe. They are already a few steps ahead of you because they did not want a reply right away from you.
No, they ARE that stupid. A lot if times it's an order for a customer they get for the next day. Needless to say because of their stupidity the customer doesn't get the order.
I tell them this...They don't learn. You can't fix stupid.
You should see them make a mess out of a group text.. it ends up being Abbott and Costello's " who's on first" bit.
Disconnecting...we would get SO much more work done.
Gawd, I don't believe there are those so left behind.... did you hire mentally challenged to work under you ?
Sales and marketing is not order taking, only those working smart and willing to learn could survive.
They must be playing you to have you believe that they are dumber than they are, to be able to get away with what they want.
Stupid like a fox ?
Bill...your first line is spot on seriously. I hate to say it but a couple if them have even come out and said " you know, my elevator doesn't go all the way to the top...". We now only require a GED...and 90% of the applicants don't have one.
Like you said sales and marketing should be out selling. A friend of mine owns a large paper company and he is amazed that our company thinks nothing of having the sales people out for a month driving delivery trucks. He says if someone is out they have a warehouse person make the deliveries. He wants his salespeople out selling.
Makes sense to me...
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I live in France and worked for 35 years for the French Space Agency. I'm still doing part-time consultancy.
When I started working here back in the 70's, we worked from punch-in to punch-out. That was it.
The lunch break, was just that. We usually went to eat as a team. If someone started talking shop at the table, he/she was penalized to pay a bottle of wine.
The official work-week is 35 hours (32 for civil servants). This being said, guys in private companies work 40-50 hour weeks without extra pay.
Nowadays, companies provide laptops and cellphones to employees knowing they will be available 24/7/365. This disrupts family/personal life as there is a subtle and implicit obligation to respond to e-mail and texts. It can, in certain cases, run into harassment.
The law, as many others, will be hard to enforce but, it does exist and it should help protect prime-time with the family.
Typhoon Makes sense to me...
I'll tell you this, my first job out of school was a door to door marketing /sales. Not selling house hold goods, big copier and desktop computer networking Was given 1/3 of financial district in the City of San Francisco plus 1/3 of the South Bay Industrial Parks. My job was to canvasing the area to visit every businesses to introduce myself to existing and potential customers. This is way before the internet time, getting your name out there is vital to expand the business Dressed up in suits and tie hitting the pavement like the Big Blue sales force ( dark blue preferred and a portfolio folder, wingtip leather shoes ).
Many of my family members thought I would not last 3 months at this job.... I had became one of the top members in the sales team in about a year, simply because I really hit the doors like it was supposed to It was an eye opening experience and I learned a ton of how to deal with people in general. I remembered at the Union Square during lunch hours there were so many beautiful women walking around. Just have to be careful try to identify their gender first. The best experience was cold calling a lingerie manufacturer/designer near the International District, while they were having a showing for their clients. Never seen so many beautiful ladies wearing underwear walking around.