Do you remember boredom?

When you couldn’t think of ANYTHING to do!

When the day dragged past oh so slowly.

No. Not really anymore. Whatever happened to it?

I do accept there are undoubtedly millions of people in tedious jobs for whom boredom would be better than the feeling of inadequacy in their own future that these sort of jobs engender, but

Maybe it’s just me but I remember all the forecasts from years and years ago that said we would get more and more leisure time as automation replaced all our jobs.

Well that’s really happened, hasn’t it?

I always seem to have tasks left at the end of the day and my hobbies are frequently neglected and running months or even years in arrears…

So what went wrong?

I hate to say this but, with the benefit of hindsight and a rather large bucket of cynicism, it was never really going to happen, was it?

For a start how would you PAY people to do less for more money? Where’s the source of the income to be distributed? Just think of the outcry from the more right wing tabloids if we were to pay people to do nothing. Especially if those people being paid were poor people in the first place. What had they ever done to DESERVE such treatment? We all know the reason poor people are poor is that they’re too lazy to get a “real job”, don’t we? How could they be trusted not to spend it all on booze and fags and even less appropriate vices?

Or was it only ever the middle classes this would have benefited?

The top echelon of our society already do bugger all in the main and, if studies are to be believed, have squirreled away all the spare dosh in offshore islands to save paying tax like “normal” people have to. So what incentive was there there to encourage a bit of sharing? Wasn’t it our previous chancellor who was reported to have said “we’re all in it together” or was it his chum the previous prime minister?

I presume that’s why poor people have got poorer over the last decade while the well off have continued to be well off – or even better off…

I also remember the cult of busy-ness that seems to have pervaded industry and the professions over my lifetime in work. I look back in faint bemusement to the early days of the bosses getting in mid-morning, buggering off for a long lunch and copping off mid-afternoon for a pint and/or a game of golf! Then there was, at least, a sense of aspiration to get sufficiently up the greasy pole so you could share in the benefits.

Somewhere along the line it all went wrong and we started importing the American idea of working all the hours you could and looking down on people who had a 9 to 5 lifestyle. The effect of this cult was to promote the ability of looking busy whether one was or was not. No measure of efficiency there. If you could or DID do it quickly it was obvious you weren’t trying hard enough! What total bo11ocks.

I WELL remember one of my former partners at this point. Don’t know where he is but I want to thank him for putting me in a place where I decided going it alone was better than putting up with his rubbish. Me, still angry after fifteen years? Surely not…

And we then got rid of all the skilled admin jobs. I’m old enough to remember all the statutory accounts  being “typed” (for younger readers, like word processing but if you got it wrong, you tore it up and started again) by a very skilled individual. I can also remember what sort of reception you got if you made a mistake and you had to ask her to amend it. Good way of promoting accuracy. Definitely.

Now I’m my own typist/word processing clerk albeit I’ve finally stopped being my own PA and Louisa does a much better job than I ever did. I now have fun conversations with Lorraine along the lines of “what you doing tomorrow? Dunno, I’ve not seen what appointments Louisa has sorted” and the like.

So where did boredom go? Well, just think about how many hours you put in because you need to look like you’re busy, just think about doing one’s own word processing, think about the number of unnecessary emails you’re copied into by people protecting their own backsides and the ones you send yourself, think about the hundreds of spam and otherwise unwanted emails, think about the number of software updates that cause you to have to relearn your business life, think about the Candy Crush and the like games you play and keeping up-to-date with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram and it’s a (insert own expletive) wonder we’ve still got time to sleep, let alone get bored.

Sigh…

I’m going to take a few minutes off for a swift hand of Mah Jong before the next income tax return.