Technology is nice. I do, after all, have a blog. And to wash my clothes, all I have to do is throw them in the washing machine, add some soap and push a few buttons. Pretty effortless compared to the few times that I have washed clothes, by hand, in a bathtub. (Washing this way is not so bad. Wringing the excess water from the clothes, however, is the pits). Having a freezer to keep a year's worth of venison and chicken in is pretty nice too. And when my dishwasher takes care of the majority of the dirty dishes for me, day after day, I really appreciate that.
So I'm not totally anti-technology. I am, however, getting rather fed up with how technology lets things intrude on our personal lives.
DH's employer issued him a smart phone a handful of years ago. The idea was, for their employees who are required to be out of the office frequently on work-related travel (in DH's case, development and testing trips for future model cars), a smart phone would make work easier. From pretty much anywhere on the road, they can communicate with everyone back in the 'office' that they need to be in touch with on a daily basis in order to keep the program rolling in a timely fashion. They can get texts, they can read and send emails, they can send documents back and forth without having to be seated at a desk in a permanent location. They can get test data without actually having to be present for 100% of the tests. And with the hands-free feature in the cars, they can even 'attend' meetings that are happening hundreds of miles and a few time zones away all while they are driving, testing, developing on work related trips. Efficient. Cost-effective.
Except that it means work is now done, at times, at 9:00 or 10:00 or even 11:00 p.m. on my living room couch or dining room table. A time that used to be private, family time. Work (in the form of conference calls to far away countries) is now done at 6:30 in the morning, while eating breakfast. Work is now done on Sunday morning, sitting in a pew, just before church starts. Work is now done from a tent, on a family camping trip that the rest of us have been waiting months for DH to be available for. And now I too can work for this company (might I say unofficially and for no pay) by reading important texts and emails to DH while he drives us to a 'relaxing' destination on one of his 'vacation' days. Funny, I thought if you were using one of your vacation days allotted to you by your employer, you did no work for your employer that day!
Do I sound a little bitter?
I am! It's ironic that back when we were engaged, when DH was entering his senior year of college and we were researching companies that he might wish to make a career with, I commented that I did not want to be a "corporate wife". I didn't want to schmooze with his co-workers and higher ups in social situations. I didn't want my lifestyle, or my time, to be controlled by a company. I wanted his work to be a separate thing from our family life: something he put specific hours into five days a week, but that never came home with him, never infringed on our time with our children or each other, never dictated when I could do things. He agreed whole-heartedly. Work was something you did, then left at the office. It had no reason to come to our house, to take his mind away from his family during those off duty hours he was at home. It especially had no need to affect me in any way other than being a regular deposit into our joint bank account.
HA! I can't count the missed birthdays and anniversaries because he was required to be out of town on a business trip. I can't count the times in recent years that I have been pretty much forced to attended corporate meetings for a company I don't work for, because I couldn't not hear what was on speaker phone, or hands free in the car, just feet away from me. I really don't care to overhear a discussion about the fuel regulations imposed by foreign governments an ocean away for upcoming vehicle models while I'm eating my bacon and eggs, thank you. Seriously, if I wanted to work in that kind of environment, attending meetings at all hours of the day, night, and sometimes on weekends, I wouldn't have, decades ago, decided to forego college and its professional degrees.
Now that technology has made it so easy to work from where-ever DH is, my objections to being controlled by a company aren't met by whole hearted agreement. They are met by either denial ("go somewhere else if you don't want to overhear my meeting"), or acquiescence ("that's the way it is anymore, deal with it"). Sometimes I just want to thrown that darn phone (and company issued laptop, too,) into the nearest water hole. Or run it over repeatedly with the tractor. That, however, isn't an acceptable (to the company) way of dealing with it. To me, being driven away from an entire floor of my home, or away from a long ride in our private vehicle or vacations with my husband, isn't acceptable either, and is not how I should have to "deal with it".
Corporate issued technology, go away! Leave me alone! I don't want you in my life. You have no right to take up my time. I never signed a contract giving you the power to dictate my schedule.
And if you want my husband after 8 hours or on weekends or 'vacation days', at least pay him overtime. Because I can't do my household and homestead chores plus keep up with the ones he's too busy/unavailable to do, and his (based on 40-hours a week and hasn't paid overtime in nearly 20 years) salary surely doesn't allow us to pay for a landscaper or a maintenance guy. We won't even go into the strain it puts on family relationships since there is no money in the world that can fix that.
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