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The Eternal Phone Problem
Dear Work Friend,
I hate my phone. I hate how large it is. I hate that it takes up so much of my energy. I hate how much of my time it sucks.
But I also have a job. The nature of my job (like most jobs) requires me to be contactable for a specific times on specific days. There are personal circumstances that also require me to be accessible at most times.
I’m wondering if you have any advice for lowering my screen time, while also not getting fired. Any and all appreciated.
— Anonymous
If I had workable universal advice for lowering screen time, I’d be very very rich. I’d also be better rested, better read, in better shape, more attentive, with fewer headaches and more fulfilling relationships. I’d have no idea who “Clavicular” is, and I’d be happier for it.
Instead, what I can suggest for you is a confoundingly simple — albeit somewhat unwieldy — solution that I think would alleviate some of your specific problems. The answer is: Work Phone.
What I mean is that you need a phone that is for work, and only for work. This phone should have a different number from your personal phone. It should look and feel different from your personal phone, so you don’t confuse them. It should have whatever email, calendar and messaging functionality your work requires — and nothing else at all.
On this phone, you will never download TikTok or Instagram. (Unless you are a social-media manager, in which case I think it may be too late for you.) If you can get away with it, you will never even download a web browser. Ideally, this phone should even kind of suck: It should be janky, slow, annoying to use. The minute you are done with whatever task is required, your instinct should be to put the thing away.
This is the phone that will keep you from getting fired.
Now you are free to set up a personal phone in whatever way you’d like. Maybe you want a colorful, distracting, fully loaded phone that you can lock in a drawer during work hours but take out for weekend zone-out time — even if you’re telling an advice columnist you don’t want that setup. Or maybe you want an even more stripped-down off-hours phone, whose functions are limited to texting and calling so you can connect with friends and family.
It doesn’t really matter. The point is to remove from your life the excuse that you need to have your big, enticing, energy-draining phone with you at all times “for work.” Yes, you still have to have a phone with you for work. But it’s your Work Phone, and it has none of the hypnotic magic of your current phone.
The only downside to this strategy is that sometimes you will have to carry two phones. But the slight inconvenience of cellular dual-wielding seems like a small price to be paid for the restoration of order to your attentional life. It may sometimes force you to make clearer choices about exactly which phone you need to be carrying with you, if any.
And you may even find that there is a certain flair to the work phone: I suggest listening to the rapper Kevin Gates’s anthem “Two Phones,” a celebration of exactly this lifestyle. Like you, Gates has two phones: one (paraphrasing here) for his social life “and one for the dough.”
Speaking of dough: Of course, your employers should pay for Work Phone and its plan. If they need you to be reachable outside of office hours, it should be their responsibility to cover the costs of that connection. The good news, if you’re a freelancer or if your boss is stingy, is that smartphones and data plans are cheaper than they’ve ever been.
And if they’ll spring only for the bottom of the barrel? That’s fine. User convenience, ease and satisfaction are your enemies in this battle.
Time Sheet Drama
Dear Work Friend,
I need help not being jealous of my teammate’s working situation.
I work for a midsize city with flexible bosses. Most people work from 9 to 5 and work through lunch. I pay attention to my hours to ensure that I work at least 40 hours a week.
I have a team member with similar responsibilities, but who shows up at 9:30 a.m. and leaves for over an hour for lunch. Even though she is working 35 hours each week, she lies on her time sheets that she is working 40 hours. She has also been given the opportunity to occasionally work from home, which has never been offered to me. From what I can tell from speaking with my teammate, our manager has never reprimanded her about her working hours. In addition, her salary is significantly higher than mine.
I feel strongly that not working our full hours is unethical. We are government employees. Lying on our times sheets is fraud to taxpayers. Recently, my anger reached a breaking point when I took P.T.O. because I worked less than 40 hours, but I probably could have just lied on my time sheet like she does. How do I deal with this jealousy that I have toward my co-worker? She is permitted to work less, get paid more and have more flexible working arrangements. Will karma ever come around to her?
— Anonymous
I’m not actually sure your problem here is jealousy. For one thing, “envy” (wanting what someone else has) is probably a better descriptor of your feeling than “jealousy” (originally, the fear of losing what you have to someone else).
But, pedantry aside, “envy” isn’t really your problem, either. Envy is a problem only to the extent that you can’t obtain the thing you want. No matter how many gray-market Chinese peptides you inject, you can’t have another person’s youth, for example. In that case, envy is a problem that can be solved only with reflection and acceptance.
In your case, though, you can get what you want. You just need to ask for it.
You complain that your colleague has been given the opportunity to occasionally work from home, while such benefits have never been offered to you. Well, have you asked? If your bosses are as flexible as you say, they’ll probably give you their blessing. If they say no, perhaps they’ll shed some light on the dispensation they’ve given your colleague.
There is even some consolation in the unlikely event they reject your request with no explanation: At least then you’ll know for sure you work in an office ripe with unfair favoritism, and it might be time to look for other work.
The same goes for your hours: Why not take a long lunch sometime and see what happens?
The problem you’re having here sounds like fear and passivity. You need to be brave enough to ask for what you want.
The question is, what do you want? You suggest that the reason you aren’t fudging your own time sheet is that you believe it would constitute fraud. That’s a noble and ethically sound position. But it leads me to another question: If you believe your colleague is committing fraud, why haven’t you reported her, either up the management chain or to a city watchdog?
To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating that you do so. You don’t say anything about the quality or timeliness of your colleague’s work, which makes me think she must be doing her job just fine at 35 hours a week. If that’s the case, her managers have probably justified the situation as a sort of in-kind compensation: Your colleague is effectively taking 8 percent of her salary in the form of long lunches, with the added benefit to her managers of a lower top-line number for budgeting.
But as far as your personal happiness is concerned, the ethics of her particular arrangement are somewhat beside the point. You have a choice: You can start working from home, dawdling at lunch and approximating your time sheets, understanding that your colleague’s unconcealed and unpunished conduct serves as tacit permission from your bosses to do the same. Or you can make your suspicion public and ensure that everyone is playing by the same honorable rules as you.
If you want to use your sense of ethical obligation as an excuse for not demanding fair benefits for yourself, you owe it to yourself — and the defrauded taxpayers you invoke — to take that ethical obligation seriously across the board, and inquire about your colleague’s apparent fraud. Otherwise, it sounds like a self-justifying ruse to cover up your own uneasiness about taking more for yourself.
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