He doesn't have to blow again until the afternoon

[austin_dern]

On Saturday I took my car up to the people who'd pronounced its wiring and hoses probably fine for the winter in order to get the bad wiring fixed. Since they're open only until 1 pm (if you believe the web site) or noon (if you believe the phone voice) Saturdays, this required getting up early since they're about twenty minutes (if you believe my father) or an hour (if you actually drive it) driving away. Since I had no reason to think this was a complicated problem I didn't feel the need to get there right as they opened, and so set my alarm clock to about an hour and a half after when I'd normally wake up for extruded office product. And, in fact, it wasn't a long fix, although it did have to wait until they cleared out room in the garage from other, earlier cars.

Since I didn't re-set the alarm time to the correct-for-workdays time after getting up and showered Saturday you can probably guess where this is going. Saturday ended up being an extremely long day for me as after the car work I puttered around a university campus and borrowed some things from the libraries that were still open. (The main library really should try putting computers connected to the library card catalogue on each floor; on the other hand, all the public terminals were being used by people playing video games or downloading tones of various sorts, so perhaps that wouldn't help.) And then off to the gettogether at my brother and his wife's, and so I didn't get back home till well after midnight and was not thinking of alarm clocks then.

Sunday night as I drifted off to sleep -- aha! -- I didn't forget this time, and I hastily re-set the clock to alarm me at around 6:15. Problem solved. And shortly after that I woke up again to switch the mode from ``off'' to ``beep'', so that it would actually alarm at the correct time. So there.

At about 6:45 my mother asked if I was going in to ``work'' today. I'd set the alarm for 6:15 pm.

Trivia: In 1898 Reuters earned £1,200 in revenue from North America. Source: The Power of News: The History of Reuters, Donald Read.

Currently Reading: 1898: The Birth of the American Century, David Traxel.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I've done that once or twice... but fortunately, it's not yet made me late to work. I keep reasonably paranoid if I'm waking up at ridiculous-early instead of my usual 11am, and set my cell-phone alarm as well, for the double-punch.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

As it happens the experience with my car accident and a few traffic jams and one other day I'd overslept suggest that I could be an hour late without anyone noticing, and maybe several hours late without attracting attention. Or given my part-time schedule I could probably skip two days without anyone realizing either.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

*nods* You're not alone in that, mind. My job, however, includes a identification badge which also serves as a time-clock swipe card. I swipe in and out and the time is recorded to the minute. So late is something that's happened about thrice over the course of seven years there.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, time clocks ... I'd forgotten. On the other hand, I have been late maybe thrice in four months even if only once was it really and truly my fault. So tying it to the clock is clearly useful. (And while teaching, when there wasn't a clock outside classes, I could get in for the day in a time interval with a huge standard deviation, depending on just how tired I was and what I had to take care of ... of course, there wasn't anything I had to be there for, exactly.)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

It's one of the core differences between a job with a daily demand and a job with a monthly demand. (Or semesterly demand, for teaching.) Two hours after my start time, customers enter the door, and my mise has to be en place.

I'm also rather happy with that. I accomplish much more with a dictated schedule and discrete tasks, and much more rapidly. (I always prefered in-class over take-home tests, for example, and grandly prefered either over writing papers.)

My arrival time (as gauged by the time clock) tends to bell-curve reasonably, I've found; The peak at about 2:52, and with about 90% of swipes coming between 2:47 and 2:57. (3:00 is on time. 3:01 is late. 2:40 is too early because they won't pay me more, and generally an excuse to visit the restroom or cafeteria first.)


--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Schedules do have their advantages in focusing the mind. And it is remarkable how many things work out well as Gaussian distributions. My own arrival time at the office is rather tightly focused around just-in-time, the result of ... well, to be honest, I don't know, since I don't get up at exactly the same time every morning, nor take exactly the same length of shower, nor leave at the exact same time, nor spend exactly the same time in the Wawa getting iced tea and something for breakfast. But I seem to arrive pretty close to the dot oddly reliably.