Attainable Sustainability

When my friend was offered a part-time survival job, he jumped on it.  He now works in inside-sales for 25 hours/week.  He spends 20 hours/week commuting, 5 days a week.  And he’s making minimum wage + commissions.  And this is for one of the better companies of its type.

But make no mistake, that’s slavery.  The company doesn’t have to pay benefits, and my friend works full-time for half-pay, not including $160/month for train and bus fare.

I have no quarrel against part-time work.  In fact,  I’m looking for permanent part-time work.  Because it pays the bills, and leaves me enough of the week left over to use flexibly – doing more work, opting for higher-paying, less-stable gigs that may lead me to full-time employment.  I win, and the company wins, only if part-time means 8×3 or 25 hour fixed price projects.

The problem are 4×5 or 5×5 jobs.  The time it takes to get ready for work, to commute to work, then commute home can easily add 10 or more hours a week, and that’s not counting wasted time from missed connections and traffic congestion.  Part-time work alone is not enough for most people to survive on, yet having to do everything times five leaves you too tired, too strapped, and without enough contiguous time to do substantive work.  And of course, it’s bad for the environment to be travelling when you could be at home.

Companies don’t do this to be mean, or in a bid to use slave labor.  Most companies hire part-time assistants, organizers, coordinators as a resource for their full-time staff, who also work 5-days a week.   But for the most part, it’s just the reality of life that a company’s employees are higher on the food chain than part-time, temporary staff.  This isn’t a call on companies to mend their ways.  This is directed at you, the part-time worker to negotiate.

First off, cut one day off the week.  Instead of working 4 hours, 5 days  week, try for 4, or even 3 longer days, which approaches the 8 hours/day overtime limit in California.  If the company still needs coverage over 5 days, they can hire an additional part-timer to fill out the rest of the week.  You can even cut your total hours if your company’s budget cannot cope.  But also remember, by not paying benefits, companies are already saving a lot of money hiring you on a part-time basis.  This is for your benefit, but if you work it right, it benefits the company too.  Make a business case out of it, and try for a win-win situation.  This is sustainable living, this is innovative living, this is humane living, and it’s a living.

Just remember, you may be a bottom feeder, but you’re not a slave.  You have just as much right to walk away as a company does to cut you.  If you have skills, you are entitled to make a living and keep that roof over your family’s head while you save up for walls and floor too.

Last July, Japan’s Labor commission ruled that a lead Engineer for the Toyota Camry hybrids died from overwork.  His family claimed this engineer put in 80 overtime hours/month.  That averages to about 250 which is a little more than 60 hours/week.  It wasn’t the hours that killed him.  It was deadline stress.  As I posted before, failing to make deadlines can lead to disgrace, and people will drive themselves to their own deaths to keep that from happening.

RIP – you gave your life for a Toyota Camry Hybrid.  Your company is grateful and will be equally grateful then next time an engineer dies.  And the next time.  And the next.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/09/japanese-man-dies-of-over_n_111707.html

As I write this, I am reminded of a web developer who was hired in a hurry by a company that fell way behind on a project and hired him with 6 days remaining to an important deadline.

That began a 6 day ordeal where the developer worked almost without rest to become familiar with a new code-base, deal with technical issues, who fell further and further behind.  In the end, not only missing a deadline, but missing it by a mile, and due to exhaustion and the rush, making mistakes that in normal circumstances would be forgivable.  In the end, he was summarily dumped, his reputation shattered with the company, exhausted and dispirited.

The company also did not deliver to its client, who was unhappy about the cost overrun as well as time overrun.  Its staff worked all hours through the weekend trying to catch up.  And the company that would normally have given a new staff 2 weeks to get up to speed, threw the developer away, violating its own normal standard of decency and caring for all those who work for it.

The end result?  Fiasco for the developer who was given an unwinnable task.  Project not delivered.  Everybody overworked.  Nobody happy.  Budget blown, the project becomes a living, walking nightmare for everybody involved and no end in sight.  And it could’ve all been averted with one simple phone call.

PMP-certified Project Mangers will tell you, throwing manpower on a prject behind schedule never works.  You triage features to deliver on time.

This is the normal, standard, MBA-approved American corporate thinking, and it works.  But it misses the point when it comes to Sustainability in the workplace, and for that matter, any project and movement.

The problem is deadline dogma.

Do you know how in one simple act, this whole nightmare scenario could’ve been averted and a more humane solution would’ve ended up with everybody a winner?

It’s easy, really.  The company could’ve called up the client, saying it could not meet the deadline, could we have another month in exchange for a 10% discount?

Time enough to do the job right, and make sure programmers work 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and go home and have lives of their own on the weekends.  The website would’ve been delivered, working properly, the programmers, managers and clients having enjoyed the process.  And in the end, everybody gets a celebration.

Why does this not happen?  Deadline dogma.

Deadlines have an important place in society.  Trains need to run on time.  People gather from across the country to meet.  Action A needs to be done by so-and-so date so action B can begin.  Tinkers-Evers-and-Chance.  The Apollo Program.

But people pick dates for a project to go live without knowing what a project entails.  Sometimes by whimsy, a present on the Queen’s birthday.  Or because they want to be rich in two years and want a website in 1.  Sometimes, you can’t get around a do-or-die deadline, like an asteroid heading to the Earth or a hostage crisis.  But 99% of the time, a date is just an arbitrary point in time you pick as the live date.

So far, it’s harmless enough.  A good tool.  When you put it into a contract, it starts to become serious.  When you tie a date to the date to execute a contract with a merchandiser, or option on a warehouse, or to start paying staff, or with some other party that absolutely, positively happen on so-and-so date, then it becomes a tyrant that will rule you all.  Tragic, capricious, arbitrary, inhmane, and definitely NOT sustainable.

And we’re trained to not scrutinize deadlines.  It becomes something untouchable, a wall we approach at great speed.  Every person who will lecture you that nobody can predict the future will happily do so by putting a date down in a legal document.  The same people who tell you that mermaids don’t exist who go to church to worship a man with a grey beard who live in the sky.

No deadline is worth dying for.  No deadline is worth killing for, unless you’re in the movie ‘Saw’.  There is no reason a deadline has to be do-or-die, economic or otherwise.  And there is no reason for you to treat others inhumanely because that arbitrary date commands you to.

So the next time you begin a project, or bid on a project, add a section to the contract stating that the deadline is a soft deliverable time, and if you are unable to make that deadline, you can buy another month for 10% of the project’s amount.  And you, the owner, work out the logistics separately, to happen only when you are satisified with the product.  Then you can work out the warehouses, the merchandise, the licenses, the advertising, the promotion on your own time.  Without overtime or doubletime.  And live humanely, and treat those who work for you humanely.  Now that’s Sustainable business.