Leafing through old-ish issues of a computer magazine I looked at this cartoon (translation of the bubble: “That’s unfair! Now Silvia’s PC is defective for the third time, and mine has never been!”)
Consider the following hypothetical:
In the work by which you earn your living, your main work equipment (be it a PC, a truck, some kind of manufacturing machinery, etc), is in need of repair and in the meantime you are reduced to doing nothing
No fault for the outage is laid at your door, and you do not need to pay anything, personally, for repair or replacement.
Is your work such that this is a source of stress to you, or such that this is a kind of paid break?
If my computer dies, I will be expected to keep working but will have to go home to do it where I don’t have half the resources and it would be really annoying.
I’m a computer tech, so if my computer is broken I’m the one fixing it! Having employee’s computers or other systems break so badly that people can’t get their work done is the #1 nightmare among IT Ops types. We work our asses off to fix it when it does happen, and do an awful lot of work behind the scenes to make sure it never does happen in the first place. Something outside our control like a power outage isn’t really good news either, since we’ll have to look at all our systems to make sure everything’s okay once it comes back up. (And I guarantee not everything will be okay.)
A large part of my job is inputting data. When the computer is down, the data piles up, which means I have to really hustle to catch up when it finally wants to work again.
Depends on the situation -
If my internet connection crashes, that’s my problem and any time lost has to be made up or I have to grovel for use of leave time.
If my employer owned computer crashes, that’s their problem; however, any time spent coming into office for repair (drive time) is on me to make up.
I voted stressful for other reasons. The work would continue but my memory jogger, main communication method and information tracker would be out of commission making it possible for everyone else to see just how little I actually recall
If my computer dies, I go run around in the woods. If my work truck dies, I go mess around on my computer. But because my computer and my work truck are a float plane ride apart from each other, the remaining portion of any individual day is pretty much shot and I can relax.
Horrible, so I voted other, because there wasn’t an option for complete disaster. Most of my money most of the year is from teaching and performing music, so if I only bring one board to a job, and it fails, or a cable fails and I don’t have a spare (which I always do), or a spare board, or the mixer fails, that means I don’t get paid, my reputation is severely harmed. Complete disaster. Always carry two boards (piano and Hammond) so if one fails, I can get by on the other, but I don’t carry spares if both fail.
If the electrical supply isn’t clean and fries an amp or a board, then that’s screwed, and if power can’t be restored, it isn’t my fault, but I’m still screwed.
For my EE work as a student, if a computer fails, it doesn’t matter – I have a bunch of old ones around I can do stuff on at my place. For the temp jobs I take during slow times of the year, I couldn’t care less what fails – screw them, I just want my paycheck.
I work in an ER. If any frequently used piece of equipment fails it’s miserable. If the computer system goes down someone has to dig out the old paper charting forms, assuming they can all be found, and we have to keep track of them in an ED that’s no longer set up for paper charts. If the CT scanner goes down we just get more and more backed up. You can’t discharge those patients because if I felt OK sending them home without a CT I wouldn’t have ordered it in the first place. So I spend a lot of time soothing pissed off patients and families because so far as they can tell I’m just sitting around not doing anything to help them. So eventually we’re mostly bed-locked and unable to move patients while people pile up in the waiting room. When you do manage to discharge someone the new patient going into that bed has been in the waiting room for a ridiculous amount of time and is pissed off before I even get to talk with them. Fortunately I’ve never seen the scenario in the poll where patients die because of nonworking equipment.
I’m a self-employed translator. If my computer doesn’t work, I don’t work. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. If I don’t get paid, I don’t eat. So… not good.
That’s why I bought a new computer yesterday after my old one’s hard disc failed. Replacing the HD would have taken too long, and besides, who knows what part would fail next? Better to play it safe and buy a new one.
(Plus, what with the the floods in Thailand and all, a new HD would have cost almost half as much as a whole new computer).
