Observation 10

It is difficult to draw the line between work and leisure on Earth. Some humans find the time at work to socialise with colleagues, phone friends or play cards for profit. This naturally interferes negatively with the amount of time they can spend working, but makes for a cheerful workplace which often has higher than average levels of productivity. At the other end of the spectrum, some people work so hard every moment they are at the office or factory that they never have time to talk to colleagues about anything other than their jobs. This group of “live-to-work” employees is generally smaller than the “work-to-live” group, but if for some reason the work-fiends* start to dominate an organisation  the consequences are worrying, as stress and absenteeism levels among the workforce as a whole tend to rise. Worryingly, a disproportionate number of the “l-to-w” group become managers. 

*work-fiends: term loosely translated from the Blimm language. As you remember such individuals are extremely unpopular on that planet , and if convicted of being one, are sentenced to  work an entire Blimm year in a small windowless cell preparing new strategies for selling cooling devices to the inhabitants of the ice-planet Balless.

Observation  11

The word, “passion” is used very frequently in corporate literature and it is regarded as desirable that people are “passionate” about their work. However, our inter-galactic language program, usually very reliable, tells us that the word describes a very strong emotion or intense sexual attraction, neither of which are likely to facilitate clear thinking or rational behaviour. Happily, I have seen little evidence of any of this intensity of emotion at the workplace so far. It appears that, despite it being a highly-esteemed quality in most corporations, most people expend their passions outside the working environment and (judging by what “passionate” humans are capable of) a good thing too.  

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