The Hindu Business Line : Time's up

RAMESH Sawant is employed in the Mumbai Mint. Day in and day out, he is to peer closely for hours together at those freshly minted coins that pass by him and pick out those which are deformed, defaced or distorted. Little wonder that he keeps an eye on the clock and dashes for the door during breaks and at the end of the day.

In the old-time manufacturing plants, where thousands are employed, it is not uncommon to witness a near-stampede at the end of the shift, when people punch their time cards and everyone wants to be the first to be out of the gate. They often include supervisory and middle management levels.

Sometimes, regular traffic is stopped during shift changing hours. However, these days, time seems to be neither well-defined nor on our side. In high-tech offices workers seem to leave home at dawn and return "when the watchmen forget the hour in slumber", as Goldsmith described in his immortal essay A City Night Piece.

When old parents of young techies meet, the talk veers round to how long their progeny spend at work. Everyone of them trumpets that their son or daughter alone is the first to clock in at the office and the last to leave.

Bosses also seem to think presence is productivity and workers, at least some of them, oblige the bosses giving proof of their commitment by resorting to some well-known tricks, like leaving a jacket draped on the chair or sneakers on the floor and computer system kept on all night.

Some of the low-level employees do everything they can to look busy in the waning minutes of the workday, cleaning their desks, answering e-mail, and generally avoiding any of the public spaces where their increased visibility might lead them to be called upon for last-minute tasks.

Clock-watching is an invention of the Industrial Revolution, division of labour and mass production, and all that followed. But in the present day service-based industries, work is becoming potentially infinite, pushing the time of departure ever later as it always appears there is something more to do. Paradoxically, though everything is done faster these days, no one seems to have enough time.

Psychologists believe that clock watching, particularly at higher levels, is usually resorted to by those who are, so to say, square pegs in round holes. "When you're doing something and your skill and the challenge are closely aligned, you lose your sense of time," says Geoff Godbey, professor of leisure studies at Pennsylvania State University. But when skill and challenge are out of balance, it is time to look for a new job, or watch the clock.

Perhaps there is no better example for this mismatch in history than that of the famous essayist Charles Lamb, who worked as a clerk in the India House in London. Clever as he was with the use of English language, when upbraided for coming late he riposted that that he would make up for it by leaving early.

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