Every job should be convenient. Not every job is. Convenience doesn’t mean easy, convenience doesn’t mean not working hard at your job, it means not having to work hard just to do your job. The key point of this chapter is that a great job doesn’t require too many unpaid hours, excess work or effort outside of work just to perform the job.
In part one we will discuss getting ready for and traveling to and from your job.
Commuting
How much time do you spend commuting to and from work? For people that work at home, the time could be measured in minutes, for others it could be measured in hours. It’s not uncommon for commuters in L.A. to spend 2 hours stuck in car traffic. A 2 hour commute in New York that requires several changes between trains, subways and buses is not unheard of either. In the middle of the U.S. where towns are far apart it might take an hour or more of driving to reach your job. While all of these may sound like terrible scenarios the person doing them might not mind. Some people use time on trains or buses to read, write, knit, or in the case of a Society for Creative Anachronisms member, make chain mail (a true story). Others spend commute time listening to books or podcasts, or simply reflect on the days events so they don’t bring work stress into their home.
As remote work becomes more common, increasing from less than 2% to almost 15% in 2021, commute stress and effort have decreased for a substantial part of the population. Some jobs, like farming, and firefighting have virtually no commute.
If your commute takes you past where you might drop off children at school or daycare, a longer commute might make for a shorter overall day. Your commute might also take you near a gym, or someplace you volunteer. A long commute is not necessarily a bad thing as long as it positively impacts your day. Sitting in a car for 3 hours each day hating your life is obviously bad for you.
My personal driving commute limit is 30 minutes each way. Any longer than that and I begin to dread each work day. Since I live where it snows in the winter, a few times a year my commute may be much longer, but on average I am willing to spend up to an hour round trip driving to and from work. Your mileage may vary, literally.
It’s time to determine your first score. Rank your commute on a scale of 0-5
- Each day is an agony of hours of wasted time and effort. You pass yourself leaving for work when coming home.
- The commute leaves you worn out and tired before you even get to work. You arrive home too exhausted to do anything.
- Not great, and it will wear you out over time.
- At the edge of your commute range, but tolerable over the long term.
- Close enough to walk or ride a bike OR long but easy enough that it can be a productive use of your time.
- You’re working from home, live onsite or take your work with you like a landscape photographer.
A quick note on commutes: some people use commute time to decompress from a stressful job and a short commute may actually be detrimental to overall mental health and job satisfaction.
Cleanup
It’s said there are two kinds of jobs, the kind you shower before and the kind you shower after. If you have a job that requires extensive cleaning off the clock after your work is complete that should decrease your convenience score. Good examples include most heavy manufacturing, mining, many health care positions and anything dealing with hazardous substances. If your job pays for you to cleanup after work that should decrease the negative affect.
When I worked in a fire assay lab analyzing rock samples, on any given day I might crush rock (and get covered in dust), handle lead oxide (toxic), pour molten glass (at dangerously high temperatures) or handle concentrated acid (dangerously corrosive). Needless to say that job required washing at work and then washing again at home before doing anything else. While the job was only 15 minutes from home, it cost hours of my life to get clean.
Prep Time
For the other type of job, the kind that requires showering before work, you might need to spend time selecting suits and ties, dresses or skirts. Include any time spent on hair and makeup. Don’t forget time spent shopping for business clothes and dry cleaning. But, for some, getting dressed up for work each day is part of enjoyment. Decide how much time you want to spend versus how much time you actually spend preparing for each day.
It’s not all fancy suits, heels and ties. Some jobs require specialized work clothes and safety equipment like hard-toe shoes, hardhats or other equipment it takes time to prepare. If you don’t get paid for that time it should negatively impact the job convenience. Don’t forget to include any time spent off the clock preparing for work in other ways: packing food, water, or sunscreen if you work outside. Any time that you spend outside of work, traveling to and from the job or preparing for and recovering from the job should be included when rating convenience.
Convenience Part 1 Ranking.
Rank the first part of job convenience including all the time you spend preparing for, getting to and from, and finally recovering from your job.
- You have a long, difficult, expensive and or stressful commute. This might include driving across a major metropolitan area like L.A. or making multiple transfers between trains or buses. If it takes hours to get ready for work or decompress from each day or if you sigh in relief when you finally reach your job, or look at each business closer to home on the way back and wonder if they’re hiring give yourself a score of ZERO.
- Hours of your life are wasted behind the wheel of car or on public transit. If you have ever used the phrase “to miss traffic”, or if you have to go home to cleanup and change clothes before doing anything else your job deserves a score of no more than ONE.
- Each day as your travel to and from work you wonder if you should move or find a new job, but the stress isn’t consistent enough to get you to act. There are 2080 work hours in a year of 40 hour work weeks. If you spend a significant number of additional hours outside of work on work related activities, you get no more than a TWO.
- While not the best part of the day, at least the commute isn’t slowly crushing your soul. Maybe you can read, or run errands on your way home. No onerous requirements to prepare for or cleanup after work. Give yourself a THREE.
- You can walk to work, dress how you would normally dress. While not perfect, going to work then coming home doesn’t terribly impact your day or your well being. You might consider a FOUR.
- If the nearest thing to a traffic jam is waiting for your spouse to get coffee, if putting on real shoes to go outside seems like a hassle, if people are jealous, then you might be working at a FIVE.
In next chapter on convenience we will examine several other factors.
Examples from my own life
Pre-COVID, the shortest commute I’ve had was barely 2 miles as the crow flies (or the pedestrian walks); close enough to ride a bike. Unfortunately it was in Phoenix Arizona where the summertime high temperature routinely exceeds 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43C). My office building didn’t provide bike racks outside and did not allow bikes inside. So riding a bike was not an option. Due to the layout of the roads, intersections and traffic lights, the fastest driving route was almost 4 miles. So much for the 2 mile drive. On the surface it might seem like a 2 mile commute should score a 5 out of 5 for convenience, but factors like the weather and infrastructure reduced the convenience noticeably.
My worst commute required driving across a large city (my employer moved making it worse), in rush hour traffic and it required business dress, meaning ties but not a suit. I’m a pretty casual jeans and polo kind of guy so the dress code imposed on my free time. The job involved work at client sites on a strict schedule so the start and end hours were inflexible (see Convenience – Part 2). Depending on the weather this job ranked a 2, or even a 1. The commute was bad enough I went looking for another job.
Summary
Having covered time you spend getting too and from work let’s move on to another important aspect of convenience: flexibility.