A couple of weeks back I was in Auckland for three days. I’ve passed through the city regularly over the last decade to travel abroad but otherwise never stayed overnight. This is a benefit of owning a private jet, specifically, if something arises one can nip up in the morning, attend to it and return home the same day without incurring the unavoidable time-consuming horrors implicit with commercial airlines.
Anyway, on this occasion I was in Auckland for two nights and three days for a particular non-commercial reason whereupon events threw up a couple of spare hours. My Auckland office manager George suggested he bring me up to date with some of our CBD office-towers as I’m out of touch.
We began with a 30 storey Queen Street building I wouldn’t have been in for probably two decades. I was all eyes whereupon on one floor I witnessed a miracle. This was on a floor currently being fitted out for a new lessee Government department.
We entered and encountered about 30 workmen, all without exception flat out working at their various trades, across the very large floor. Not one was even holding a cell-phone, let alone gazing or jabbing at it as is normal nowadays on building sites.
Since the advent of the smart phone that was literally a miracle. Only one bloke standing about watching all of this activity held one but he wasn’t actually using it.
The explanation for his inactivity soon became clear, specifically he was a Pom and thus culturally programmed to indolence.
George told me they solely use this company for all their fitout and maintenance work, which amounts to tens of millions of dollars annually with office-towers.
The so-called smart phone has been the greatest threat to productivity ever invented. When I reported this miracle to my Wellington manager he nearly wept with envy. Currently he’s investigating the feasibility of flying them to Wellington and hoteling them, for our larger projects.