Yesterday I watched a documentary on TV with the name "Time Thieves". It was a very European documentary, every interviewed person speaking their own language (Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Italian, German and probably a few more). It resonated very well with me and showed why FI is so important.
But the subject was Time Thieves and it discussed the following subjects:
- We started to use time when we started travelling by trains over longer distances. Before that, we weren't so tied to the clock.
- Self checkout and self booking is a way to let your customers work for your company for free, without the hassle of employment benefits. Ikea is also such an example, by selling furniture that you need to assemble yourself.
- Companies have misused time tracking systems to track how much time employees could use at the bathroom, minimizing that time.
- Social welfare systems generally don't support that parents can take paid time off to be with their dying child during the last months of the child's life.
- In Spain people start working pretty late, have a long coffee break in the morning, a very long lunch break and work until very late in the evening. People have no time at all for a private life after work. This has consequences for society (volunteering, democracy etc).
There were probably some other subjects that I don't recall at the moment.
I do indeed often feel rushed because of time schedules. That might be one of the reasons I am often so much more relaxed during vacations. I had also not given it a thought that self checkout, self booking and self assembling is also a time thief. But indeed, if the self booking system is complicated (like filling out a healthcare.gov application that I read about in another thread), then we spend a lot of our time doing something that formerly an employee would have done for us. Now we need to do it ourselves. In some cases it is very convenient, but if not easy enough, it can be a PITA. I do think however that we Mustachians would rather buy flat-packed Ikea furniture for a low price than fully assembled furniture for a nigh price.
When it comes to employees and their measured toilet times, I was really shocked that that exists. I am so happy that I have always worked at places where that hasn't been an issue.
What all my employers do is giving people a free phone with cell phone plan in the expectation that people read and answer emails in the evenings and weekends. That is a time thieve. I have never accepted such a phone.
The documentary certainly reminded me on why FIRE, and in particular the FI part, is so important. Then at least we can decide on our own time. It also made me feel right about our decision to start working part time, even though that is a bit inconvenient to our employers.