TIME IS CLIENT MONEY
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Lots of good and honorable people in this business love to go to parties and family reunions and such and expound on how hard they work. How crazy this crazy business is and how long they go without shaving their legs or trimming their razor-sharp sideburns, all in the name of the job. “The deadlines truly are imPOSSible but someway I dig down deep and strike a well of midnight oil and deliver the goods, with barely a minute to spare.” They love saying how tired, how rushed, how busy they are. But here’s the stuff you never hear at parties: I stroll into the office at brunch time routinely. I ran out this afternoon and got my nails done. I added a sauna after my workout at the gym. Billie had a rare soccer game at 2:30 today. My second-cousin is getting hair implants, and I’m his godfather. I’ve gone to the range at lunch 18 out of the last 20 days. We spent 45 minutes getting the office Survivor pool in place this morning. I just had to find out about the Spartan recruiting class on the internet before anything else. The wife called six times today in an uproar over the kitchen cabinets, how they look a tad more off white than they looked in the showroom so what in the world do we do now huh, Mr. Husband? (elapsed time: 90 minutes). I scheduled the meeting at 1:30 so I could be home at 4. That waiter was so slow, it took 2 ½ hours to eat. Had to go to the dermatologist, and skin tags = time. My car had to be dropped off at the shop. I got my teeth cleaned. Who lets the dog out? Me, every damn day at lunch. My dry cleaning is clean across town. Here’s what I’d like you to do. Buy a stopwatch and put it on your belt. Every time you do something other than work, turn it on. You’ll be absolutely amazed how much time you run up. Some days it’s as much as the Yankees-Red Sox game 5. So remember every minute you spend comparing cookie recipes or describing your weekend round of golf in painfully infinitesimal detail, somebody’s paying you to do it. That somebody is the client. If you don’t think we have great jobs, go watch an assembly line for eight hours. They never have time to catch a matinee. I know, I worked on one for two summers.
