My Dad moaned at me the other day about the phone. I was round at his house and had to ring J at home, so I picked the phone up, dialed the number and rang her. When I'd finished he said "Why didn't you use the speed dial?"

It's not a phone I've used before, so I wouldn't be able to quickly figure out how to use it. I don't know what position in their phone's memory my phone number is in, so I'd have to scroll through all the numbers to find mine.

Easier just to dial the number (which I know very well, it's a memorable number) the old fashioned way.
--
smart, pretty, sane. pick two - georgeha

Didn't know you could get anything half decent for less than £150.

--------
It's political correctness gone mad!

The Society for Barefoot Living exists mainly as a mailing list. Even there it is largely accepted than one wears shoes at work.

Imagine going to work barefoot! You boss tells you to put some shoes on and you don't ask why, you ask "How will that earn a return on the shareholders capital? Will customers pay more? Will our suppliers charge us less?"

I find it intuitive that such questions would be taken as sarcastic and insubordinate and be found unacceptable.

If we can distance ourselves from our social embedding and protective intuitions that get us safely through the day, we can become aware that something odd is going on. One turns up to the office to preen and quarrel, dominate and submit. One must also maintain the fiction that the difference between what the customers pay and the suppliers charge pays our wages, because it is true. Notice the strange way in which the fact that something is true forces people to pretend it is true; to mouth the words, while still ignoring the substance.

I find the example of going to work barefoot fascinating because two contradictory things seems so obvious, both that it doesn't harm profits so should be tolerated, and that it is unacceptable, showing that work is not really about earning a living.

My guess is that most of western business management is cultural artifacts with no grounding in the search for profit. I also guess that it is hard to shrug off the artifacts, or even recognise them, because they are so much part of social life.