Stop Telling Your Co-Workers They Are Going To Get Hit By A Bus
Fun fact:
Australian comedian and TV host Charlie Pickering is a fully qualified lawyer.
After finishing high school, he studied law for five years, did two years of placements and finally landed his first full-time job as a lawyer in the big city.
Suited up, he began his first day with a tour around the office. A fellow employee was tasked with giving him the lay of the land. While showing Charlie to his desk he explained to him the firm’s ‘bus rule.’
When you leave, make sure your desk is tidy, with your work from today organised neatly. That way if you get hit by a bus someone will be able to finish your tasks.
That was Charlie Pickering’s last day as a lawyer.
Pictured: The reason you should keep your desk clean.
Another fun fact:
Work can be demoralising at times. (Sorry, I now realise that wasn’t a very fun fact).
Yet the ‘if you get hit by a bus’ saying seems to come up a lot. In every agency I’ve worked at, it was always been said at least once.
I find it depressing for a few reasons:
It reminds me about the frailty of life.
I imagine how my girlfriend, family and friends would react to my death.
I imagine how my work colleagues would react to my death and feel a creeping sense that they don’t care about me dying in a freak accident. They’re mad at me for dying before backing up my files on the server.
(On top of that, they’re soon going to be mad at me for the food of mine that is going off in the office fridge and resent me for forcing them to draw straws to decide who’s job it is to throw out my last ever slice of tuna bake.)
The saying ‘if you get hit by a bus’ really reinforced the fear I had at my previous agency. The idea that if I died, the people that I spent most of my day with, wouldn’t make it to my funeral if it clashed with a client meeting.
Charlie Pickering felt it and I do too.
Work comes first. You come second.
At challenging times in your life, this idea that our co-workers, especially those who are our superiors, see us only as keyboard monkeys. As cogs in a machine. It’s easy to dramatise this as it is a personal thing; it’s how you spend most of your day after all.
The fact is, things in a business (very technical term) do need to be filed/stored/saved/arranged properly for things to flow.
We just don’t need to be so morbid about it.
It’s likely the person saying this doesn’t actually think you’re going to get hit by a bus, they’re just using an extreme example. However, they can still stress this without making you feel like it’s time you called that life insurance salesperson back.
The good news is, I have a simple and easy to remember alternative:
“Be sure to always back up at the end of each day, because if you win the lotto someone else will need to pick this up.”
Please note, no one died in my alternative.
…if you win the lotto…
Instead of making someone face their own mortality, their mind is buzzing with all the things they’ll do with their money and which lucky co-workers get a turd in their drawer.
Karen is first. Then Jared. Followed by Mitch if I’ve still got any left in me. But definitely Karen first.
It is important to keep a record of the work we do, but let’s do it in a way that doesn’t make people literally depressed. Let’s keep people hoping that if they can’t make it to work it is because they are now mega-rich, instead of having copped one while sneaking a cheeky jay-walk.
In summary: Less bus crashes. More lotto.
(Even though, let’s face it, the odds of getting hit by a bus are much more likely. Especially if you, like me, have never bought a lottery ticket.)
