TL;DR (by GPT-4 🤖):
- The author reminisces about life before the ubiquity of cellphones and the internet, particularly focusing on the after-work hours.
- The concept of being unreachable after work hours is alien to younger generations who are constantly connected and expected to be available at all times.
- The author and his peers recall the days when work emails didn’t exist, and work communication was restricted to work hours only.
- The article highlights how the growth of remote work and the pandemic have blurred the boundaries between work and personal time, with a survey suggesting that U.S. workers were logged into their employers’ networks 11 hours a day in 2021, up from 8 hours pre-pandemic.
- The author interviews people of his age group about their experiences around 2002, when they were about 27 years old. They recall waking up just in time for work, commuting with newspapers or books, and using work phones for personal calls.
- After work, they would engage in activities like swing dancing, improv classes, or simply visiting friends. Plans were made over the phone or via work email, and people were less likely to flake as there was no option to send a last-minute text.
- They recall the days of watching whatever was on TV, renting movies from Blockbuster, and playing games on their desktop computers.
- The article concludes with a reflection on how different life was before the internet and cellphones became a constant presence in our lives.
The only thing I can agree with on this article is that. yes. I too had a “social life” outside of my first job when I was younger. I went to work at min wage job. Came home at 5. Dropped $100 every Friday on the kitchen table (because I had to pay rent to my mother), and immediately went back out to who knows where.
The thing is that was the only thing I had to worry about back then. I did not have a car. I could not rent an apartment because at 18 in 1995 how the hell are you gonna have Credit in the first place out of High School? And I’m from the glorious chest-beating, so proud to be neglected by my parents, Gen-X.
Other than that, I didn’t read the whole article because I agree with everyone else’s sentiment. I for one am happy a lot of those things are gone today.
A lot of these old farts like to point their fingers at youth today because they didn’t immediately move out of their parents home at 18… well I wonder why that is?