If internet years were equal to dog years, Mark Chapman has already spent an entire lifetime on the world wide wait. Many human years later, the new tube finally delivers and Mark is only too happy to be your guide to the weird, whacky and wonderful online. So much time and money, all gone
| Mark Chapman
A co-worker just walked into the office, shell-shocked at the calculation of her coffee expenditure for the year.
As a drinker of two rather large coffees daily, she had worked out that more than $3000 of her hard-earned cash had gone towards her caffeine kick in 2007.
(She also noted how paying with change, you don’t realise how it adds up!)
This got us thinking about all those other little things that we take for granted, but add up massively over the space of just one year.
As an example, a few years back - in a vain attempt to score an ongoing Friday afternoon off work - we did a little math on how much extra time the smokers in the building slacked off work by popping outside to suck on a tarstick.
Going on a conservative two breaks a day at 15 minutes each - 7 to smoke, 4 either way for the trip to and from the desk – it worked out that our nicotine-needy peers were getting four full weeks of time off every year!
Quick to jump to the smoker’s defense, another colleague noted how as an ex-smoker, she however, worked through lunchtimes.
A challenge! So of course, straight to the calculator: give up your lunch break every day, and you’re working an extra 6.8 weeks per year…
Here are some other shockers:
• Takeaway lunch at work at $6 a day - over $1500 per year
• Fighting traffic for 30 minutes either way to and from work – 10.8 full days in the car.
• Checking email and surfing the net – one user had worked out 4 hours of use a day, which comes to a whopping 60 days of eyeball time online!
But, it’s not all bad news:
• Walking on the beach every morning – 7.6 full days of sand between your toes.
• Watching the Simpsons every day – it’s only 5 full days of your life annually, so relax.
• And reading thedaily.com.au… you can’t spend too much time on that, now can you?
What do you spend all your time and money on?
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Recent Comments
And to the world wide corporation responsible for feeding my caffeine addiction, thank you for being such tasty enablers. But alas, I believe the time for my two celebrity sized coffees a day has come to an end.
How much time do you think my withdrawal symptoms will cost my bosses?
- None if you just use the coffee machine at work, Amy - Editor
in fact, i wouldn't be in the least bit surprised if non-smokers spend the same amount of time whinging about smokers going outside, as the smokers actually spend outside smoking.
Aside from that, there is also all that time spent telling smokers they shouldnt smoke, complaining about the smell as they walk past the smokers... the list goes on.
You don't hear smokers complaining about the non-smokers do you... you dont hear smokers berating the non-smokers about their choice not to smoke.
and here is a piece of advice... if you dont like it... stop breathing!
1. It takes a lot of preparation the night before, but I take my own pasta lunches in glad-ware containers to microwave at work. When I don't do that, I make toasted sandwiches. I mostly eat non-meat foods, so they are pretty hard to get decent ones at the shop anyway.
2. As for coffee, have a coffee machine at work, or if you can't do that, plunger works damn fine. So long as you do the washing up!
3. And you can save heaps on travel as well by riding push bike or a scooter. I've been travelling to Brisbane so have to do the park and ride. Scooter works fine for the train station, even in the wet with the right gear. Can't really help those expensive train fares except by buying weekly tickets. Oh yes and I've never owned a car.