In response to the wonderful article published by Yorokobu, are you one of those who work from 9:00 to 5:00, or are you available 24/7,…

Let’s not lose our common sense either 😉 I love that this topic is being raised… OK, we all know the paradigm has changed and now customers expect 24-hour support… but a reflection…
Some time ago I realised there is a huge gap between the employment and/or commercial contract and what is expected of the employee or provider. I think this happens for two reasons: one, because we are in Spain and these things just happen; and another, because there are professions that are not yet fully established and, therefore, there are some rather harmful unspoken assumptions.
In the case of those of us who work in communication and the Internet, I think we should first of all understand that YES, there are limits—human, professional, and moral.

This seems obvious, doesn’t it? Yet there are those who believe in human/professional cloning, and I personally think we must not be mistaken. If a company requires a 24-hour service—call centre, 24-hour crisis management… it has to be paid for, either by paying its employees through multiple shifts or by paying its providers. How can we expect someone who works 8 hours to earn the same as someone who is practically a customer-service junkie? Personally, I think we should not confuse personal motivation and the desire to do a job well, to feel recognised by users… with giving away hours to the company or client…
Anyway, perhaps I am going back to talking about Community Management rather than the Community Manager, because if it is only one person who has to provide personalised support 24/7 and internationally… well… it may not be very healthy…
I think I am going to write a post to vent

Well then, here is the post I have titled Slaves to the Motivation to Serve. We start from the premise that there has been a radical shift in the communication paradigm—true—as he said in his excellent video 101 [youtube

We are in the midst of a full-blown social revolution, “apparently”. I still think it is a lot of noise and very few real results, but it is true: the demand for information has therefore changed. We even see companies that seem to have realised it, like Mercedes-Benz coining the “old term” infoxication.

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My absolutely personal opinion on this is that this change must not come at the expense of the progress achieved with great effort, such as workers’ rights, the working day…

As I commented on Yorokobu, one thing is what is demanded—which I believe must be carefully taken into account—but we will have to analyse how it is addressed.

haplo_fschaffer , whom I follow on YouTube, comments at 0:04 of his video If one month on the Internet is equivalent to 7 in real life, when the hell do I take a holiday? I liked this observation from his video about the second SMM congress. Well, you may agree more or less with the rest of his content, but I liked this remark.

One thing is the needs of companies to satisfy their customers—or seen from the customer’s side, the need to be attended to 24/7—and quite another is that the same person has to do it.

We all know friends, acquaintances in the sector… whom you email and they reply at 1 in the morning, or you see them tweeting at any hour… and I agree, and I am also—and have been—highly motivated, but not at any price and not in any way. There is money and effort involved… let’s focus.

I consider that those of us who do this are sometimes quite geeky, somewhat overly willing to help, collaborate… but everything has a limit. I think we live in fear that someone will say, “Have you seen…?” and we have not seen it—precisely for the same reason Haplo said in his video: if one month on the Internet is 7 in real life, God, how scary it is to sleep, in case we miss something… when what we are really going to miss is sleep, as Mar Abad rightly comments in “Be careful about bringing technology into bed!”

I see some common points among those of us who do this:

– motivation, I do not think it is excessive; it all depends on how we manage it
– willingness to serve (the need to always be online). If I disconnect… uff, I do not know…
– false state of alarm or constant urgency (it is important to distinguish what is important from what is urgent)
– always more, the feeling of it is not enough for me, maybe we can do a bit more
– fashion victims (some new little gadget has come out that I should sign up for…)
– no limits: no schedules, no places, no moments (a lack of common sense at times—so yes, we do have limits)
– hyper-connection, hyper-communication, online hyperactivity (we need at least one Zen moment a day)
– procrastination
– impatience (compulsive rush to reply to emails—in short, the age-old inability to wait)
– devaluing time and effort (we undervalue dedication: “don’t worry, it costs me nothing…”)

It is true that there are also responsible people and companies that know what their work is worth, and that know when to stop, when to say no, when it is not the time, and when they need to be offline….

Sometimes I think that behind this over-willingness there is a lot of loneliness… other times not…