A few years ago, Microsoft launched a Office 365 campaign with the slogan of #GetItDone. The basic premise was fitting more work into more places of your life. Well, not so much just fitting as shoving, cramming, and crunching it into every damn nook and cranny of your existence.
Like, why shouldn’t you check up on that Excel spreadsheet with the latest TPS numbers from the bathroom? Or take that conference call from your kid’s soccer game? Or fake presence with your spouse reviewing Word revisions while watch a show “together”?
Seriously. I’m not making these scenarios up. Microsoft’s campaign included all of them, complete with stats to alleviate the guilt of living such a shackled life. See, everyone is doing it! And Microsoft 365 makes it easier!!
Fuck. That. Shit.
We tried to push back against Microsoft’s #GetItDone back in 2013 with #WorkCanWait. That lead to a whole series of features in Basecamp 3 to encourage the exact opposite of what Microsoft wanted the future of work to look like. Basecamp 3 has a literal feature called Work Can Wait, which ensures that work stays out of your kid’s soccer game or your family’s movie night.
Anyway, that was then. I kinda thought Microsoft would have wised up since. In 2013, you could at least excuse the company somewhat since the dancing buffoon was still in charge. But in 2016? No. No, you cannot excuse that any more.
So watch this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yjs2uiKPo2c
Oh yeah, that’s just Microsoft putting a chipper fucking jingle to an ideal of work that’s literally presented as “14 hour days, 7 days a week, for decades”. Say what now? In what alternate universe is that an ideal you want to endorse?
Maybe that’s what the new Surface is all about. Perfect for sweatshops like Marvel to churn out yet another superhero rehash. Just so everyone else who’s working death shift after death shift for decades can escape the hell that is their life in make-believe fantasy. Swell.
But hey, THIS IS THE FUTURE OF WORK, right? The Surface Pro 4 is just here to enable the inevitable transition to this glorious paradise of productivity. Your life: 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, running Microsoft gear. Wouldn’t you want this too? Isn’t this aspirational? No. It’s death.
Sleep is good. Sleep works. Fuck companies and products that endorse skimping or skipping it as some kind of superpower. Fuck the Surface Pro 4’s marketing team. I seriously hope that this is just Microsoft temporarily slipping up, not a trend worthy of retracting forgiveness for.
