Tag: hours

Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why It’s Good To Shop With Your Other Half!

She sees it as the ultimate cardio work out. He sees it as the ultimate test of endurance. It could mean only one thing… couples shopping!

Take a look around any town centre in the UK and you’ll see a familiar sight – women, the hunters of fabulous clothes; men, the carriers of bags and the heroes that help their ladies shoulder barge through the hoards of bargain hunters.

But while women are the Queens of the high street, it’s men who reign supreme on the internet. In this Infographic ‘Men Vs Woman – Battle of Spending Habits’, from financial solutions company Baines & Ernst, men actually come out on top as the biggest spenders, with alcohol, vehicles and gambling appearing in their top 5 purchases.

Men spend on average a total of £3,495 online every year and 15% more than women on their credit cards, making them the surprise cash flashers.

Although guys prefer the comfort of shopping from their armchair, there are certain benefits to being a co-pilot on a shopping trip…

Here are 7 reasons why it’s good to go shopping with your other half…

1. You earn excellent boyfriend brownie points! This is the only reason you really need to go shopping. Want a night out with your mates? Don’t want to be relegated to the other room to watch Match of the Day? Want an all night Xbox marathon with the boys? Well, you earned it buddy!

2. It’ll make your lady happy. A shopping wing-man is always good. And if you’re there to hang out with, tell her she looks good and treat her to lunch, your lady will be happy. And by doing all of this you’ll get… excellent boyfriend brownie points! *see point above for boyfriend rewards.

3. Pretty good way to while away the hours. If you’ve got nothing planned, then a trip to the shops can be a good excuse to check out the things you want to see and treat yourself to a few well deserved treats. Many big shopping centres also double up as entertainment complexes now, so if you get bored of wandering around the shops, you could go and have a really nice meal in one of the restaurants or catch a film.

4. Coming up to a special occasion? Use the time to plant seeds! Whether you’ve got an anniversary, birthday or Christmas coming up, you can use this time to look for what you want and plant some seeds. And it’ll give you the chance to check out what she’d like too.

5. You get regular sitting intervals. They’re in the changing room – you get to sit. Shops seem to have all designed dressing rooms with the gent in mind – creating little social areas for abandoned boyfriends so that you don’t get funny looks for loitering around outside changing rooms.

6. You get the gift of time. When you’ve been relegated to the boyfriend bench in the changing rooms, you can use this time to catch up on your phone admin. So you can message your mates, answer emails, check out Facebook, read the news and anything else you like without being asked “Who are you messaging?”

7. Its mutual ground. Okay, it might not be your most favourite activity, but it’s a good mutual ground for you to spend some time together and have a bit of fun. Grab a coffee, people watch and do some browsing. It could be worse!

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January 28, 2013
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Why Working From Home Is Good

Truth be told many of us hate the demoralising Monday morning alarm and rush to the office only to be greeted by a desk of paperwork and your evil boss. The 9-5 grind can get the better of even the most workaholic individual, so why not bite the bullet, clear up your office desk and work from home? Here are seven reasons why running a home-based business can be the best decision you will ever make.

If Delia Smith can make a mint working from home, why can’t you?

1. Dress code. T-shirt, pyjamas or even your birthday suit, working from home can let you dress as you like without comments from HR and management regarding corporate dress code policy. This has many benefits, but few are better than the satisfaction of rolling out of bed in your Superman PJs straight into the office. Ultimate efficiency. No time wasted.

2. Your office is your castle. Working from home enables you the privilege of designing your very own office sanctuary. Comfortable and productive, the days of sitting on uncomfortable office furniture, at bland generic desks, will soon become a thing of the past. Just imagine the possibilities of creating a completely unique work station with a range of beautiful furniture and accessories.

3. Stationary won’t grow legs. There is nothing more annoying than every piece of office stationary you buy disappearing. Communal offices provide a perfect environment for stationary evolution; where, in a matter of minutes, single cell biros can develop the ability of movement and walk off without warning. With the correct furniture and storage space in your home you will be able to keep all of your stationary essentials safe. And threaten any want-away with the staple gun.

4. Home Cooking. Nothing beats a hearty home-cooked meal. Working from home will enable you to eat what you want, when you want. No more boring, bland packed lunches or overpriced vending machines. If you are lucky you could even have your partner or parent cook the food for you, letting you fight the hunger pains without sacrificing levels of productivity/looking on YouTube.

5. Flexible Hours. Getting up early on those cold winter mornings isn’t for everyone. Well, when working from home there would be no need to chuck the alarm clock at the wall anymore. You will have the freedom of a butterfly in a country meadow. However, it still requires a bit of discipline as you will still have to work in line with your client’s expectations. Breakfast meetings they might be happy with, bed and breakfast meetings… not so much.

6. Daytime TV. Working from home will introduce you to the wonderful world of daytime TV. Why not work away listening to the tranquil background noise courtesy of your country’s finest individuals on the Jeremy Kyle Show? If nothing else, it’ll make sure you work you backside off so you don’t end up on the programme too.

7. Save money & save the environment. Nothing raises blood pressure more than rush hour traffic. No longer will you have to contend with grid-locked roads, full of workers desperate to get home at the end of the day. This, in turn, will help you save money, which would normally be spent on fuel and also save the environment by reducing your carbon footprint. In other words you can add the title ‘Eco-Warrior’ to your ever-expanding CV. Take that BP!*

*Other oil companies are available.

Author Bio: Chris is a recent University Marketing graduate and keen sportsman (armchair sports fan). He is currently writing on behalf of thefurnituremarket.co.uk.

October 28, 2012
Guest Post: 7 Reasons Meetings Make You Homicidal

Saturday dawns as Saturday always does with a new guest post. This week the we welcome Juliet James to the 7 Reasons sofa. Most of the time Juliet is a writer for Print Express, a UK printing company that features booklet printing and business card design. Juliet has worked for many years as a writer and blogger. Over the years she has become quite adept at avoiding meetings for the safety of her co-workers. Here she is:

The two most dreaded words in business are definitely “You’re Fired” but if you ask me, the second worst words to hear at work are “Staff Meeting”. Almost every working schmuck has had the “pleasure” of sitting through at least a few meetings. Everyone has their own pet peeves when it comes to corporate convocations. But most people have probably wanted to kill someone in a meeting for at least one of these seven reasons.

1. The Boss. I’ve gone to great lengths to avoid seeing the boss. I know he uses the east entrance, so I use the west one. He takes lunch at noon, so I eat mine at 13:30. My schedule is a finely tuned instrument of circumvention. And meetings blow it all to hell. Not only do I have to face him, it’s almost impossible to escape one of the boss’s meetings without extra work, a policy change or a self-esteem deficit. And if we’re really lucky we’ll get all three. That’s a trifecta.

2. Stupid People. Everyone works with a moron. You know the one. It’s person that complains that the coffee maker is “overly complicated”. Normally you only interact with them for entertainment purposes. But in meetings, somehow, you always manage to wind up seated next to the dumbass. Perfect. They’ll either whisper stupid questions to you, or invite the entire room into their idiotic inquests. Either ways it reminds you why it’s unfortunate that bitch-slapping violates company policy.

3. Suck Ups. There’s always one guy in the room who’s just WAY too happy to be there. He’s taking notes, nodding emphatically and looking a lot like a dog about to go on a car ride. These are the suck ups, and they all come out of the woodwork in meetings. “What’s that boss, you think we should re-direct the Christmas bonuses to a mandatory sexual harassment seminar? Fantastic! You wanna do it over Labor Day weekend? Brilliant!” But on the plus side, at least you can spend most of the meeting fantasizing about flattening the sycophant’s head in the Xerox machine.

4. Wasting Two Hours of Your Life to Get Nowhere. Does anyone ever really accomplish anything in a meeting? In my experience it’s a gratuitous exercise in going in circles. It starts with a simple discussion of a problem. Then we have to dissect all of the complications surrounding the original problem. By the time we’re finished we haven’t solved anything but we’ve raised half a dozen other issues and someone went home with a migraine. Most office think tanks fail to engender progress and dissolve into pointless bitch sessions. Can’t we find a more efficient, less annoying way to get nothing done? Cause I have plenty of ideas about much more entertaining ways to accomplish nothing.

5. Being Stuck Sucks. Leaving in the middle of a meeting is always awkward and uncomfortable. So whether you have to pee, smoke or eat, you just hold it, because out of a meeting only seems to draw inquisitive looks and silent admonishment from others. It’s like there’s some kind of unspoken agreement among the inmates that everyone will “Stick it out”, so… you get stuck. Being locked into any one place for an indefinite amount of time is annoying; I don’t care if we’re talking about being trapped in the Gumdrop forest, if you can’t leave, you’re miserable.

6. Staying Late. It would be one thing if having an all-staff meeting bought you an extension on that project that’s due by COB that day. Of course, it never does, Nope, you’re deadline didn’t move but you just lost crucial work time to discussing the pros and cons of the re-designed Time Sheets. So now you get to stay an extra hour tonight to tie up loose ends. On deadline days the announcement of a meeting literally drops a bomb on your to-do list. You spend the entire gathering twitching anxiously watching the minutes tick past. Slowly, your hopes and dreams of making it home in time for dinner slip away. You already know it’s going to be another night of ordering take out at your desk. So by the time the meeting breaks you’re ready to trample anyone who gets between you and your desk

7. Here Comes The Bus. A lot of times meetings get called to address an “issue”. Of course that tends to be code for “Bob screwed up and now we all have to get together to talk about his mistake.” Or, even better, the meeting itself is a trap to catch a culprit. And the suck-ups just love those meetings because they’re dying to drive the bus right over the guilty party. So you just slouch down in your chair praying you’re not the guy who winds up under the wheels. Half the time if a meeting isn’t an announcement, it’s an indictment. Going in you never really know which one it’s going to be, and that’s always fun.

Meetings have all sorts of different functions, but usually by the time they’re over you’re pretty much ready to slaughter someone. But I think it’s healthy. Just keep your weapons at home and your murderous urges off of Facebook and you’ll probably be fine. But if you absolutely can’t resist exacting punishment, I hear Ex-lax makes excellent chocolate. And nobody can resist cookies during a meeting right?

July 23, 2011
7 Reasons To Embrace Christmas Traffic Jams

Strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a Christmas traffic jam, in the same way as there is no such thing as a Christmas turkey, but you know what I mean. Which is just as well, because if I had used ‘7 Reasons To Embrace The Traffic Jams You Experience While Travelling Somewhere For Christmas’ both of you may have decided not to read. I’m glad you have though, because I have importance to impart on you. If you are travelling this Christmas, this is the most helpful thing you will read this half-hour.

1. In-Laws. If you are very lucky, your in-laws, or – if you are sans wedding-ring – your partner’s family, will be normal. This is fairly uncommon however, so we shall assume that the in-laws are a weird bunch. The mother-in-law smokes a pipe and keeps singing sea shanties and the father-in-law insists on wearing novelty ties and very little else. That type of weird. The type of weird that means you want to spend as little time in their company as possible over Christmas. The type of weird that makes traffic jams seem like a little piece of heaven.*

2. Christmas Playlist. Unless you really are a Scrooge (or deaf), Christmas songs evoke the festive spirit. And no one can tell me that after listening to Wham! and Chris Rea over and over and over and over and over again you’re not going to be in the mood for mulled wine. And beer. And brandy. And anything else that might numb the pain.

3. Excuses. Despite having 364 days to buy your loved one a present, you seem to have forgotten to buy one. This means you need a damn good excuse. And to think of a damn good excuse you need time. And time comes with traffic jams. Lots of them. By the time you get to your destination, your loved one will be too tired and relieved to care about presents. Which gives you time to whip down to B&Q.

4. Traditional Games. What with the advent of Game Boys and Game Gears and PSPs, the traditional in car entertainment was shelved. Mammoth games of ‘i-Spy’ and ‘I Went On My Holidays…’ were swapped for games featuring a hedgehog called Sonic and a footballer who looked like Shrek. Christmas traffic jams are the perfect opportunity to relive those golden days. A chance to remember those simpler times. Times where the use of the brain was more important than the use of the thumbs. Admittedly, i-Spy will only last until someone has guessed BOOORRRIIINNNGGG!!! but, despite someone not quite understanding the joys of the game, it will be fun while it lasts. Honest.

5. Scenery. Ever wanted to see Slough look pretty? Get stuck there in the snow. It’s your only hope.

6. Accents. Have you ever wondered what people sound like in the area you are driving through? No, probably not. That’s because you are driving through them. But what if you are stuck in them? No, probably not. But you should. Because it will open your eyes to the world around you. And you don’t need to do it by winding down the window and freezing to death. Just tune in to the local radio station. If you are lucky they’ll be interviewing someone who thought they had grown a six-foot cucumber only to discover it was in fact a marrow. And that never happens where you live.

7. Challenge. Despite what we are encouraging here, we know no one likes sitting in a traffic jam and, given the opportunity, they will find a way of getting out of it. Which is where the road map comes in handy. I can’t think of anything more rewarding than plotting a way out of a jam and then executing it perfectly. Especially if you set yourself a time limit and pretend you are being chased by members of the KGB. Such circumstances can turn pain and despair into exhilaration and triumph. And is a case in itself for joining a jam if you see one. We’ll see you in there.

*I would just like to point out that I am very lucky. Despite their annoying habit of making me look a very average tennis player, my girlfriend’s parents are a delight.**

**No, I am not just saying this. How cynical of you.

December 20, 2010
7 Reasons That Time Zones Are Confusing

The way we measure and calculate time is a wholly abstract construct that is often difficult to grasp. And then, when we split it into zones – that are also abstract – it becomes very confusing indeed. Here are seven reasons why.

1. South Africa. I’m not a geographical expert, but I have rough grasp of the map of the world and how it relates to me. I’m in England; I know that South Africa is approximately 5,500 miles away from me. I also know that France is 21 miles away from England. But it’s exactly the same time in France right now as it is in South Africa. This means that when it’s lunchtime in Cape Town, it’s lunchtime in Paris, and when it’s teatime in Cape Town, it’s lunchtime in Paris. But they’re so far away from each other!

2. The Moon. The moon has a time zone of its own, Lunar Standard Time. Today’s date on the moon is 42-12-21. So if I go to the moon, I’ll probably need a separate moon calendar, and perhaps a moon watch, though I’m not certain about that. What I do know is that the time (and date) on the moon bear no relation to the time and date on Earth, or even in Paris, where it’s still lunchtime.

3. The North Pole. There isn’t a time at the North Pole. The moon has a time, but the North Pole doesn’t. The reason the North Pole doesn’t have a time zone is because there’s no permanent human presence at the North Pole – which makes me wonder if there’s something that we’re not being told about the moon? If you go to the North Pole, you can just choose (arbitrarily) to be in whichever time zone you like. This means that you can be in a totally different time zone to the person standing next to you and the same time zone as someone standing inside Starbucks in Croydon. Or Johannesburg. Or any Starbucks you like.

4. The South Pole. The South Pole is on New Zealand time, despite being a long way from it. This is because most of the things that the polar bases consume are imported from New Zealand. But in Britain, most of the goods we consume come from China, though we’re not on Chinese time (yet). This is good as their next New Year is in February, and my New Year guests arrive in December, and there’s only so much of me they can take.

The International Date Line

5. The International Date Line. You may have already noticed that it’s not straight. This means that if you travel sort of North-Eastish, by sea, from New Zealand, the date may change several times on the way. The date line isn’t a time zone though, so when the date changes, the time doesn’t. So you know it’s 2pm, because that’s what your watch tells you, but you don’t know if it’s today, yesterday, tomorrow or Thursday – which must make arranging shipboard entertainments damn nigh impossible. And what if one of the days is your birthday? If you’ve worked on a sort of North-Eastish-sailing ship from New Zealand for a few years, you could end up having your fifty-ninth birthday at the age of twenty-seven. And then your presents would be inappropriate. What twenty-seven year old wants a subscription to the Radio Times and a pair of Totes Toasties for their birthday?

6. Trains. The Indian Pacific train in Australia has its own time zone. On its journey between Kalgoorlie and Kalgoorlie the time on the train bears absolutely no relation to the time zone that the train is in. This is because it crosses several time zones (including a weird one that changes in half hour increments). I find this confusing, but compared to British trains – which also seem to operate in their own time zone, one that bears no relation to either the time outside the train or the published timetable – it seems quite straightforward.

7. Greenwich. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is the time zone of zero degrees longitude. Greenwich is in London. London switches to Summer Time (BST) during the summer months. This means that London is an hour ahead of Greenwich in the summer. But, as Greenwich is in London, Greenwich is also an hour ahead of itself. This makes my head hurt. But if anyone can think of a way in which I can exploit this to plan a heist or win the lottery, please let me know.

April 12, 2010