Phone Policies In The Workplace And False Assumptions

Stretching working hours beyond what is needed to actually productively tackle actual work for the sake of workweek tradition is stupid enough on its own, but enforcing penalties for briefly, sporadically using cell phones--even to check for emergency notifications or family plans--adds to the nonsense.  Anything from a quick traffic or order update to taking moments to respond to a friend who has been extremely busy for months (probably from professional work of their own) to sending a text about philosophical matters far above petty business could get someone written up in many companies, and in some cases fired.  At the very least, workers risk being assumed to be lazy, incompetent, or unconcerned with their job performance or the company's success.

On a pragmatic level alone, however, which would be more likely to inspire employee dedication and loyalty over a prolonged period of time?  A company policy that is supposed to eliminate even momentary relief from monotony or treat workers as if professional labor should be all there is to their lives, or the allowance and expectation that they might need random, short breaks to relax and regain energy, perhaps even to stay alert about major personal events?  If any employer thinks the first kind of intention behind a policy is likely to engender attachment to a job, they have only made assumptions on the basis of personal convenience or whatever other egoists might have erroneously told them is true.  They would also be ignoring how constant professional productivity can impede productivity.  An exhausted or frustrated employee might burn out or withdraw their efforts.

The only form of productivity that could truly matter itself is productivity in discovering, focusing on, or celebrating logical truths, metaphysical realities, and moral obligations, and the workplace is nothing by comparison to these things.  Even so, the demand for workers to remain invested in their tasks, still have something to do, and do so with an outward cheerfulness even if it is illusory is idiotic at best.  The dealings of the workplace almost never overlap with pursuing things that actually matter in themselves, and yet there is only so much a given person can consistently accomplish with or without the occasional opportunity to use a phone to reply to a loved one or confirm plans or some other such thing.

Some employers assume that allowing this means it would be misused and no work would be completed.  This does not follow, and even if it occurred, it would not be because of the policy, but because of how individual employees handle it.  They might also assume that technology is only useful or good to the extent it serves the company profit or their own personal ends, rather than the ends of anyone else.  Other possible assumptions could include the belief that workers are less important than owners/managers or that their lives have less turbulent or significant things happening in them.  These are assumptions, yes.  They are also demonstrably false by logical necessity or it can be proven, in the case of the latter ones, that they are unprovable.  It would be impossible to believe them for any reason other than assumptions or anti-truth apathy or emotionalism because they are wrong or unverifiable.