Public Transport Break

It's not uncommon to bemoan smokers who you work with - and particularly their breaks to feed their addiction. It is unfair, the nicotine-free cry, that because of this filthy habit they have the luxury of taking a 5 minute break every hour or two.

Leaving to one side how this is often utterly irrelevant, that smokers will often make up that time and that non-smokers will dawdle just as much over making a cup of coffee on an hourly basis - but I noted to Chrissi this evening that public transport users have a similar effect without anyone noticing.

Today I was at a meeting, and as I am still in the process of learning to drive I was attending by public transport. This meant a bus to a train to a bus, leaving my home at 10:55 to get to my destination for a 12:00 meeting. The return journey meant I left my meeting at 13:30 and arrived home at 14:45 - which is not too shabby for public transport involving multiple connections. However, I was close enough that had I been able to drive, it would have taken me a mere 25 minutes each way - and if we allow that I would not have cut it so fine and would have allowed myself an additional 15 minutes on the way there, we still notice that my 2 hours and 20 minutes of public transport greatly exceeds the 1 hour and 5 minutes that the trip would have taken by car.

Now, as this meeting was at such an annoying time I effectively missed my lunch break, grabbing a sandwich at my laptop when I returned home - but the point is still valid that it was still a huge additional use of time. So I won't be picking on any smoking breaks for a while.