24/7 Customer Service

In this blog, I want to explain why sometimes I like it when my phone runs out of battery, data, signal, whatever.

It's no secret that people who are self employed have to be on top of their emails and messages, as failure to attend to them can lead to loss of work. But I'm starting to wonder if there is a line as to how accessible you are...

For example: I think that it's probably fair enough to be annoyed at someone for leaving it 3 days to respond to a simple message asking for your availability for a gig. In that situation, all you need is a yes or a no; in theory, you should be able to reply to this as soon as you've looked at your diary, or sent a message to someone else asking about it. But sometimes you get out of a rehearsal / your car after a long drive / off stage after a set and your phone has blown up with notifications, and then you have to justify what you've been doing as to your slow reply. I don't think that's as fair.

Maybe this is a result of technology moving forward so much, people are now contactable 24 hours a day if needs be. This is really great news as information can travel quicker than ever before, however, it means that there's rarely a moment where my phone is out of sight out of mind, for fear of losing out on potential work. I sometimes question what it would have been like to operate as a freelance musician back when my idols were doing great things maybe 30, 40 years ago. Obviously back when the internet, mobile phones and tablets were a myth or a dream. "Hey Pino, you ready for another take?" "One second, I've just got to reply to this group whatsapp message about a rehearsal next week." I can't picture it.

Of course, I say 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But I don't mean that. Owing to my body clock being a bit messed up, I'm often awake when people are sleeping and vice versa. There have been a couple of times where I've got in late at night from a gig and been woken up by a phone call the next morning at a bit of an embarrassing hour. People have asked "Sorry have I just woken you up?" and I lie and say that I've got a cold. So I hardly operate during business hours and the "working day" so to speak. I'm an advocate of the idea that it's ok to still be asleep at 10am, if you only got to sleep 5 hours before that. But with the instant contact thing, people don't know that. I hope that it doesn't come across as unprofessional.

And sometimes it sounds bad, but when you are abroad, or doing festivals and stuff, it can be nice when your phone runs out of battery. There might not be anywhere to charge it, let alone use it. So you submit to the idea that you're disconnecting from the grid. You can actually get on with seeing what's around you, really experiencing everything that's going on without feeling an underlying anxious feeling that you should be communicating with someone to get the job done. And you can be one less person with their phone in the air watching The Darkness do their thing.

In my opinion, this is what can lead to people burning out. Really pushing the boat out. Burning the candle at both ends. (OK I'll stop with those) If you're always contactable, do you ever switch off? Even on holiday, or when you're visiting your parents, the messages still come through, and I always feel compelled to respond as soon as I can for fear of getting a bad name associated with poor communication skills, or being unprofessional; although it can often be quite rude to just drop everything and answer the phone, or send a long complicated email or whatever. I can't be the only person to think like this. It's always good for people to be getting in touch with you to ask for your skills, but sometimes it does get quite tiring.

Apply below for the job of my PA, I'll consider all CVs, I can't pay any money, because, well you know how it is.

Al