For most of the time that I have worked as a merchandiser for Pepsi, they have relied on the honesty of us merchandisers to report on the hours we have worked and that we have actually been in the stores we are supposed to have worked in. Obviously, this system lends itself to abuse, although I do not think we have had much of a problem in the Seymour area. Still, Pepsi has wanted to implement a more reliable system for some years now, the general idea being some sort of method in which we punch or scan ourselves in, at the various stores, etc. It wasn’t until last month that they finally got around to using such a system. They put up barcodes in each of the stores the merchandisers work in and we scan the codes when we enter or exit the store. The software they decided to use works on an Apple iPhone, and so they gave each of us an iPhone, with an unlimited data plan in order for the software to function correctly. Although these iPhones belong to Pepsi, we have been encouraged to treat them as our own, the only limit being that the plan they adopted only allows 300 minutes for phone calls, so we have been warned against making too many phone calls, and to text message whenever convenient. I suppose this generosity is to encourage us to actually use the phones to scan in and out, etc.
I would have to say that the iPhone is a really cool cell phone. It’s actually more like an electronic Swiss army knife than anything else I can think of. By that, I mean, that with the various applications, or app, you can actually use the iPhone for just about anything that involves information. There must be many thousands, perhaps millions, of app, a good many of them free. Among the apps that I have downloaded are an Amazon Kindle app that allows me to read all of the materials I have bought from Amazon, Olive Tree’s Bible Reader, WebMD, the Drudge Report app, WordPress (I can blog from the iPhone), some educational apps, and some fun apps.There are several apps that come with the iPhone, including YouTube,
I think that Pepsi has made a major mistake here. I now have the equivalent of a library and a home entertainment center in my pocket. I am not sure that such distractions are likely to improve my efficiency at work.
David's Commonplace Book 