The journey
Getting there and back
The journey as a line in the ledger rather than a background condition, set against the part of the day that required the room.
Days this part is about, hour by hour
Tuesday, the first week
1 of 7One hour that had been going round in writing for a fortnight
Tuesday, the fifth week
0 of 7Wednesday, the fifth week
2 of 7three days · 21 hours logged · three of them were only possible there · one of the three days contained no such hour at all · three were made worse by being there
Three days, two of which repaid the journey and one of which did not.
The commute as a line in the ledger
Seventy-three hours and forty minutes in a quarter, treated as a background condition rather than a cost, and what happens when it is written down as a number.
Door to door is the only honest measure
Scheduled journey times understate the real one consistently and in one direction. How to measure it, and the three parts that always go missing.
Two hours and twenty-six minutes
The ratio of travel to hours that required the building, how it is calculated, and the four things that move it — only one of which is the number of days.
The journey nobody costs
The travel is paid by the employee in time and money, and appears in no account anywhere. What follows from a cost that is real and invisible at the same time.
What the travel buys, and what it does not
Four things the journey genuinely purchases, three it is assumed to purchase and does not, and how to tell which you are getting on any given day.
The day the trains were out
A two-hour-forty journey to a building that produced nothing, and the reason the day happened anyway.
Distance is not evenly distributed
The same three-day rule costs one person twenty minutes a day and another five hours a week. Who ends up at each end, and why it is rarely a coincidence.
When the travel is worth it
Four conditions, checkable the evening before, that between them predicted every good day in the quarter and none of the bad ones.