I was working for a company by Heathrow Airport. This one evening I was finishing something up and I was still there at about, it must have been just before six or seven, something like that. Suddenly everybody had stopped work and they were all standing by the window and I said “What’s going on?â€? They said, “Look, you’ve never seen this.” I went “What?” And they said “Oh, this is why we stay late.”
And I went up to the windows with them and Concorde took off and it was extraordinary. I’ve never seen anything like it, just in terms of “Wow! This is what human beings can do.” The noise, even through sound-proof buffers, windows it’s incredible, you can feel everything vibrating and you can see it take off and when it took off at night, you could just see these huge blue flares of jets out the back and it took off and when it had gone and cleared the horizon you could hear the car alarms all going off in the car park outside.
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We were there on the last time that Concorde landed. We had the best view of anybody to see all three of those Concordes come in. We had a massive party and it was, it was really sad and it still feels to me like somehow we’ve taken such a step back there that we no longer have supersonic flight, when [PAUSE] I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference any more.
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It was such a beautiful machine, you know. So that’s my most memorable moment from being there. That and being asked at half past five to finish something that took me there until ten. Going in the next day absolutely exhausted and going “I’m going home at 3” and the Project Manager said “No, you can’t do that.” And I said “Okay, the next time you ask me to stay working until 10 o’clock on a short notice, I’m going to say no.” And they let me go at three, which was good because I was shattered.
But yeah, if you’re going to ask people to stay late give them a little bit of notice, appreciate that they may have other plans, I don’t mind staying late any more and frequently do, but I’ve learnt what sustainable pace means as well. It’s okay to pull a 43, 44 hour week, it’s okay even to pull a 47 hour week. It’s not okay to do it every week, you don’t work well then.
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