With spring approaching in the northern latitudes and days getting longer, management and I usually go for a walk around our village after work.
This used to be a mellow affair, commenting on the daffodils currently in full bloom, the explosion of green buds on bushes or flocks of birds returning to the woods for the warmer weather.
No longer. Management has now acquired a little gadget called a Fitbit and leisurely strolls have now been turned into a series of cellphone texts.
I kid you not. I had never heard of a Fitbit before, and I wish I hadn’t now.
Anyway, my first introduction to this new ‘fitness’ gadget was last week as we were walking around a golf course called Blue Mountain that sadly is going to be demolished to make way for a gazillion new homes when her cellphone bleeped a text alert. This happens often as management has lots of friends, so I paid no notice.
Five minutes later it bleeped again. Then again … and after about the fourth time I asked who was hassling her.
It was her Fitbit texting her exactly how many steps she had walked and how many more she needed to stride out to reach her daily goal of 10,000.
Even worse, when she got to 5,000 steps it bleeped to congratulate her and urged her to keep hanging in there for the next 5,000.
The next series of bleeps was my language being censored. I mean, who needs to be encouraged to put one foot in front of another on a glorious near spring evening with birds singing and flowers blooming?
Well, management does.
She now never goes anywhere without her Fitbit and even gleefully gives me updates about how many steps she walked at work that day. Like I care.
It gets even worse. She heard about Fitbit from a lovely couch-potato who was vaguely using one to count steps to the fridge and urged management to follow suit. They even linked up to each other’s gadgets to compare daily totals. Unfortunately for management, she also linked to a couple of other friends who are serious walkers and when she saw their daily tally, she immediately ‘unfriended’ them. She now is only linked to her non-athletic mate, enabling her to crow whenever she gets a higher step count. In other words, every day.
I suppose I should not be surprised as management is far happier receiving orders from robots than she is from me. For example her car, a Suzuki Swift, is fully computerised and incessantly flashes commands from the moment she gets in and doesn’t put her seatbelt on in a nano-second, to neglecting to change gear the exact instant her rev count gets high. Whereas my car, a Suzuki Jimny, doesn’t even blink a seatbelt light. I like that – it tells me it reckons that if I’m too stupid not to strap myself in, that’s my problem.
Anyway, I am now resigned to hearing more text alerts than bird chirrups during our walks. But I suppose I am getting off lightly. For example, management hasn’t (yet) signed up to the Fitbit apps that not only count your steps and patronisingly tell you to do better, they also manage your calorie intake, your water consumption, organise your meals and plot your weight. The more serious models even have motivational videos showing people with gorgeous bodies doing stuff that you too can do if you only listen to your Fitbit.
But worst of all, it can even monitor your sleep. One of management’s work colleague’s husband is a Fitbit fanatic and I’m told he often wakes up in the morning feeling as refreshed as a mountain creek.
Then he looks at his Fitbit. Bad news – it says he had a restless night. Suddenly he feels as exhausted as a marathon runner and the day hasn’t even yet begun.
So you will forgive me for sticking to my own body clock. If I wake up feeling beat, it means only one thing: too many brewskis the night before.
And I don’t need Fitbit to tell me that.