Counting My Time

Outaservice

The Society reports millions of hours spent in the field service yearly. When you were active did you follow theocratic instructions carefully and faithfully?

Did you stop for a coffee break and keep your time going? (Or possibly breakfast)

Did you stop and look at Used Car lots while continuing to count time.

Did you start your time at the Kingdom Hall or when you were suppose to, at the first door you got someone home?

If you got 2 hours and 45 minutes in, did you round it off to 3 hours?

If things were like our congregation, I believe you could honestly count 15 minutes of actual preaching for every 3 hours put in! Were we the only ones like this?

Outaservice (counting his time right now)

AlmostAtheist

I usually started my time when the first person in my group made their first attempt to reach someone. So the first door, generally.

If I (or someone in my group) gave a tract to the person running the yard sale, I kept my time going. ;-)

If a coffee break was really just a coffee break and not "brunch", I kept my time going.

And of course, if I made a call on one side of the territory, then drove 45 minutes across the territory to another call, I counted all that time.

Agreed -- time spent in actual preaching is only a tiny fraction of the hours turned in.

Dave

I was always honest with my time. Although reasonable. I always thought that people who would "start their time" and "end thieir time" were trying to trick God. I thought that was probably a bad thing to do - you know, he tends to get pissed off pretty easy.

By that I mean people would go out and knock on one door before meeting for service (most likely a door that they thought nobody would be home). But this first knock was the key to "starting time". After that - they could have a cup of coffee and then go to the meeting for service. Repeat the same procedure but in reverse when finishing up. This gives you an extra hour or two each day. And between these times - you can do your grocery shopping, laundry, whatever. God never caught on. Sucker.

Those people were regular pioneering, and I could only manage to aux pioneer because I was being honest about my time (while going to school, and working part time to pay for gas). I was knocking on more doors than them, but they looked down on me for being "spiritually weak" because I was only an auxillary, not a "real" pioneer. I'm still a bit bitter from that whole thing.

Honesty

When you were active did you follow theocratic instructions carefully and faithfully? NO

Did you stop for a coffee break and keep your time going? (Or possibly breakfast) YES. Breakfast was counted as a RV if I ate at the same resurant more than once.

Did you stop and look at Used Car lots while continuing to count time. I test drove 'em too.

Did you start your time at the Kingdom Hall or when you were suppose to, at the first door you got someone home? My time started before I left the house. I called my next door neighbor on the phone because I knew he would be at work.

If you got 2 hours and 45 minutes in, did you round it off to 3 hours? I rounded off 1 hour and 45 minutes to 3 hours.

WTWizard

When I was active and serious, I was quite honest with my time and played by the rules. Typically, if I worked 2 1/2 hours, I would round down to 2 hours and carry the extra half hour for the next time. If it was at the end of the month, I truncated the fraction instead of bumping it up. As for starting my time, I would always call it 9:30 AM or 1:30 PM, just to be consistent and to avoid the panic to knock on just one door to get it started.

Toward the end, I would put in dummy service. That is, I would take a walk around a block, purposely avoiding people, with my magazines hanging out, and call that an hour of field circus. I found the route that was guaranteed to be totally fruitless--and made that my hour of field circus a couple of times. I didn't give a fxxx how weak I was in the cancer. Eventually, I put in my last 2 hours and didn't even bother to go to the Kingdumb Hell to report it (it wasn't worth it to go to a boasting session for two lousy hours). After that, nothing.

Witness 007

Pioneer rules: 1. Always leave a magazine with the 7/11 guy or some random letterbox to start time before the group.

2.Call on other friends studies to "encourage" them.

3.Do odd jobs during Witnessing {pay bills, etc}

4.Eat in the car....or leave tracts at Mcdonalds.

5.Drop a magazine in a letterbox near your home.

Robert7

Did anyone take advantage of the 4-hour per month time you get for 'instructing your child'? We were told since you spend time instructing your children, you can count 4 hours per month. This was 4 hours total no matter how many children. Didn't matter, since I didn't really believe anything that strongly, I didn't study with the kids, so it was free time :)

So my wife and I split that, so I was guaranteed 2 hours each month, to stay 'active'. Add another 2 hours with 1 day of service when I went out even though I didn't want to.

Now, when we were out, we spent at most 1 1/2 hours of actual time, and the rest on break. The actual time was inefficient, usually calls. Then I'd round it up to 2 hours.

mouthy

After kids left for school would stand on the corner of subway holding up the mags.( this is before

I had to go to work when ordered by bro?& hubby) Until 9 a.m when we could now knock on the doors.Yes I counted my time faithfully .
I also added extra work on with out putting the time in because I knew some who would put the WT in the car window & count time as soon as it appeared in the window. They counted time for that. I felt that was cheating --so worked extra time with out counting it. Yes I was very JUDGEMENTAL