Tag Archives: telework

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

Posted on by

1. Lawn (work) envy. If there was ever a single sound that could get under my skin, it isn’t nails on a chalk board or the hi pitched whining of small human beings. The most awful of sounds is the sound of lawn maintenance happening somewhere next door when I’m working from home. No, I’m not mad that they’re doing it. I don’t feel interrupted or put upon at all. It’s mostly just a rising frustration that they’re able to get out there and do it while I’m stuck being more or less responsible and not able to take advantage of the good weather to do the same thing myself.

2. Calls from unknown or 800-number. By now you’d think your fancy algorithms would tell you that I’m not going to pick up. I never do. But I admire your hope-spings-eternal persistence. If you want to have any hope of getting my eyes on your product or service, try send me an old fashioned letter. I’ll at least scan the first line of that before shredding it… and every once in a great while I’ll read the pitch if you’ve got a good hook up front. Otherwise, feel free to continue going to voicemail. It’s entirely your choice.

3. Showing restraint. There’s really nothing worse than being forced by social convention to sit politely and try not to smirk when the person on the other side of a conversation so richly deserves being grabbed by the throat and pummeled against every flat surface in the room. No matter how much asshats like that deserve a bit of rough treatment, I’d be the one who ended up in jail for handing it out. Talk about living in an unjust world.

Training my life away…

Posted on by

I’m not a procrastinator by nature. I tend to want to jump in and get shit done just as soon as possible. The grand exception to this rule is the laundry list of online annual mandatory training opportunities that Uncle has decided are important. Many of them don’t change from year to year. The old ones never drop off and new ones are always being added by some good idea fairy lurking in the depths of the five sided lunatic asylum on the banks of the Potomac.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve put off doing this online training hell right up until the last possible minute. Usually that means sequestering myself for a few days before the end of the year to click through everything just before the end of the fiscal year and clear my name off the training officer’s naughty list.

I’m trying to turn over a new leaf and using part of my telework days to plow through these interminable classes two at a time. I don’t have a rhyme or reason for which ones I take other than working the list from top to bottom… but today turned out to be “drug and alcohol awareness day” at the online training farm.

After two hours of checking this particular box, I’m left to wonder how these dumbass training requirements don’t send us all down the path of reckless drug and alcohol use.

The new Monday…

Posted on by

Tuesday is the new Monday. There. I Said it.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago I use to dread the arrival of Sunday night and the end of the weekend. Now that Mondays are usually spent working from the comfort of home, Tuesday is the day that causes the most angst and consternation. Now that I’ve settled into the new Monday routine I’m even more starkly aware of just how cripplingly unproductive a day at the average office is.

The trouble with being an information worker is that so much of what you touch requires some amount of reflection and analysis. Concentration is pretty easy to come by when you’ve got views of the woods and the loudest sound is mid-morning trash collection across the street. It’s a much harder commodity to come by when you’re stacked shoulder to shoulder with 30 other people who are all having their own conversations, or are warming up their lunch, ignoring phones ringing, pushing reams of paper through the shredder, and making their way to and from meetings and appointments, or who are just away from their desks wandering around to pass the time.

Now I can be a pretty focused guy. When the need arises I can summon monumental amounts of concentration on one point to the exclusion of all else… but I’m starting to suspect that the need to do that all day, every day is a major contributing factor to why I drive away from the office four days a week feeling like someone has run my brain through a blender. Somehow I doubt seriously that’s part of the recipe for wise and effective analysis over the long term.

I know for a fact that isn’t not even a short term recipe for a happy and productive Jeff.

Work is work…

Posted on by

I’m still settling in to the whole idea of working from home. Not schlepping through the pre-dawn darkness to sit in a badly lit room with thirty other people doesn’t really suck. I like the view and my coworkers are appreciative of ear rubs and the occasional milkbone. Honestly it’s a whole lot of up side and not much down, at least so far.

It’s a learning process for sure and what I’ve learned this week is:

1. Dogs make the best coworkers. They’re content to find a convenient spot on the floor, preferably in the sun, and stay put until you want them for something.

2. Cats are attention-seeking little hoodlums who want to interrupt you 47 times a day. So basically, working while a cat is in residence is a lot like having actual human coworkers.

3. Happy hour begins promptly at 4:00. Getting that tasty beverage to start the evening an hour earlier is an awfully effective way to put a fork in Monday.

4. There’s something to be said for a lunch that doesn’t come out of a cooler bag / paper bag or from the hands of a sandwich artist.

5. The availability and freshness of the coffee / tea selection is way, way better. It’s hard to underestimate just how much better life is when you can fresh brew all day long.

I wish I could offer up something a little more insightful, but work is work no matter where it’s getting done. The best we can seem to hope for is improving the venue where we spend our eight hours.

Day 1…

Posted on by

Today was my first telework day in over a decade. I learned (or maybe re-learned) a few things:

1. When no one comes by your desk to talk, even with distractions of social media, animals, and an enormous killer snow storm bearing down on you, you can cram more work into two hours than you often get done in eight hours at the cube farm.

2. For years I’ve been blaming my work-issued laptop for being an antiquated, slow piece of junk. As it turns out, the computer isn’t the problem. Even on my out-at-the-end-of-the-road Comcast network connection, the thing is a veritable speed demon. So starting today, I’ll officially be blaming the network people for allowing us to creep along like we’re still using dial-up.

3. When they blow stuff up on the north range, I can hear it at my house. I’m fairly sure I knew that already, but it’s still satisfying to have an answer to “what the hell is that thumping” when the dogs start barking for no obvious reason.

4. Daytime television really is awful. I left the TV in the kitchen tuned in to the local news as background noise… but lord, the filler the run between the 12:00 news and close of business at 5:00 is just well and truly bad.

5. Working in fuzzy slippers and sweats is nice, but I’m going to enjoy it a lot more when I can help keep the world safe for democracy from the comfort of the back porch.

Breaching the firewall…

Posted on by

For most of the last five or six years I’ve worked to build up a firewall between home and office. They were the twin streams in my life that must never, every cross. Today, with a few strokes of the pen, I’ve started the process to un-make that bulwark and let the two halves scrape past one another a bit more closely. Actually, that’s not accurate. I’ve given work a written invitation to conduct a wholesale invasion of Fortress Jeff.

That sounds more dire than it probably is since all I’ve really done is start the wheels in motion to get approval for working from home one day a week. As much as I value the hard wall of separation between home and office, the hard math isn’t on my side. Once I ran the numbers, finding that tucking myself in to my home office once a week would save me almost 40 hours a year of commuting time it makes the thing a bit of a no brainer, really.

I did the whole working from home thing years ago and I’m well aware of its virtues, particularly when it comes time to really study an issue and give it the mental once over without Chatty Cathy in the next cube spending the whole day in your ear. Plus, although my colleagues are decent enough (mostly), chalking up at least one day of the week where two dogs, a cat, and a tortoise are my officemates sounds preferable in just about every way.

We’re going to take this idea out for a bit of test drive starting (probably) sometime this month… but I’m not making any promises. As much as I’d like to spend another day at home, letting the office creep into the sanctum sanctorum may be a bridge too far.

I’d be there by now…

Posted on by

As I sat down at my laptop this morning at 6:15, it occurred to me that if telework were a thing we could do on a regular basis, I’d be at work by now rather than just sitting here waiting for the body shop to open at 8AM. I could have worked for two hours, taken an early lunch to deal with the truck, and still gotten in a full 8 hours before my usual quitting time. Instead, I’ll do a little writing, drop of the truck, take a few hours of vacation time, and work about half as much as I would on a normal day.

As a former supervisor, I’m well acquainted with the challenges of working with people spread out all over the countryside. It’s tough, but with the right people it’s eminently doable – where there’s the will to make the extra effort. Of course where there isn’t the will, you end up with a lot of arcane rules that make telework something you have to beg for once a year rather than a regular part of your workweek… and I’m sure you can all guess how I feel about begging for anything, let alone begging for something that would make me a better, more productive employee. I’ll lead the horse to water, but it’s going to have to decide to drink all on it’s own.

Limited (dis)agreement…

Posted on by

So let me get this straight. You want me to sign a “limited telework agreement” that basically says management can tell me to work from home any time it’s convenient for them (i.e. whenever the office is closed due to some outside condition like snow, hurricane, or wildfire). In return, they may possibly consider allowing me to work from home a few days a year on days when I would usually take some kind of leave (i.e. dthe cable guy coming to fix the TV). I hope you’ll forgive me if I don’t jump at the opportunity to sign on for something that’s a whole lot of upside for management, but that gives me pretty much nothing in return.

Oh, and just in case you were considering signing up for the program, you’re signed agreement will give your employer the right to come into your home to inspect for “safety”. Sure that will probably never happen, but even knowing it’s possible is more than a little creepy; a creep factor that I’d be willing to deal with if it were for a regularly scheduled day where I’d get to read memos and build PowerPoint decks while wearing my fuzzy slippers and sitting at my kitchen table. It’s not a creep factor I’m willing to get onboard with just to have the privilege of working the next time we get snow deep enough to make the roads too hazardous to get to the office. Honestly, if it’s so bad that I consider coming to work a hazard to life or limb, I’ll go ahead and exercise the unscheduled leave option if the powers that be are too hardheaded to close up shop for the day.

For me, it’s a simple fact of living in the 21st century: Telework is either a good program or it’s not. It’s something worth doing right or it’s not. For an organization that does business in 100+ countries to say that individual productivity depends on sitting in a cube so people have physical access to them is farcical… or it would be farcical if they weren’t so serious when they said it. I’ve been at it long enough to know that you don’t gain a damned thing from swimming against the tide. I’m not going to wage war for the sanctity of telework and I’m certainly not going to fall on my sword for it, but the chance of my signing a “limited” agreement are somewhere between slim and none.

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.

Banker’s hours…

Posted on by

I thought that one of the perks of not being a supervisor would be qualifying for some kind of alternative work schedule… you know, the deal where you work nine hour days and get every other Friday off kind of thing. Years ago at the start of my career I worked at a site that ran ten hour days Monday through Thursday. Every week was a three day weekend. I have to admit that there’s something to be said for that schedule. Yesterday, though, I took a pass on the chance to get on board with the every other Friday off schedule. I always figured I’d jump on the opportunity for “free” days off, but I didn’t and here’s my rational:

1. I’ve become a morning person by default. I’m more productive between the hours of 8-11 AM than I am the rest of the day. My least productive time of the day tends to be between 2-4 PM. Tacking on another hour after that doesn’t seem to be a value proposition for anyone. Now if they’d let me start the day around 6AM, we might be on to something, but that doesn’t seem likely.

2. If I leave on time, even in the depths of winter, I get 30-45 minutes of daylight in the evenings. It doesn’t sound like much, but for my money there’s little worse than driving to work in the dark and arriving home in the dark. In December, those few minutes of light every day are worth more to me than extra days off (seriously).

3. The only “alternative” I’m really interested in is telework. I had a good run with telework back in the day and found working from the kitchen table, five feet from the coffee pot to be probably my most productive day of each week. That probably has something to do with being out of sight and out of mind. It’s a great way to sit down once a week and focus on something without that cacophonous roar of people yelling over the top of cubicles at each other.

4. Being a single father, there’s only so many hours I can stay away before something bad happens… like the kids staging a jail break, eating the couch, and turning the floor into an open sewer. Since they’re pretty well trained at keeping themselves entertained for 10 hours, trying to change up a system that works seems like a bad idea. That’s just a layer of additional stress that I don’t need to inject into the environment.

So yeah, I’m going to take a pass on the alternative work schedule for the time being and just be happy keeping banker’s hours.

Telework…

Posted on by

In theory, telework is a brilliant idea. Disaggregating your workforce to hundreds of different locations means your not necessarily subject to a single point of failure that could shut down operations. Power out at the home office? No problem. Half the workforce can log in from home, Starbucks, Nevis, or really any place with an internet connection. It’s the kind of idea that give planners a warm fuzzy when faced with how to prepare for typhoons, earthquakes, or terrorists bent on leveling your building. It’s one of those things that’s probably more brilliant in concept than in reality. On the whole, I tend to think most people generally want to do the right thing most of the time. But how many of your average employees are going to be able to resist the temptations that face them when they’re working from home or some other location – throw in a quick load of laundry, change the baby’s diaper, or making just a quick trip to the supermarket. I mean after all, no one will know you’re gone and you’ll be right back anyway. No harm no foul, right?

As an employee, I love the idea of telework if for no other reason than the very idea that being tethered to a desk eight hours a day equals a productive work week. The technology available has moved us beyond the need for dedicated office space for a great many kinds of work. Human nature being what it is, though, I suspect most people might just be more productive if they have someone looking over their shoulder from time to time… but personally, I’d rather sit at home in my fuzzy slippers and get eight hours of work done in three and call the rest of the day “research.”

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of posts previously available on a now defunct website. They are appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.