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Work from home I like my job. It’s the one-hour commute I don’t like. On the Wednesday I teleworked from home, I slept in an extra hour and was working forty-five minutes before I’d normally arrive at my desk. When I’d worked at home before, my oldest daughter couldn’t figure out why daddy wasn’t coming downstairs to play. She kept calling for me and coming upstairs into the office, breaking my concentration. So this time, I picked a day when I had the house all to myself. I was editing sections of the Savvy, so I saved those documents to a USB memory key. E-mailing the stories to myself would have worked just as well. To access my city e-mail from home, I logged onto cohowa.cityofhouston.net/exchange/logon.asp. I typed in the same user name I use on my work computer, then entered the server name (to find this, contact IT) and my password. Now, I had access to all 238 messages in my work inbox. The one hitch in my carefully laid remote-work plans is that I couldn’t figure out how to forward my calls to my cell phone. So, every hour I called my voice mail. Eight times I called, and I only had one message. I later discovered the city doesn’t allow call forwarding outside the city network because of the possibility of toll fraud. But next time I’ll use Audix option 6, which calls my cell phone when someone leaves a message on my voice mail. Almost as good, unless the person calling is leaving right away. The phone problem illustrates one of the drawbacks I discovered with remote work. I felt disconnected from my co-workers and limited in what I could do. I guess that’s because I don’t have everything there with me. Just what I brought home. What if I’d needed that folder on a story I’d written in the fall 2004 City Savvy? I imagine that’s a problem that would increase if I worked home multiple days. I worked more than I would have in the office. I only took a half hour lunch, and I worked well past 5 p.m., determined to finish my editing before the family got home. If I’d been at work, I would’ve reluctantly left the editing unfinished because of the long commute home. However, in many ways, this is the most inflexible of the flextime schedules. You still owe the city eight hours of honest work. This isn’t something to do to create time for a doctor’s appointment or hang up pictures. You have work to do, and you have to prioritize it so you get it done before your family comes home. That requires real dedication. But you’re reading this, and the rest of the spring 06 City Savvy. So, I guess I found that dedication. Now, I think I’ll take a break and play some Xbox. |
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