“Aren’t you driving to work this morning? I didn’t hear your alarm go off.” My wife sleepily roused me from some dream where I was trying to navigate a maze that required me to move and dance the correct way at each station before I could move on. It felt like the dream had been looping through my head forever, and I was glad she woke me. I needed to be rescued from that maze.
I rolled over, grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand. There was faint light shining through the bedroom doorway, so I knew it was past the time I could get to work on time. One glance at my phone confirmed that. It was 6:25 AM, ninety minutes past my wake time and almost an hour past when I leave for work. When I commute to the office, it’s 70 miles, so I give myself plenty of time to get to work before the 7 AM start to my shift. The commute was not going to happen this morning. Thank goodness for work from home options. Rather than stress out, I resigned to work from home, slunk downstairs for my coffee and oatmeal before returning to my loft office to log in. I had to retrieve my backpack from my car, there because I am a planner. Before I went to bed last night, the work laptop and catalogs were packed up and placed in the back seat of my car. A saucepan filled with a cup of water was on the stove, a bowl, spoon, knife, banana, and honey next to the stove so I could add that half cup of oatmeal to the saucepan in the morning. My coffee cup was waiting on the Keurig, a few packets of Splenda in the cup and a fresh pod of dark roast coffee loaded in the coffee maker. Clothes, shoes, and medicine waited in the bathroom. All for naught. When I work from home, it’s shorts and tee shirt, no shower.
I did put on a hat and shave. Lisa also worked from home today. When we lived in our condo, it was not great for us to work from home on the same day. Now, we have a house that is large enough that we barely know the other is home. My home office is upstairs in our loft. Lisa works part of the time from the large overstuffed sectional on the main level, then retreats to our basement and her multi screen set up when she has meetings. We even take our lunch break at different times. Lisa needs quiet time for lunch, comes up and says hello and gives me a kiss, then retreats to sun herself on the patio.
I both like and dislike the idea of working from home 100 percent of the time. A large part of me loves the convenience and comfort of working from home. As it stands, company policy is work from home 50% of the time. My boss really doesn’t care how often I come to the office, as long as I am doing my job. That’s never going to be a problem from me. My metrics improve when I work from home, the distractions actually less at home than when I am in the office. I also need to see my coworkers now and then. I’m an extrovert, and I need to be around people. In addition, my title ends with ‘senior’ and I was hired with that title, the idea being that my age and experience would add stability to my team. I need to be an example, which means I need to honor the 50% work from home policy. My team is the best it has been in a long, long time and I would like to think I have contributed to that success by example. Our team currently has a 98% accuracy rate, is knocking our team metrics out of the park, and has remained a complete team for over a year. The rest of the company is responding with a trust that wasn’t there five years ago, when I was hired. We are getting noticed, and it’s pretty cool to see. Our boss is by far the best boss I have ever had, is technically proficient, is as genuine a person as I have ever met, and his own example is fueling our team success. Our company is on the verge of cracking the two billion dollar plateau, and our team is ready for the added responsibility a growing company provides.
With all this work talk, I am reminded that retirement is looming on the near horizon. My wife is less than two years from retirement. I am likely 4-5 years from that milestone. We’re beginning to prepare for what retirement life will be like, am trying to get a glimpse of what we are facing. It’s both exciting and scary. Before we know it, work from home will be 100%!!!!
shenrydafrankmann 