Gratitude Monday: working at home

After a couple of management meetings last week in which both our business unit SVP and the company CEO laid out the organization’s plans for allowing employees back in the office in a safe way, I came to a realization.

First off, they’ve said all along that they’re not letting people back in until they’re convinced that they can do so safely. That means extra cleaning, face masks (the head of HR placed an order for masks a couple of months ago; still no sign), social distancing, staggered seating, new rules about conference room use, no outside visitors. They have to plan for individual jurisdictions in a global setting and meet all local requirements.

I think it was the thing about offices in high rises and only two people allowed in an elevator car at a time that made the nickel drop. My office in the People’s Republic is on the fourth floor; I could walk up, but I wouldn’t be wild about it.

Also, the face masks. Of course I would wear one. But my glasses would fog up continually, and the notion of shouting into conference calls through the mask really did not appeal to me as a good-colleague effort.

However, it turns out that the entire company, and my unit in particular (where a good portion of staff were already WFH), have demonstrated that remote workers are as productive as on-site ones. They’ve assured us that no one will be required to return to an office setting until s/he is comfortable with that. (The SVP, who has five children, made the point that “if you’ve got a screaming toddler and you really want to come into the office to get your work done, when we’re ready, that’s fine.”)

My realization was that there’s no particular reason for me to go in, even though the office is only a mile away from my house. My manager moved to Portland, Oregon, two weeks ago. I appreciated having face-to-face meetings with him, but that’s no longer a thing. My team was already dispersed—Florida, Texas, California, Washington; now we’ll add Virginia and Oregon to the “remote” list. I’m not going back to the office for at least throughout this year, and maybe never.

Well, that being the case, I needed a somewhat more ergonomic setup than my laptop on my lap in an IKEA chair. Facilities was happy for me to take what I needed from the office—chair, monitor, docking station, etc. I just had to put in a facilities ticket. As I was doing that, I checked in with one of my office neighbors—different team, but two desks away. I do this once a week or so. She and I amped up the holiday workplace decoration competition last December when we gift-wrapped our area. Last I actually saw of her was on one of the Virtual Happy Hours, with a glam turban on her head and looking very Rita Hayworth.

Anyhow, she asked how it’s going with me, too, and when I said I was going to take home some office kit she offered to help. She has an SUV; I have a coupe. I hesitated, because I’m reluctant to put people out and I was anticipating a whole big deal about getting the docking station, keyboard, mouse and monitor bundled up. But then I thought it would be a grace to accept her kindness. And I did.

Well, as it happened, it took me all of five minutes to pull apart the docking station and toss everything but the monitor into an Amazon shipping box. By the time I’d done that, JS was there (bringing back one of her monitors because she’d bought her own back in March). Within about three minutes more, we were rolling the chair with the monitor on the seat out, and she had it into her SUV in no time.

Less than 15 minutes total, she wheeled the chair and monitor over my doorstep and was on her way. It was so much simpler than the Big Operation I’d envisioned. So easy, in fact. So easy.

I have to work out the arrangement—I want it where I can look out onto the bird feeders, but I also want the ability to roll it all away when I’m not working. But now I’m set for whatever comes, except for printing. But the up side of that is that I’m not consuming entire hectares of rain forest every week.

So I’m grateful my company supports the choices I make about my work location. I’m grateful I can set up in my house and carry on my work without a mask. And I’m very grateful for JS’s kind help in making this happen in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.