Don't Try This at Home

I'm sitting at my desk the other day, and my assistant buzzes. “Your 3:30 is here,” she says.

“Who?”

“Bob Botnick.”

“Send him in,” I say.

Bob’s worked for me in some capacity for a few years. I don’t know exactly what he does, but he’s always at his desk, nose in a spreadsheet. I like that. And Notfinger, whom I really trust, seems to respect him.

“Hey,” says Bob, as he enters and sits. “Well,” he continues, and then stops.

“Go ahead, Bob,” I say, thinking about how careful you have to be when you warm a pint of ice cream in the microwave so that it doesn’t melt all over the turntable. I’ve found that 30 seconds exactly will do it; any more and it turns to soup. But Bob is talking.

“ . . . working from home, for the most part” is all I catch.

“Pardon me, Bob?”

“I was saying,” Bob continues, “that I’ve been thinking about the possibility of working primarily from home, using existing telecommuting technology to become even more productive and effective.”

“Working from home?”

“Yes,” says Bob, warming to his task. “With the new digital video hookups and conference-call capabilities, I think I could actually do my job better.”

Telecommuting. That idea again. As always, when I hear the word, the following thoughts go through my mind, pretty much concurrently.

THOUGHT #1  WHY DOESN’T THIS GUY BELIEVE HE NEEDS TO BE AT THE OFFICE?
I know I do. If I’m not in by 8:30, I feel like I’m missing something crucial that could bite me in the ass before noon. I have a cup of coffee at my desk. I wade into the scene with a few phone calls. I see who’s in and who’s not. I read the newspaper and check the stock futures online. Pretty soon things to do start to accrue, simply because I’m there, you know? Haven’t you ever noticed that when you’re away from your office for a period of time, the volume of business activity declines, slowly at first and then more rapidly? The energy you bring to the workplace actually attracts work. If you’re not there, the spirit moves down the hall to some other, more ambitious soul. What would it be like to never really be there? And why does this fellow want that?

THOUGHT #2  DOESN’T HE LIKE TO BE AROUND HERE? IS IT SOMETHING ABOUT US THAT HE CAN’T STAND? Doesn’t he enjoy seeing me? I’m his boss. Doesn’t he think that part of his job is to hang around, suck up a little, inform me of things, bring me tidbits, and mosey out for a drink after work occasionally? Is his job all about his function and nothing more? Aren’t we fun to be around? I’ve always thought that we have a lot of laughs. My people like me. Don’t they? I wonder how many of them would take the option of working from home if I offered it. Maybe more of them. Maybe nobody likes me. Maybe this guy sitting in front of me is a living reminder that I’m not as popular as I think. Screw him!

THOUGHT #3  WHAT’S HE LOOK LIKE IN HIS PAJAMAS? Out, damned thought! I’ll bet he just paddles around his place in big, ugly boxer shorts and a ripped T-shirt, doing whatever it is he does with nobody watching. If he has a video conference call, he probably dresses only from the waist up. What a dork.

THOUGHT #4  WOULD I LIKE COMMUTING TO MY LIVING ROOM EACH MORNING? One of the greatest pleasures of working life, particularly when you have small children who don’t sleep at night, is to move to the quiet of your office, hunker down, do work, have lunch, think thoughts. I see people at the restaurant where I eat lunch, and I can tell they get dressed only to attend that meal. The rest of the day, it’s a bathrobe and slippers. I don’t think I’d like to wake up at 6 a.m., check e-mail, have some Special K, honk the phone, and then listen to silence until lunchtime.

Will this guy’s wife come in around 11 and ask him to go to the post office? Will he have to do it? What about in the afternoon? When would I start drinking? Probably around 5:00, 5:30 . . . except if it was raining and nothing was going on. Then I’d have a beer with lunch maybe, all by myself sitting at the kitchen table, and then another, and then I’d be drunk on my ass by midafternoon and take a huge nap until dinnertime. After 6 months, I’d weigh 300 pounds, and my wife would be threatening to leave me unless I checked into rehab. I don’t want to go to rehab! Why does Bob want to go to rehab?

THOUGHT #5  ISN’T THERE A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TALKING TO SOMEBODY ON AN ELECTRONIC LINKUP AND BEING THERE IN PERSON?
I was at a meeting a few days before. It was a very big gathering, with high-level players from around the world. Corporate staff were in attendance; also lots of financial types. One executive was on vacation with his family and called in on our multimillion-dollar audio system. He sounded like he was talking through Swiss cheese. “Ug buh eck,” he said. “Very important to snzz whrrr bezanger.”

“I tell you what, Frank,” the chairman finally said to him. “Send us that information in an e-mail.” Then we said goodbye and the meeting continued. We all love Frank, so it didn’t hurt him, but what if this was the kind of thing he pulled all the time? After a while, wouldn’t we just forget to tell Frank we were meeting? I know exactly what happens to guys who aren’t in the big meeting. People talk about them. Doesn’t Bob realize that? What a moron!

THOUGHT #6  DOESN’T THIS GUY HAVE ANY AMBITION? Every promotion I’ve ever gotten was because somebody liked what I did and found me indispensable to them. The very definition of a dispensable employee is one whose function can be replicated elsewhere. How can you prove you’re not fungible without being present? And why doesn’t this seem to matter to Bob? There must be something missing from his character . . . something that I usually look for in people I want to work closely with and promote. In fact, why didn’t I see this piece missing in Bob all along? Hmmm.

THOUGHT #7  PERHAPS TECHNOLOGY HAS CHANGED A LOT, AND HIS SUGGESTION ACTUALLY MAKES SENSE. But wait! I’ve attended splendiferous video conference calls in recent years. They were stilted, abbreviated, tedious affairs, nothing like a real meeting. I know there are creative companies that have entire rooms that replicate a real meeting environment. I’ve seen them. They’re very impressive. The boss who runs the company is still down the hall in the corner office, though. There is that.

And beyond that? Video, schmideo. It’s still a stupid conference call. They put me to sleep.



THOUGHT #8  WHAT’S HIS REAL AGENDA? Maybe Bob is sick of working so hard. Maybe his wife wants him to be home more. Maybe he’s already been doing other stuff for 6 hours a day and wants nobody to find out about it. Maybe he’s got a goat in the garage that he wants to fondle every noontime before lunch.

I’ll tell you one thing: It’s mysterious. I hate mysterious. I hate not knowing what people are up to, particularly when they don’t want me to. Maybe he’s working for the competition! What do I actually know about this fellow, really? What do any of us know about each other, when you get right down to it? You know what you see. What you don’t see, you don’t know. So everything I’m going to know about this wanker will come over an electronic hookup? That really sucks!

THOUGHT #9  DO I HONESTLY CARE IF I DON’T GET TO SEE THIS JOKER EVERY DAY?
Know what? I don’t. Not if he doesn’t want to see me! In fact . . .

THOUGHT #10  WHY AM I EVEN BOTHERING TO LISTEN TO THIS? Good question. Get this guy out of my sight.

“So, Bob,” I say, after a pause in which all of the above notions rocket around my brain. “I suppose we could work something out. I’ll be looking at your numbers even more carefully than usual, of course. But I see no reason why I can’t accommodate your request.”

“Thanks,” says Bob. He departs, leaving me alone to think about who I’ll hire to replace him. It won’t be hard. I’ll just look for someone who wants to show up for work every day.

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But if you must...

HOW TO WORK FROM HOME WITHOUT SCREWING UP YOUR CAREER

Step 1  Negotiate expectations. Your boss may be okay with your working from home, but now comes the tough part: making your pitch to a more skeptical audience—your coworkers. “It’s vital that your colleagues understand what you’ll be doing, why you’ll be doing it from home, and what they can expect from you each day, week, month, and year,” says Dawn Carlson, Ph.D., an associate professor of management at Baylor University and coauthor of Beyond Juggling: Rebalancing Your Busy Life. You want to be as transparent as possible. “Make sure you put everything in writing,” suggests Carlson.

Step 2  Requisition the best equipment. Employers are often tempted to give secondhand equipment to people working at home, says Gregory Stephens, Ph.D., an associate professor and chairman of the department of management at Texas Christian University. But telecommuters should really have the best technology, he says, because it’s much harder for them to request and receive technical support.

Step 3  Schedule spontaneous communication. Pick a point person and check in with him or her by phone several times a day, says Stephens. No matter how hard you’re working, many coworkers—and maybe even your boss—will assume you’re playing Solitaire all day long. Checking in routinely will at the very least reduce the jealousy and snarkiness, Stephens says.

Step 4  Make sure your office has a crappy view. Set up a separate space, away from the household hubbub. “My office is a converted dining room that faces out the front of the house,” Stephens says. “I keep the blinds down, because I don’t want my neighbors to see me and come knocking on my door. Likewise, I don’t want to see them and be lured outside.”

Step 5  Show your face often. Successful telecommuters visit the mother ship regularly, even if it’s not necessary for a work project to be completed, says Paul M.A. Baker, Ph.D., who studies telecommuting as the director of research for the center for advanced communications policy at Georgia Tech. “Marketing is a big part of any job. When you work from home, that doesn’t happen automatically. You have to really make the effort.”

TED SPIKER