Telecommuting

I worked from home Friday, and I surprised myself. At other jobs, when I've worked from home, there has always been something that distracted me from total focus on work. There was laundry that needed doing, or a package that needed to go to the Post Office, or grout that needed to be scrubbed with an old toothbrush. Anything but work.

Friday, though, I had to stay home to wait for the towing company to call me.

I had a '96 Mercury Villager with 248,000 miles on it, and it died. I decided on a Toyota Echo as a replacement vehicle for the gas mileage (44mpg hwy) and price ($10,000 base price), signed up at Costco so I could use their car-buying service, only to be told by the Toyota dealer they sent me to that Toyota doesn't make the Echo anymore. That was already Plan B (Plan A was another minivan, but fat chance on my being able to afford one). Tried the nearest Toyota dealer's used cars for an Echo, and they had one with high miles and a 5-speed stick for almost as much as a new one would have cost and the dealer was making signals that they wouldn't budge on the price.

Went to the next-closest Toyota dealer's used cars. No Echos on the lot. Try the Camry; we'll come down from the sticker price. I drove it, liked it until I saw that it had 114,000 miles. Hmmm. As I was pulling back into the lot, I spotted a Mercury Villager sitting out in front. "What about that one?" It was an advertised special that, after tax & license, came to less than the cost of putting a remanufactured engine in my old Villager. And it only had 64,000 miles. I took it.

The leather on the driver's seat was ripped, but I noticed the seat setup was identical to my old minivan, which was still sitting at the Ford dealer, where I left it when they gave me the sticker shock over the projected repair costs. So I took the new one down to the Ford dealer so they could swap the seats from one van to the other (for a fee). Once that was done, I called a local wrecking yard to come and take the old one away. Which was why I was working from home Friday.

Other than stopping to make tea (which I do at work) and to let Abby outside once in a while (which I don't do at work), I stayed focused on getting my work done. Run stuff. Send it the printer so it would be ready for me for Monday. Check emails for answers to my questions so I could do more work. I finished everything that I would have finished if I had been at work.

Impressive. Surprising. Food for thought, since the company reimburses people who telecommute (not sure how or how much). But traditionally, our group's management has wanted to see warm bodies sitting at their desks during normal work hours (although they're happy if they also see you signed on from home after normal work hours).

The only problem I see with a telecommuting arrangement is that I didn't blog at lunchtime Friday, because I was working through my lunch hour so I'd have as much work done as possible before the tow truck guys called. It was a different mindset at home.

Regardless, I think I might start making noises about working from home one day a week and see if anything hits the fan.