Work From Home Evolution

Before COVID, I worked from home on most Wednesdays. This really worked well because I was able to take my father to doctor appointments and then work late to makeup time without having to battle traffic.

Occasionally, though, there would be Wednesdays without doctor appointments and I would work in my pajamas until lunch time, then take a shower and get dressed. I called them pajama days, and while they were few and far between, they were glorious.

When the pandemic struck and we were all told to work from home, I started out with every day being a pajama day. A funny thing happened, though, as the weeks rolled by: I started to shower and get dressed before I started to work.

Not dressed as in presentable to leave the house. Dressed in workout clothing. No makeup, nothing done with my hair--just washed and let to air dry--and slippers. This is my new favorite way to work.

Now at lunch time, I put on my tennis shoes, walk for however long I have scheduled in my planner (usually half an hour), and when I'm done, I put my slippers back on and go back to work. I love wearing slippers. I don't know how I'll handle having to wear real shoes all day after this.

A few guys in my department are eager to get back to the office, but while I miss my coworkers, I don't share this desire. The most important reason is COVID. My father lives with me, and because of his age, he's in the high risk category. I want him safe!

That's the biggest and most important reason, but I also like sleeping longer and having my commute be from one side of the house to the other. And slippers. Maybe I'll have to keep my slippers in my desk at work and put them on when I get there.

The Work From Home Blues

I work from home one day a week. I'm very grateful that my company/department allows me to do this because 1) gas and 2) I hate driving in Atlanta so much. I normally work from home the same day each week barring appointments and my coworkers know this. I also try to handle anything that might crop up the day before so that nothing explodes while I work from home.

However, pretty much every week on the day I'm working from home, at least one of my guys blows up my 1) email 2) instant messenger 3) phone 4) all of the above. Almost every week. For real.

It happened again this past Wednesday.

This was a week I had a doctor's appointment. As I'm sitting in the waiting room, my cell rings. I look at caller ID and it's one of my guys so I answered. He didn't ask me how to renew his airport badge, didn't follow the process, and needed me to approve his request so that he could get his package. I'm like, dude, I'm at the doctor's office. I can't do anything until I get home.

And the thing is that I had been reminding him about this badge renewal for SIX WEEKS! Why did it blow up on a work from home day? Because it always does. He's lucky that he's super sweet and I like him a lot. :-)

When I say something like this happens almost every week, it's not an exaggeration and I don't get these kinds of things happening regularly when I'm in the office. It's not as if email, IM, phone is substituting for them running to my cube. It's rare to have someone stop by with an emergency. But let me work from home? Yeah, Rome is burning that day.

Flyers

At work, there are frequent charity fundraisers. Just this week, there were two on back-to-back days--a lunch for a woman who'd been in a car accident and another the following day for a man who had cancer. Both were worthy events, but the difference in flyers posted around the office were amazing.

I will confess immediately that I did the flyer for the woman in the car accident. There is a short, grabbing headline, a picture of the woman and her children, and the necessary information. First, what happened and why she needs financial assistance (this is also kept brief, but hopefully grabs the heart) and then a Where, When, What, Cost list in bold. This allows people to see the important information in a glance without having to study the flyer in detail.

Then there was the other flyer. The headline is long and confusing because of the poor grammar. I actually had to stop and read it twice to grasp what they were trying to say. There was no paragraph of explanation because that was what the headline was. It was necessary to search for the important information like where this was being held. The date and the cost were easy to see, so that worked.

I see bad flyers all the time at work. Literally, the flyer has about a second or less to grab a passerby's attention. Lengthy, confusing headlines don't do that. This is typical. Graphics of the food being served at the lunch instead of pictures of the family in need (or the charitable organization). Everyone knows what food looks like. Show the family, make it real.

Don't even get me started about grammar. My least favorite is the apostrophe atrocity. That would be using apostrophes where none is required. For example: Thank you for your contribution's. UGH! ::sobs:: I hate apostrophe atrocities. Not every S requires an apostrophe.

I'm not the only one who creates good flyers. Another department put together a flyer for a smoothie fundraiser that was exceptionally well done. It conveys the what you get brilliantly and the other information is easy to see in a glance. Someone else made it and did a fabulous job!

The thing is that these charity fundraisers are all good causes and it's a shame to lose people who'd potentially like to attend the lunch, but their eyes skim right over those flyers that are dense with text and confusion. The key always is to make it as easy as possible for people to know what you're asking of them. I try to do that with my flyers and I think I succeed.

My advertising degree at work.

Screens, Screens Everywhere

I blogged previously about one of my Rally goals being to go without looking at a screen for an hour and how difficult that was to do. It's become more difficult at work than ever.

My day job recently remodeled the building I work in--it needed it because of how long it had been since the last refresh--and one of the additions has been large televisions everywhere. When I walk in from the parking deck, I pass two of these TVs in the main hallway and when I turn down another hallway to get to my office, there's another one. Then there's the TV on the back wall of my office.

It wouldn't be too bad if they were locked to the company's news network, however, they're not. The first screen I usually see will show company news. This is okay. The second screen, however, usually has some kind of station playing on it. This is not the way I want to start my morning. I need to ease into the day and the TV blaring whatever is like a rude slap. It usually makes me tense as soon as I can see it as I come down the hallway.

The third TV is one that is never on and I'm not sure why they installed that one since I've never seen it being used. The television in my office is generally okay, too. It's normally set to a camera that shows us a view of the airport. It's our version of a window.

Maybe I'm the only one who doesn't appreciate all the screens, but I look at computer screens all day for my job, I have a phone with a screen that requires attention, my car has a screen to control navigation, radio, temperature, and the phone, and when I get home and write, I'm staring at the computer again. Taking TVs out of the hallway isn't going to change these other factors, but it sure would be nice to have a break as I walk around the office.

Chaos

They remodeled the building where I work. It's an old building, built in the 1960s, and probably hasn't been updated since the 1980s, so it was kind of overdue. I mentioned this before when I talked about the hideous open-office concept where distractions are rife and quiet is hard to come by. This would have been last summer when my department moved.

Construction is just about finished now, although I believe there are few small pockets left because I still see the guys working on the project leaving work when I do. During this year and a half, departments have been moving around, parked in temporary locations until their permanent spot was finished. We were lucky. My department only had to move once because our forever location was completed early in the process. Other areas haven't been so lucky.

One of these departments is the one that processes airport badges. They moved three or four times in the past year and people are having a hard time finding them. I know this because I sit near a doorway and almost every day someone is asking me where they're located.

That's not the only area people are looking for and can't find. Unfortunately for the people who think I can help them, I have no clue where most of these departments are now.

In the old configuration, I would have been able to guide these people, but now? Their guess is as good as mine. It's chaos!

The only good thing is that now that construction is wrapping up and the moving has stopped, I'll eventually learn where departments are located again and so will the people trying to find said departments. It's just confusion until that happens.

How Being an Author Helped Me At My Day Job

I'm not going to mention the obvious: Good writing and spelling skills. Besides business writing is totally different from fiction writing and it takes different writing muscles. I'm not real good at business-type writing at all.

Since I've been published, I've actually been asked to speak in front of groups of people. As an introvert, this is a horrible thing, but I made myself do it. It's true that I'll never really enjoy this. In fact, I still get sick when I know I'll be doing any kind of presentation, but I've become better at speaking and not sounding like an idiot.

Cut to the day job. My boss is trying to get everyone in the department to look and sound professional when they talk in front of a group. My guys have to do it a lot to get projects approved and all that. I slid by for a year without having to do it. And then it happened.

I'm sure everyone thought I'd be a stuttering wreck. Not because they don't like and respect me, but because they know I'm quiet. I think I surprised them all by being calm and actually able to present coherently. This is a skill set I never would have chosen to develop on my own without being asked to speak in front of groups about my writing and books.

Okay, so it's still something I'd rather not do and I'm sure I wasn't smooth like a TV spokesman or a politician, but the important thing is I could do it without being a nervous wreck.

I'm not sure about how many verbal ticks I used. You know: um, er, like, so, etc. The filler words that are so hard to cull from speech. I tried not to use them, but they're so ingrained that they come out unconsciously. But I did okay. That's what counts.

Auto Flush

I've blogged before about these crazy auto flush toilets we have at work. Why the reprise? Because it got even crazier.

They're renovating our restrooms at work. They need it, believe me. The building I work in went up in the 1960s, and aside from some minor updating (like the self-flushing toilets), it doesn't look as if any work has been done on them.

The restroom closest to my desk is currently closed for the renovations, so I have to use another. This one is already all prettified. It also has brand new auto flush toilets and these things are wild. As a water-saving measure, they are extremely worthless. Let me explain. :-)

Walk into the stall, try to put toilet seat cover on seat. Toilet flushes.

Turn around so I can sit. Toilet flushes.

Stand up again. Toilet flushes. (This is the only time it should flush.)

Reach for door lock. Toilet flushes.

Walk out of stall, door swings. Toilet flushes.

Yes, five flushes when there should have only been one. I'm calling this a massive water-saving Fail.

Then there are the motion sensor sink faucets... But I won't go into that. ;-)

It's Too Early For Talk

I love riding the van pool to work. If I'm tired, I can close my eyes during the commute in, there are people to talk to, and it saves me money on gas and car maintenance. All big pluses.

The only thing that routinely makes me nuts is the radio.

You see, in the mornings I like quiet. I have since I was a child. When I get up in the morning and have coffee, I keep the sound on the TV muted. All I want is the weather and I can pick up that information from the graphics.

Unfortunately, the morning van drivers all like the radio on. I could probably survive it if it were music--as long as it wasn't something loud like metal. :-) But no, they like the news station with all the talking. Gah! This really harshes on my morning mellow.

I certainly can't complain about it and I won't. I started bringing my iPod with me and plug into my favorite ambient music, but the guy who sat next to me that morning thought I was being unfriendly.

It is kind of off-putting, but it had nothing to do with not wanting to be friendly and everything to do with trying to block out the yammering from the radio. I guess I have a hard time understanding why anyone wants noise early in the morning. That's the time to be all mellow and zen-like. It could also be (if it were quiet) a great opportunity to think about the story in progress.