Obstacles of working from home

This brings to mind the Yahoo CEO who caused a titanic snit among workers last year when she slashed the work-from-home policy.

Mind that this isn't just a cursory survey:

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The survey, based on interviews with over 24,000 business people from 90 countries

LINK

I can definitely relate to the kids interrupting phone calls problem. I often had to contact people after hours to work on issues. You'd think they'd tell the kid(s) to go watch tv or play with their xBox or something, anything to get them out of their hair, but no. I can honestly say that 90% of the after hours calls I made involved a screeching kid in the background. It got so bad with a few of the oncall people, I told them "I'll send you an e-mail with the details of the issue. You call me back when it is fixed."

ETA: I hate that the article was illustrated with a cute, fuzzy kitten. More appropriate would be a kid demanding "MOM! MOM! MOM!"

I telecommuted for 3 years, until my job was outsourced. I would go into the office about once a week, for meetings, but, other than that, I was completely on my own. It was a great job for me, and I was exceptionally well at it, but then, I did not have little distractions running around interrupting and demanding my time. Moos couldn't have done my job, especially when we were constantly evaluated for any kind of errors.

Moos think working from home is easy, and that they can still cater to their kyds while on the job; that doesn't work at all. It may seem ideal, but you really have to work hard to not let yourself become distracted, and you have to treat your home as if it was your office, for an entire work day.

Telecommuting worked for me because I always put the job first and minimized distractions. I have a feeling that moos wouldn't take it seriously. I don't believe they take work at the office as seriously, even, as a CF person would. We will put work first, moo will always put Bratleigh first, and you can't have that in business.

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cfchevygirl
Telecommuting worked for me because I always put the job first and minimized distractions.

That would seem to be the key. And the majority of people seemed to have been able to make it work except in one category

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Children or family demanding attention (59% of respondents)

Which I don't get. If you have a spouse, you tell them to make sure the damned kid doesn't bother you. I don't know how many times I heard the person I was speaking to on the phone say "go see if Mom/Dad will help with that. Mommy/Daddy is busy." If you have young ones at home without someone to mind them, you don't work from home. Period. That is just an impossible situation.

I telecommute now,and had to get permission from the Big Boss to do so. I still have to make appearances at the office, and still have follow all the company rules even if I'm just sitting in the office/spare bedroom in my condo. Big Boss can end my telecommuting privileges at any time.

When husband has snow days, I have to work. I close the door of the office, and he does snow day stuff. We eat lunch together and I go back to work. The only reason he would've knocked on my door would be to say police/fire department was evacuating the building.

My employer screws up a lot of things, but the rule is if your kid is in daycare when you are at work, they need to be in daycare on your telecommuting days. If someone finds out this isn't the case, your telework arrangement can be terminated.

How can anyone think Mommy can be productive with a child around? (Theoretically if the kid is say, 12 or 13 and old enough to entertain himself/herself, they could stay out of one's hair, but these days I'm not so sure that's realistic. Most kids are incapable of entertaining themselves.)

I'll take that kitten sitting on the keyboard, thanks.

I know someone who works in advertising sales from home and has 2 young kids - she has a nanny for these grommets - but I still wonder how the nanny gets these kids to listen to her when she says "Don't bother your Mommy" bit. If anything, working from home only works out when you have the pets in another room, no children, and no husband harassing you at all hours of the workday.

Working from home would be an ideal situation for me. I am severely introverted, to the point that normal office environments make me anxious and miserable, and I loath it when I have to hear about some distracted moo giving it a bad name.

Maybe if I built a separate office for myself (which is becoming popular - convert a pre-built shed into office space), but I have to admit that I'd probably have trouble working at home. I'm too used to multi-tasking with ADD with OCD traits thrown in eyes2

Taking a bathroom break, I'd see the clothes hamper full and think "that job I'm processing won't be done for 15 minutes. Time to throw some clothes in the washing machine. Bonus - I won't have to do that chore on my weekend!" Or "hey, I can put that chicken in the oven and take the timer to my desk. When it's done, I can set it on the counter to cool and then put it in the fridge. It won't interfer with my work!"

I expect I'd end up running myself ragged if I worked from home

bell_flower, I'd like to give your employer a high-five for their telecommuting policy. Working at home is a work arrangement, NOT a childcare arrangement, and I'd like to slap every idiot who thinks otherwise!

The cat is the big distraction. I had to move my keyboard tonight because His Nibbs decided the keyboard table was meant for his fuzzy butt.. Of course he wanted to sit where my hand and the mouse were.

Guess I'll just finish this continuing ed class tomorrow at work.

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“There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man.”

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bell_flower
My employer screws up a lot of things, but the rule is if your kid is in daycare when you are at work, they need to be in daycare on your telecommuting days. If someone finds out this isn't the case, your telework arrangement can be terminated.

Most of the places I worked at up to last year this was the case, in theory, but the pahrunts nearly all abused it, including my then boss, who used to work from home if her kid was sick, despite the official policy. I had another colleague who used work from home days to save on nursery fees, and she even dialled into a conference call, the kid was clearly yelling in the background, and her spineless boss (a duh) said nothing, because everyone was at it, and if the bosses called out their employees for abusing work from home days, they'd have to abide by the rules too.

I used to work from home a fair bit, if the weather was bad (I had a long commute) or if I had medical appointments during the day, so I benefited, but I was expected to do a normal day's work and then some, to demonstrate that I could be trusted to work from home, or the privilege would be withdrawn. Yet the pahrunts were never called out on their blatant abuse of the system.

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bell_flower
My employer screws up a lot of things, but the rule is if your kid is in daycare when you are at work, they need to be in daycare on your telecommuting days. If someone finds out this isn't the case, your telework arrangement can be terminated.

)

And this is how it is supposed to be....you do not have your kids in the office with you, either at work or at home. Everyone knows when the kids are home work is not getting done.

This was a major reason Yahoo's CEO put the kibosh on it...in addition to remotely accessing and finding several people were not even logged into the Yahoo employee intranet portal.

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From a bottle cap message on a Magic Hat #9 beer: Condoms Prevent Minivans
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I want to pick up a bus full of unruly kids and feed them gummi bears and crack, then turn them loose in Hobby Lobby to ransack the place. They will all be wearing T shirts that say "You Could Have Prevented This."

If I ever was dealing with someone in a professional capacity and heard screeching baby/kid noises in the background they would lose my respect and business.

Yeah. The last fucking thing I wanna hear during my work day is someone's kid screaming its fool head off.

Of course, I hear that every day, anyway, at my current joke. I mean, job.

Sometimes, it's not just the assholes I have to call, either; it's my coworkers' little Petri dishes that decide to pollute the place.

Back when I was still working, I had a mostly telecommuting deal for aboutg 2 years (2001-2003). My job duties were well suited for telecommuting. I did a lot of maintenance of ocomputer programs I wrote, and it made a lot of sense to take those programs off line at night or on weekends to do work on rather than try to work on them during the day when my division's staff wanted to run them. Also, I ran a lot of other programs which took a long time to run so running them at night when the system's usage was low meant they took less time to run and cost my division less money charged back to them.

I had other non-programming duties so it was nice and quiet to work on them, often whenever I wanted to work on them. I still had to go to the office one day a week which was better than 5 days a week. I went out of my way not to abuse this privilege by taking vacation time when things got very slow.

This good deal ended in 2003 when the company decided to end all open-ended telecommuting deals. I could still work part-time but had to fulfill all of my hours at the office. This returned the horrors of the long, awful commute even though it was only 3 days a week. I knew it would be my eventual undoing. My immediate bosses told me that they liked how this deal was working and did not ask for it to end - it was the corporate bigwigs who ended it.

Five years to the day after my telecommute days ended, I retired, reducing my commute from 2 days a week (down from 3, I cut it back at one point) down to zero. I remember telling the HR flunkie in my exit interview that I had so despised the commute that if they offered me that old telecommute deal (1 day a week) I would have turned it down.

I hope the cause of the end to open-ended telecommuting was not due to parents like those in the OP's post abusing it. I did hear that there was some abuse of the policy but it was not kid-related, though.

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thom_c
The cat is the big distraction. I had to move my keyboard tonight because His Nibbs decided the keyboard table was meant for his fuzzy butt.. Of course he wanted to sit where my hand and the mouse were.

Guess I'll just finish this continuing ed class tomorrow at work.

It's his job to break you of the spell of the light box. Also, he's trying to make sure you don't freeze to death, or develop frostbite on parts not covered by body blankets.