Working from home

[Anonymous]

When you work from home, are you available during those hours by phone, email or IM? A colleague WFH some days and the rare instances when she is contacted during her work day and she doesn't respond until the next day or much later in the day, she will say that there was something wrong with her email or phone. Do you think she is lying?

[Anonymous]

Yes she is lying.

[Anonymous]

when I work from home I go OUT OF MY WAY to be available to people, respond to emails, etc. I feel so guilty for the priviledge of being home that I wind up getting 10x more done than I do at the office. Someone at work asked me whether on the days I work from home, I keep the baby home from daycare...ummm NO. I am working!!


But yes, as PP said, if someone takes days to get back to you and is generally unproductive she is full of it.. PEOPLE, stop making i bad for the rest of us!! We dont want our bosses going all Marissa Meyer on us!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:when I work from home I go OUT OF MY WAY to be available to people, respond to emails, etc. I feel so guilty for the priviledge of being home that I wind up getting 10x more done than I do at the office. Someone at work asked me whether on the days I work from home, I keep the baby home from daycare...ummm NO. I am working!!


But yes, as PP said, if someone takes days to get back to you and is generally unproductive she is full of it.. PEOPLE, stop making i bad for the rest of us!! We dont want our bosses going all Marissa Meyer on us!!

This.

[Anonymous]

When I work from home, I generally get back to people within a few minutes. Sometimes I do run errands and it might take a half hour or so, but that is rare.

I would say I get more done when I work from home that when I am in the office.

[Anonymous]

What OP is describing is why a lot of people will do air quotes and say "working from home". They are the reason a lot of employers aren't willing to let people telecommute.

[Anonymous]

I would not consider running errands unless it is my lunch break. I don't even drive my kids to school. I would be very embarrassed to not answer my phone to my colleagues. I think if you work at home you have to go out of your way.. If something was wrong with my phone or e-mail, I would contact my manager/co-workers to alert them and give them an alternate means of contact like my home e-mail or cell.

[Anonymous]

When I work from home I log on earlier than a normal day and off later. I'm probably more responsive to email and IM than I am when I'm in the office. Not just so people will know that I'm actually working but because I can be more responsive when at home than when I'm in the office with people constantly talking to me. While working from home is allowed, its difficult to do regularly because I work onsite with the client and face to face time is important. On Friday I purposely worked from home to get away from the constant interruptions and I got more accomplished that day than the previous several days combined.

Someone who is not responsive when they are at home isn't actually working.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, that sounds like BS. A couple minutes is understandable (it's Murphy's Law that folks invariably try to reach you during a bathroom break). And I do think phone is the best for instant contact, as emails or chats can be missed when you're working in multiple programs. But consistently taking a long time to respond would be a red flag.

[Anonymous]

I am super responsive when working from home. My old boss said she never understood how fast the internet truly was until I started teleworking. I would reply to her emails so fast she didn't think they could have reached me yet.

[Anonymous]

That's what someone in our office did. She "worked from home" and lets just say she was never available always full of excuses and now NO ONE in our office can work from home. It makes me made. Because on the days I did work from home. I could get so much more done, especially when it came to writing and editing because I wasn't be bothered with other tasks. I could pick a task and complete it. I made sure I was always available, responded to emails, IM etc. Also if I was running out for an errand then it was my lunch and I let them know so if I didn't respond immediately there wasn't a question of where I was or what I was going. But one bad apple ruined it for everyone else.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What OP is describing is why a lot of people will do air quotes and say "working from home". They are the reason a lot of employers aren't willing to let people telecommute.

Exactly. There are people in my office who "Work from Home" but wait hours to respond to emails or better yet - don't even bother taking their laptops home.

[Anonymous]

Yup, she's lying. I work from home and it pisses me off when people do this because it gives me a bad reputation and I get a lot more done at home than I do in the office!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes she is lying.

Of course she is lying. I'm much more available when I WFH.