Good morning.
I’m writing to you from my new office.
Gone are the days of getting up at 6 am in the morning to force myself into a shower to stand in front of a closet full of clothes that never beg me to get in them to just sit at a desk all day.
Gone. G – O – N – E. No more.
I’m in a new office. Under new management. Enacting a new policy that I’m going to need everyone to sign. We’re having a staff meeting and first on the agenda is the very important announcement that as of today I am working from home.
Home?
Home. As in my house, as in my commute is now a trip down the stairs from the bedroom to the kitchen, not 10 miles just 1 floor.
Home.
DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING
We have a winner here…………………..HOME.
And working from home there are new rules. As the CEO, President, Manager, The Chief, Large and In Charge, I’m putting myself in the position of office manager and I feel we should have a talk. There are policies you need to be made aware of or else you risk disciplinary action for not listening to those in charge.
(me)
First in the new policies. The dress code. No buttons, no belts, no matching jewelry, no boots, no tights, no collars, no coats. And nothing – absolutely nothing – that requires an iron. That’s right, you’re going to need a whole new wardrobe for this workplace. Because you are only considered an employee around here when working in pajamas – preferably with monkeys or cupcake designs. Underwear – totally optional. We don’t care how your hair looks or what you put on your face. And shoes – none. You’ve been sitting with your feet under the desk, shoes off and a bag of ice attached to something for so many years that about the shoes – we just don’t care.
Company policy on use of cell phones, e-mail, and general surfing of the net. Highly encouraged and not a waste of your time. File under “things you do when it takes you half the time to do twice the work as the chucklebucket next to you still figuring out how to return their calls.” And blogging while working – “creative expression of innermost thoughts.” Very important for company mental health.
There is no penalty for being highly productive, effective, smart, and fast. There is no magical numbers of hours per week enslavement that you must undergo because somebody thought I wonder how long it would take a monkey to do this job to determine how many hours we need to work each week, rounded up to the nearest tenth and decided 40 hours is what it takes. Yes, if you spend 8 hours talking to your co-workers, 7 hours looking for things in piles on your desk, 6 hours on smoke or office food breaks, 5 hours on unjamming the copier, 4 hours on answering phone calls that you are paying someone else to answer in the first place, 3 hours looking at e-mails trying to convince you to join the 401K, 2 hours walking really slow to the bathroom just to see if you can kill more time that leaves 1 hour each week where you can actually get your entire job done. If you work really fast.
And to get all of your work done really fast you’re going to need a desk with top notch design. Your new desk – the kitchen table. Or the living room floor. The bed, the toilet, who cares just as long as you work. Forget the cubicle it’s just a corporate tool to promote intra-employee disgruntlement and justify an employee assistance program. And to learn too much about your co-worker’s personal life. I don’t want to hear any more stories about incorrigible children or what’s for dinner tonight. If I’m not invited I don’t care and unless it has a healthy serving of work in it you shouldn’t be talking about it in the first place. And if you happen to get the an office with a door – don’t bother closing it because it is just fly paper for employees standing outside trying to figure out if you are actually in the office with the door closed or if the door is just closed.
Psssst…listen closer, closer, do you know what the door is saying? CLOSED.
Management. We are under new management and it’s about time. Around here to manage you actually have to have skills in management. Imagine that? We’ve been looking over resumes and we feel there has been some confusion on what has been called “management skills” up to this time. And so we regret to inform you that if you have been in the company for 20+ years, if you work six days a week, if you have been promoted to a level of incompetence you are no longer a manager at this time.
But fear not, the severance package is great – a healthy package filled with eight weeks worth of HTFU and get over yourself.
Being under new management we are also cracking down on company sloths. You know, those with cars filled with happy meal buckets and cigarette ashes. Those without placards that park in the handicap spot. New company policy – sloth is not a handicap. It’s an animal that lives in the jungle and comes down from a tree once a week to take a crap. So I guess if we’re talking about working styles there are similarities but nonetheless it is still not a handicap.
And this just in…after careful review of resumes that have come flooding in, we have selected a new boss. Complex calculations of combined years of experience, innate talent, boyishly good looks, agility, tact, speed and general furriness – we have chosen my dog. Yes, that’s right, the only boss we need to answer to around here is….my dog.
And of course all of those resumes first came through Human Resources. But since I am the HR Director we got through those resumes in no time. Which is very unusual considering HR is usually the quickest way to engage yourself in some of the slowest processes in the world (almost as slow as sloth on way to crap). And that’s because HR is mostly filled with girls that majored in liberal arts and didn’t go to their high school prom and now spend their days sending snippy e-mails and sipping from a McDonald’s cup (note: this does not apply to AP other friends). Well around here to work in HR you had to go to 3 high school proms. So take a frosty sip of your diet coke sister and hush up.
Now for office supplies and pens. I guess you can’t call it stealing when it you take it from your own home. I guess you don’t have to hide all of your good pens unless you are hiding them from yourself. Or keep a secret stash of assorted post-it notes. Or hide your pencil sharpener because you had to snag it off someone else’s desk because when you asked for your own someone actually came back to you and asked “why”.
Seriously?
And if something breaks you can fix it right away. Because you’re not only the Office Manager, the HR Department, the Admin Assistant, you are also your own Facilities staff. You don’t need to fill out a form to submit a form to someone that collects forms and sends them on to the person that reads the forms and then assigns the tasks on the form to someone that won’t do it anyways. In the end you just end up doing it yourself so just screw the forms, put on your Schneider tool belt and fix it yourself.
The benefits of all of this working from home? No, it’s not a discount you’ll never use or a free coupon to a local eatery you would never set foot in anyways. It’s not a gym membership because you already have one of those. Nor is it getting your birthday off every year (gee thanks!). It’s not a company non-denominational non-holiday party or an engraved pen.
No, we’re under new management around here and the benefit is that you can think, act, and manage for yourself. And perhaps the biggest benefit of all – you get to do what you have known how to do all along – lead yourself, be yourself, and work towards something entirely of your own.
And we’re sorry but we’re no longer accepting applications at this time. Besides the kitchen table is full. However we’d be happy to keep your resume on file. Just drop it in File 13 and we’ll get around to it. In time.
