One of the loudest noises making its way around lately is a call for everyone working remotely to Return To the Office (RTO, caps mine because I am lazy and want to refer to it later).
Working remotely is something I actually have considerable experience with. As a long-time IT staffer, in most every role you can imagine, I have worked on my systems from a remarkable number and variety of locations. I have logged into my home systems from airplanes, rather deftly (if I do say) performing minor miracles of systems recovery. I have logged into my systems from a laptop perched on the roof of my race car, in the pits, on race day to solve a problem that my users three time zones away were experiencing. I routinely accessed my systems from several time zones away, *after* a day of work, to respond to issues raised from there while I was, well, working. And then during COVID, I was sent to my home office to work, to access my systems remotely, well, all the time.
The recent call to everyone to return to the office (oops, I mean RTO) seems largely spurred on by people who suspect that those remote employees are simply not working enough, or by congress-critters who, as usual, have not studied the issue but recognize a constituent’s hark when they hear one. My experience, and that of plenty of others that I have spoken with, suggest that is far, far from the case. In fact, my last remote work experience was quite the opposite.
You see, my last IT (quite rewarding) post before retiring was working for a company a full hour drive from my home, a commute I made uncomplainingly for some 10 years, courtesy of books on CD, podcasts, satellite radio and more. Once there, I worked my full normal hours, then made my hour commute back to my house. (And from there, there were many occasions to fix things after hours, but that is another post.) Then came COVID, and a number of us were sent to work remotely, for an indefinite period.
Remote work for me, as it turned out, started quite a bit earlier in the day and lasted somewhat longer into the evening, than my commute-work-commute-back experience. A typical day was not eight hours, but more like ten, and then extended by multiple calls after hours from the western time zone folks. So my employer was in fact seeing at least 25 percent more ‘work’ from me remotely than when I was in the office.
So, interestingly, I was fairly neutral on the calls to RTO (there, I remembered) until I recalled one of the most vocal groups calling for this, that being the congress-critters of the United States. You know that bunch, the ones who spend a lot of their time purportedly working for us, traipsing around the country/state/district campaigning for the next election, shaking hands, speaking at donor dinners, smiling at rallies etc. etc. and missing congressional votes in the process. Wait, what, missing congressional votes? Why, *that’s* the one thing they are *supposed* to do. How does that fit in with working for us? And then those CEO’s who are busy with those congress-critters playing golf, going to rallies, etc. instead of running their companies.
These are the people most clamoring for employees to return to the office (dang, forgot again). To this bunch, I offer the briefest of words of advice:
You first.
In no particular order 