Back in the old days you would get a foot of snow and companies would close for the day. People would stay home and shovel snow, clean off the cars and go inside and watch TV or play a board game together.
Now that everybody has laptops and home computers that can access the company network via VPN, the company office physically closes, but you are supposed to act like it is any other day, and put in a full day's work. No time off for shoveling, no TV, no family time. If you had a 8 AM meeting scheduled, you hold it by teleconference and/or WebEx.
I thought technology was supposed to help us fee up time...
To add insult to injury, I recently worked at a company that had 2 main offices, one in Europe and one in the US. They didn't believe in "remote employees". If you weren't in the office, you didn't exist. They even strongly discouraged working from home for the day if you had a delivery coming or an appointment at lunch time (Heaven forbid you would schedule an appointment during working hours, despite the fact that salaried employees put in 50+ hours a week - but that is another rant for another time...)
But...when it snowed, and the roads were closed, you were expected to connect via the VPN, put in a full day's work from home, and be just as productive as you were in the office. Hmmm, when it is in the interest of the company, an employee can be as productive working remotely as in the office, but when it is in the interest of the employee, you couldn't possibly be as productive at home! Just one reason why I started this out with "I recently worked" at that company!!
No comments:
Post a Comment