Telecommuting from Paradise - Not What I Had Planned
Now for a sobering post about what happened to me this past June while I was sleeping at my home away from home. During the summers, my wife and I frequently go to the shore (in our case, the Chesapeake Bay) as many people do in my region. I often go down Thursday night and work from there on Fridays so that the fishing can commence swiftly after the workday. My wife will come down after work Friday but won’t get there until after it’s too late for me to dip the fishing lines in the water - thus, my Thursday arrivals. As I mentioned in my previous post, it doesn’t matter where you work when you have a work at home job as long as you have the basic necessities at your disposal.
This particular Thursday evening started as many do once I arrived after the 2 1/2 hour journey - with dinner - and I grilled lamb chops on the BBQ that night. I’ve been cooking for many years but I still haven’t found the trick to grilling lamb chops without grease-induced flames, so they became a bit charred (I need to use the indirect heat method next time). No, this wasn’t the source of the fire you see above, but it plays into the story…
I spent some time on the Internet that night, watched some television and went to bed around 10:30. I was unusually restless that night and left the room 3 times to get a drink of water in the kitchen - something I never do (once I’m in bed, I stay!). The first of those three times I smelled something funny - a smoky, burnt smell, but I assumed it was the remnants of the BBQ’d lamb that was then residing in the waste bin. I went back to sleep and I realized the next day I had been sleeping for hours as the fire started and grew.
I woke up two more times and during the third awakening at 5:00 AM I decided that the charred smell wasn’t BBQ lamb - something was very wrong. I left the bedroom (located on the left side of the house below) and I looked out the glass doors in the center of the rear of the house and saw flames shooting out of the other side of the house. At this moment I encountered the first situation in my lifetime where I felt truly powerless and quickly decided to jettison myself from the house.
Being someone that wears corrective contact lenses, I was in a vulnerable position as I had no time to put them into my eyes so I was running blind to a degree. I threw on minimal clothes, no shoes, no lenses, no wallet, no keys, no cell phone, hit the ADT Security fire alarm button and left the house with the cordless phone in my hand while dialing 911. I had enough time to tell the emergency operator my street address, she blurted out the name of my city and the phone went dead (power line inside was burned through). I learned later that since she lost contact with me part way through the conversation, she put the call into the emergency crews as if I was trapped in the fire. Luckily at this point I was safe in the backyard, walking around with very poor vision in the dark - but safe.
Twenty-five mile per hour winds off the Bay were fanning the flames and expediting the spread of the fire, which started in the garage area and entered the attic, spreading across the breadth of the home. At this point my SUV - my immaculately maintained Porsche Cayenne that was parked in front of the garage and the boat parked beside it were absorbed by 40 foot flames. The remnants left over after the fire are below. It was as if a missile had hit them.
Within 25 minutes, the fire department was present and starting to take control of the fire. My neighbors quickly arrived and offered any assistance they could provide. In all, five fire departments arrived from as far away as 40 minutes. Within about two hours the fire was out and I could commence doing something productive like asking the fire department to retrieve any of a few key items: contact lenses, keys, wallet, shoes, cell phone, and oh yes, my work laptop. The laptop was scorched, melted and contorted, but fortunately the hard drive was magically intact.
I had backed up my work data a few days before and it was fortunately at the other house so I was safe either way. This fire is now why I use Mozy, which is a remote backup service over the Internet (safely encrypted). In the case of fire, your backups are offsite and not just sitting on top of the computer in an external device prone to the same disasters that your source computer is.
There’s much more to tell on the fire story relative to insurance claims (all stories are positive so far) and other recovery activities, but suffice to say this is the most eventful night of my life - and thankfully I still have one. In the end, they ruled it an electrical fire, possibly coming from a power screwdriver battery. Rebuild planning continues as I write this.
How to Land a Legitimate Telecommuting Job
I recently received a query from “Jo”, who is a professional business writer, asking how to find a legitimate telecommuting job. Rather than present you with one perspective, I thought I’d present you with a myriad of resources to answer that question. Some of these links provide how-to’s while others are pure telecommuting job search sites.
How to Find a Telecommute Job - This article reminds that you need to treat the telecommuting job search just as you would a “regular job” search. It provides several other resource links, including a link to a long list of blue chip telecommute-friendly companies.
Telecommuting: the Pitch - This article helps you approach your current boss about telecommuting in the job that you already have.
2Work-At-Home - This blog is dedicated to working from home and coincidentally has a currently posting relating to 4 resources for finding writing jobs. Their main site is here.
The Write Jobs and SunOasis - Sites dedicated to writing jobs, many of which are from home.
Craigslist - I’ve heard from several sources that Craigslist is a good site to search for telecommute jobs. Sarah found her job there and provides this tip: “When I look search craigslist, I search all jobs, leave the keyword section blank, and check the telecommute box, that brings up all of the telecommuting jobs for that city.” Don’t just search your local Craigslist city site, since by definition you can work from anywhere.
Genuine Jobs - I can’t vouch for it myself, but I have read at least one positive review of this site. They claim to have helped hundreds of job seekers find telecommuting jobs.
Work At Home Jobs - Currently has 80 WFH jobs posted
Telecommute Jobs - Currently has 120 WFH jobs posted
Monster - Currently has 553 WFH jobs posted
Telecommuting Jobs - In business for 11 years and they screen their jobs listings.
GoFrelance and Freelance JobsPost - Two freelancing job search sites
Telecommuters Paid Less than the Office-Bound
I ran across an interesting article online at the Minneapolis Star Tribune that provided the results of a survey of 46 studies looking at 12,883 employees done by the Journal of Applied Psychology. It found some not-so-surprising tidbits:
- Telecommuting improved job satisfaction, performance, turnover and stress.
And some more less-expected tidbits:
- Telecommuting did not harm career prospects
- Telecommuting more than half-time did harm relationships with coworkers, but not with supervisors.
In a tale from the oxymoronic department, the article goes on to relate that AT&T recently rolled back telecommuting privileges after having bragged of improved productivity and savings of $30 million a year in real estate costs. Their defense was that it was due to “reconciling human resources policies at the company in the wake of acquisitions.” Hmmmm.
The last point from the article was the first instance I have run across of the impact of telecommuting on relative pay. It goes on to say that:
“Minnesota workers in general rank ninth in median earnings relative to workers in other states, but Minnesotans who work at home rank 22nd in median earnings, according to the Census Bureau.”
Though Minnesota’s local economy is not directly relevant to me, seeing some numbers that demonstrate a penalty for working from home is something that I took note of.
As a manger, I personally have seen the pay of telecommuters impacted negatively but it was not due to the fact that this particular individual telecommuted. It was because it was known that they were extremely averse to traveling for business to customer sites - something their peers were willing to do.
If you are a telecommuter, be prepared to be impacted in the frequency and size of future raises (and promotions) if you convey a message of inflexibility, e.g. that you are anchored to your home and are are less amenable to office visits and customer travel.
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