At last, I have a respite in my daily grind of that horrible commute that sucks up two hours of my life each and every day, with the hour to Westlake via Baden Powell drive in the morning and then the hour back to Gordon’s Bay via Baden Powell in the evening.
I don’t enjoy the commute, despite the scenic route, and it was starting to get to me. I’m tired from the early morning starts, my fuel bill is too high, my poor car is clocking on the kilometers at a far faster rate than what I’m comfortable with, and my evenings are far shorter than what they should be!
I brought this up with Rudi the other morning just as an aside as we were chatting downstairs during one of our regular, informal SurveyThumb meetings which happens before the rest of the horde arrives at work. Out of the blue, he suggested that I start working a couple of days from home during the week then, and after a little deliberation, I put forward that Tuesdays and Thursdays would be most fair and cause the least disruption in the office.
From there it was straight onto the e-mail draft in order to highlight my motivations to Simon for the final go ahead, and seeing that there aren’t really any juniors left for me to mentor in the office any more, and the fact that I’m working completely isolated on a standalone project, the request was given the okay without any hassles, much to my delight of course!
Naturally, I promptly set about pulling a laugh out of Chantelle on the first Tuesday back home, by acting completely normal, packing my bag the evening before, going for my early morning walk, showering, eating breakfast and then giving her the customary goodbye kiss as I grabbed my bag and left for the office – except of course the office in question was the home one, meaning all I had to do was take a step around the corner.
It took a while to realize, but the look on her face when she finally dawned what was going on was absolutely priceless! :)
The day working from home itself was actually really, really productive, without all of the usual distractions that comes with an open plan office environment that I normally find myself in, and was further enhanced by some gorgeous weather outside, a walk down to the shops for lunch and then a walk with Chantelle later in the evening to pick up Jessie from the daycare to close things off.
So yeah, Tuesdays and Thursdays have just become my favourite work days in the week! :)
