![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Working from home-NOT
Sep. 28th, 2011 05:35 pmI am a contract worker. I earn a salary and work full time, but I go from place to place as I'm sent. However, my shortest assignment was three months, and the longest three years, so you might say the jobs aren't real temporary. I work in the medical records department of hospitals doing medical coding.
For the last 17 months, I have done the work and then gave it to someone else to enter into the computer, as everyone assumed that I would be gone in a few months. However, seeing that it's now past a year and will be at least one more month, someone High Up decided it was worth losing half a day's work for me and another coder to teach me the system they use for entering their work. The system is a dinosar from the Dark Ages of DOS, and not vey user friendly.
I found it entertaining that they did this and forgot to ask for a password to the system for me. It's going to be next week before I get into the system to do the work.
Anyway, I was called into the manager's office to provide the information so they could begin the password process, and she asked if Iwas going home to work. I told her that would have to be worked out with my home office. I sincerely doubt that request would be honored, because there are a fair amount of people who do work from home in the agency, and that assignment would go to them. I might be asked if that was what I wanted to do, and my answer would be a resounding "No thanks!'
Two of the reasons are practical. Now, I do have a production amount I am expected to meet, and being salaried means that I stay until I meet it or have extenuating circumstances, like being trained on the new system. But if you work at home, you are paid by the record and not by salary. Part of what I am paid for is the inconvenience of never knowing where I'll work next. While I've always worked in my home state, I could possibly be sent to another. We had several people I worked with went to Atlanta, the idea of which gives me the willies-WAY too big a city for my comfort zone! But if I were assigned there, I would go. If I work at home, I don't have that inconvenience and I take a pay cut for it.
As I am the sole support of two young men in their twenties who are in community college and can't find even part-time work in this depressed economy- and my state is one of the harder hit- I can't afford a pay cut right now even if I wanted to work from home.
The other practical reason is that the two aforementioned boys are home a lot, and we would all go insane if I was home with them, part of the problem being that both of them are internet geeks, and I would have to kick them off to work.
The personal reason is that I am very much an introvert. I'm not good at getting out and meeting people. I managed to find a church and I stay active in it, which helps. But a lot of my social contact outside of my family is work. As much as I hate dragging my oversized rear end out of bed every morning and driving an hour to work, and however much I want to leave at the end of the day, I want to go somewhere to work. I really do not like the idea of working at home. I want home to be where I let my hair hang down and relax.
Now, when the boys are gone and I use one of their bedrooms as a home office, that will change. I'll have space for work and for home, and manage that way. Then, I'll be able to take the pay cut. Then, I'll make more of an effort to get out and join clubs and the like.
But right now, I want to work-at work.
For the last 17 months, I have done the work and then gave it to someone else to enter into the computer, as everyone assumed that I would be gone in a few months. However, seeing that it's now past a year and will be at least one more month, someone High Up decided it was worth losing half a day's work for me and another coder to teach me the system they use for entering their work. The system is a dinosar from the Dark Ages of DOS, and not vey user friendly.
I found it entertaining that they did this and forgot to ask for a password to the system for me. It's going to be next week before I get into the system to do the work.
Anyway, I was called into the manager's office to provide the information so they could begin the password process, and she asked if Iwas going home to work. I told her that would have to be worked out with my home office. I sincerely doubt that request would be honored, because there are a fair amount of people who do work from home in the agency, and that assignment would go to them. I might be asked if that was what I wanted to do, and my answer would be a resounding "No thanks!'
Two of the reasons are practical. Now, I do have a production amount I am expected to meet, and being salaried means that I stay until I meet it or have extenuating circumstances, like being trained on the new system. But if you work at home, you are paid by the record and not by salary. Part of what I am paid for is the inconvenience of never knowing where I'll work next. While I've always worked in my home state, I could possibly be sent to another. We had several people I worked with went to Atlanta, the idea of which gives me the willies-WAY too big a city for my comfort zone! But if I were assigned there, I would go. If I work at home, I don't have that inconvenience and I take a pay cut for it.
As I am the sole support of two young men in their twenties who are in community college and can't find even part-time work in this depressed economy- and my state is one of the harder hit- I can't afford a pay cut right now even if I wanted to work from home.
The other practical reason is that the two aforementioned boys are home a lot, and we would all go insane if I was home with them, part of the problem being that both of them are internet geeks, and I would have to kick them off to work.
The personal reason is that I am very much an introvert. I'm not good at getting out and meeting people. I managed to find a church and I stay active in it, which helps. But a lot of my social contact outside of my family is work. As much as I hate dragging my oversized rear end out of bed every morning and driving an hour to work, and however much I want to leave at the end of the day, I want to go somewhere to work. I really do not like the idea of working at home. I want home to be where I let my hair hang down and relax.
Now, when the boys are gone and I use one of their bedrooms as a home office, that will change. I'll have space for work and for home, and manage that way. Then, I'll be able to take the pay cut. Then, I'll make more of an effort to get out and join clubs and the like.
But right now, I want to work-at work.
