"Remoted" - Day Three

Holy cannoli. Day Three in the Remote home-office was very busy. Again. On the bright side, while my team’s busy days are frequent, it’s never the same day twice, and it’s never boring. I’ve been waiting four years for the “slow period” often referred to by others in the Bank, and I have questions. Where is our slow period? Will we ever get one of these magical times? It's possible it already happened, one of those days I left the building for 30 minutes for lunch.

In addition to being busy, today became a day of technological wonder as my department had its regular team meeting via a webcam meeting program, bringing us all together on one screen from six different locations. Thankfully, our tech Help Desk team is amazing, because my meeting prep was not going smoothly.

After a frustrating hour of juggling a steady stream of texts and emails, while also trying to finish whatever it was I was working on that felt very important at the time but I can’t even remember now, I was also attempting to download the program for the team meeting. Things were dangerously close to erupting in a conniption fit.

The program download problem was, the instructions on the download site didn’t match the words on the screen during the actual download. It was creeping close to meeting time and I still didn’t have the program loaded. Please tell me, my tech writer friends, why do instructions say “follow the prompts on the screen to install the program,” while the screen asks if you want to “Run” or “Save”? Ummm… I don’t know. The objective is to “install” so which of your words is the secret synonym for that? But our tech genius talked me off the ledge and onto the meeting screen in the nick of time. He even told me about a shortcut that will come in handy daily.

It was great to see everyone, even if it was on a screen. Sure, I saw almost all of them on Monday, but that already feels like it was an entire lifetime ago. The days are blending into each other in a long and gooey mess. Without the date displays on my computer and phone, I would have no clue what day I am in. And it’s only Day Three.

Lessons from Remote Day Three:

1. Working at home alone and living alone can be kind of lonely even for a hermit, so I really appreciated today’s face time with other humans. The dogs are cute and all, but not great at conversation or collaboration. They don’t even try to hide that they just want me around for my door-opening and food dispensing services.
2. Having a dog that needs to be by your side constantly is great. Sometimes. But be prepared for surprises! Like when he steps on the power strip and turns it off with his little paw while your computer and phone are charging and you don't know it until your stuff is nearly dead. Or when he starts barking during your web meeting and then decides to join the meeting by jumping in your lap.
3. Not buying the wireless mouse accessory while in the store buying the new computer was a dumb move. Receiving the Best Buy rewards coupon after buying the computer, intending to use it to buy a wireless mouse, but not reading the expiration date was also dumb. Failing to even enter the store and leaving the parking lot in a huff upon realizing the expiration was a week earlier was perhaps the dumbest move. Because guess what dumbass? Still no mouse. This may be an example of what my Grandmother meant when she would say someone had “cut off the nose to spite the face.”
4. Working at home makes the idea of "going home for lunch" a lot less fun. I have eaten lunch each day this week, but just like at the office, it's happened while working at the same time. It's time to figure out how to step back and eat away from the computer. New life goals.

Today's lunch ... chicken soup with a bunch of leftover stuff tossed in.

Up next … Day Four. Or is it Forty-four? Hard to tell.