How do you draw the line between your work time and your personal time in a virtual workplace? Expectations are that you’ll do your job whenever you’re asked to do it. That could mean long hours or even working on vacation.
Yep. I said it. I worked on my vacation. It was unavoidable. I had to present to leadership about a topic that I own; it was bad timing on my part honestly. We’d planned this vacation well before I switched jobs and I guess the assumption was that I could take the time off with no worries. Any other week and I probably could have, but not the week we chose.
So in the middle of my glorious getaway – prized time with the family – I had to find a way to dial into a conference call and miracle of miracles, find wireless so I could get onto my laptop to present my slides. That was a lot of fun. By the way, on Cape Cod in the off season, free wireless is very difficult to come by. In fact, B drove around one afternoon with his laptop just looking wireless so he could upload his homework!
It’s amazing how attached we’ve become to being connected. I can remember a time when if someone from work needed you after you were gone for the day they had to wait until you came in the next day! Gasp! You didn’t have a laptop and goodness knows there were no cellphones. There was definitely a separation of work and home – but you did spend more hours in the office.

I do enjoy working from home – it sure is nice to do laundry and multi task while I’m on conference calls – but I miss the camaraderie of my co-workers and the teamwork that is so important to my job when I’m not in the office.
So I guess the answer is to balance both options. Work from home when I need to be there and go into the office the rest of the time. They gave me a laptop and Blackberry for a reason and I guess working a day or so on vacation is the reason. At least I got lobster on vacation.
Happy Thursday Ya’ll!