Back in the early nineties, as in 1990 , I hadn’t heard the term “telecommuting” yet. In reality, I hadn’t heard of anything that mattered for real, anyways.

I had tried to work from home, though. Not as a telecommuter, but has in having my business based there, saving in overhead costs with office rental and so on.

In 1989 I had equiped a whole room at my new apartment in Rio de Mouro (Sintra, Portugal) as an office. There were 3 PCs, one “portable” Sinclair (read: I used to take it with me), one that had two floppy drives 5.25 where I ran accounting applications I developed (basically, glorified Lotus 123 sheets) and one Amstrad with a 10 MB hard drive where I kept the more space needing applications and data, all running MS DOS and Windows, can’t recall the exact versions. We’re talking the most advanced machines here, the Amstrad was a 386 that had cost me about 3000 Euros!

Of course, I needed a typewriter as well, because those awfull Epson printers did not have enough quality for my taste, so I bought from Xerox a Typewriter (with memory, it would store pages of documents and templates), a Fax machine and a Photocopier.

To be in touch with my clients at all times, I was equipped with a bi-tonal beeper and carried a bunch of coins to use in public phones. Whomever wanted to talk to me would “simply” call my home number, my answering machine would pick it up, they would leave a message and number and, instructed by my message at the answering machine, had the option to call my beeper; doing so, I would get beeped with the “you-have-a-message-waiting” tone, call my answering machine, use a tone-machine in it to authenticate (most phones were still rotary), and listen to the message. Then, I could call back whoever wanted to talk to me. Simple and efficient, hein? We’re talking 1989 here, remember It actually worked, believe me.

Anyways, I was “armed” and ready to work form home, and very enthusiastic about it. I could only think of the benefits of not having to change clothes in the morning or of not having to spend 2 hours in traffic, each way, every morning and afternoon. IC19, the highway that serves the area, didn’t exist yet, and traffic was even more so cahotic and slow than it is nowadays.

Soon, however, I was faced with a few surprises about tha facts of life relating to working form home.
First, my family simply didn’t get the concept, including my wife. For most, I wasn’t really working at all and they weren’t shy about telling it to everyone. With that perception, my wife kept insisting that, since I was home “all day”, it was only “reasonable” that I would take to, and pick up the kids form school, cooked and gave them lunch and afternoon snack, took care of all grocery shopping, washed the dishes and did all the chores alone. Also, of course, since I was “available”, why not coming to see her for lunch in town everyday or go do all errands for the rest of the family, since all of them “worked” all day? Even after countless fights and arguments, this never actually changed.

My wife finally gave up pressuring me for errands but expected me to do all the rest anyway, and would either be really pissed off or very surprised if I didn’t have time to do so (“How come? Weren’t you home ALL day??”). Of course, being how I am, I simply would not do anything I wasn’t already available to do if I was commuting to work for real. Never seemed enough, though.

Then, I was faced with the reality of NOT leaving home for work every morning, a routine I’ve had since I started going to school, if you think about it. This, I kind of resolved by getting dressed and going out for a coffee and to get the newspaper, every morning, then coming back home to work.

Jumping through a few more little annoying things, finally there was the problem of my customers not really “believing” or trusting I was for real!!  I wasn’t a “real” business, how could I have the resources if I didn’t have where to work and entertain my customers or have meetings and appointments? This, actually pissed me off.

The story lasted less than 3 or 4 months because someone offered me a “real” job, perhaps motivated by the idea that I needed help since I was home all day, and I took it because it was good money and made sense, career wise. I wasn’t being able to keep my customers, anyways, so why bother and keep trying?!

For years after I always felt a “thing” in my stomach anytime I thought about “working from home”. My marriage ended up by or around 1992, and the episode with my attempt to work from home DID play an important role in that happening. I was not happy that my own wife had not given me the necessary support and encouragement, nor respect. I guess I was never able to forgive her for that – although this wasn’t in any way the main reason for the divorce, mind me! But I still have strong feelings about the subject and I don’t take it lightly if someone in my family says that “if I am home, I am not really working”.

By the time my marriage ended, I moved to Canada, and went to live in Toronto, Ontario. There, after a couple of jobs that actually required my presence in the office – as the Operations Manager at Imperio Tours, I was charged with the responsibility to open the office every morning – I finally went to work for Sprint, a well known North American telco.

That was when I heard the word “telecommuting” for the first time and realized they meant it. You see, having those winters, being “snowed in” is actually common, so they take it seriously that you CAN work from home. Hence, they give you what you need to do it:

- Communications:

A high speed line at home, paid for by the company, a desk phone that you can forward to your cell phone and, of course, the cell phone. I also had a pager, but that was because some legacy system still sent pages to it when it had error messages… They paid for all this, naturally and of course being a telco, asked no questions about your use of it for personal purposes as well.

- Computer:

A good laptop to go, while you had your two workstations at work (a Sun station Sparc 5 and a Silicon Graphics)

What else did you really need, huh? Remote access to your work network, and there you go.

I wasn’t very convinced and had a bit of a hard time buying into the concept of still having to work when forced to stay home because of the weather! Anyways, when in Rome do as they do, so I asked no questions and dismissed the whole thing for months. Then, one November week, the storm came. They called it a Blizzard, schools closed, commuters stayed home and companies… kept working.

Now, all my bad memories about working from home came back and I actually feared my new family would give me a hard time. Not so. My (new) wife, whose work didn’t actually require telecommuting, simply went about her life, watched TV or whatever and not for a moment interrupted me or asked for anything.

As for being productive, oh well, those days I started working at 8 am instead of at 9:30, ended up working up until dinner time. And I finished a whole application that had been scheduled to take 1 and a half month of my work time! All the while having breaks for TV, for lunch, for a bit of chatting with her or to play with my kid. I even could watch “that” movie I wanted in the middle of the afternoon!

Note that, I still was able to test things in servers, talk to my colleagues and exchange all info I needed, get help, help others, and so on. Ah, and I had my weekly status meeting, by phoning in to a conference call with all my department.

Now, having to stay home because you were snowed-in, is one thing, but my next employer actually took telecommuting to the next step. Solect Technology Group, a very successful IP billing software maker, actually did not even require that we were at the office, unless we really had to! In reality, most of us did go everyday to the office and worked from there – it made more sense if we had to interact with others – but many times I stayed home simply bacause I wanted to start working earlier or because I had to take care of my son, or something. I still was very productive. Actually, I measured my productivity to be much higher when I worked from home and my results of better quality.

Again, all they invested in for this was basically the same they were already investing in our regular tools to work. The DSL line, in that case, was mine but they participated in the bill because they wanted to, not because I required it, I was already using Internet at home anyways!

Many people with disabilities, for instance, or with needs regarding their families, could be working and be productive, getting a decent income if companies did provide this alternative. There are many mothers out there, that are also very competent and productive professionals that are confined to their homes while their babies grow enough to be put in a kindergarten.

Besides, most people would not mind getting lower salaries if they could work from home, because of the simple fact that their overhead spending is lower and that this may actually help them address some other need in their lives.

So, who would have to gain with this? Would it be beneficial for all of uss, including companies and businesses, if this was more accepted in our culture? I for one, do think so.

In fact, given the fact that my commute takes about 1.5 hrs each way everyday, that I spend lots of gas stuck in traffic also contributing to pollute the planet and that when I get to the office I’m usually stressed and takes me about 15 minutes to unwind and get ready to rumble, I’d say even here in Lisbon I could work from home and still do the same I do here at the office. I’d work my 8 hours, be happier and more productive, healthier even, and have a lot of time to do other things like improving my skills. I’d have at least 3 and a half hours a day to spare. I’d eat better and cheaper. Overall, I’d be a better employee and more productive and a better, happier and healthier self.

Hey, after all I do communicate with my colleagues almost exclusively by email or chat (gtalk, msn…), my boss calls me on my cell when he needs to talk to me (his desk is a few meters from mine) and all the work is done in my laptop, which I carry with me, or the servers, which can be accessed remotely. The two meetings I have on Tuesdays and Thursdays could be the only real requirement to come to the office, if you think that a conference call is not the same as seeing and hearing people in the person. For the rest, I really think it would be feaseable to work from home.

Oh well! I miss working from home. The “butterflies” from my first unsuccesful attempt to it are gone now…