Miasmatic Review

Minions at home.

If you recall I have five employees that are telecommuters. They have the luxury of working from home. As part of my duties as their supervisor I must make periodic home inspections to make sure everything is on the up and up. What I’m checking for is to make sure that all the equipment that the company gave them to use is there and in working condition and that they are following the agreement they signed to be eligible to work from home. This includes:

-Verifying that the floor plan for their home office is correct.
-Confirm that work area is a separate space from common living area of home.
-Confirm that work area has a door with working lock.
-Confirm file cabinet has a working lock.
-Verify it is a distraction free environment (no television, pets, children or elderly they have to take care of.)
-Verify that homeowner’s/renter’s insurance policy is active.
-Verify working Smoke Detector.

We actually have a checklist we have to go down. If they fail the inspection, then they have to return to working out of the home.

Today I had to do my first round of home visits. IE The Inspection! Of course, to make sure that they don’t cheat, it’s a surprise inspection. Meaning, I just show up during the times they are supposed to be working and make sure everything is on the up and up. The whole thing is rather uncomfortable for everyone involved. I really don’t want to go in their house, and they really don’t want to just surprise them by stopping by, especially if it’s a bad house day.

Of course there is some fun to be had. I hit the first minion’s home. Everything was squared away and fine. She had all the information I needed and everything matched as it should. When I went to check the smoke detector, it wouldn’t go off. Of course she gave me the song and dance that the battery had been unplugged because of a cooking incident. Once the battery was plugged back in, it worked just fine. However, I couldn’t bypass this opportunity to tell her that I was going to have to fail her because it hadn’t been plugged in. At first she believed me, but because I was in a hurry to get out of the house, I let her know right away that I was kidding.

One of the houses I went to really threw me for a loop. Management has joked about going to the houses and seeing people working in their pajamas. I just never thought I would actually see it. Nope, when I rang the doorbell my minion answered the door in her pajamas. She had everything on the up and up, but it just made me a tad bit more uncomfortable. I was really glad that one of my Peers was with me, just for proprieties sake. And trust me, this is the only time you will ever hear me be honestly thankful for this peer, because she in general gets on my nerves.

One of my minions is a smoker. When I visited her, I saw that she had ashtrays next to her computer. Our company has a very strict no smoking on company property policy. I had her going that I was going to have to revoke her work from home privileges because she was smoking while on the company time. I explained that, even though she is at home, the equipment belongs to the company and that while she is on the clock, she is not allowed to smoke. Because she was in violation of that, I had to bring her home. I even went so far as to show her in the agreement papers she signed; it states she must follow all company policies. I had her going pretty good.

I let her off the hook as I was walking out the door. We all had a chuckle about it, of course she was relieved. She didn’t want to have to go back to working in the office.

So my first set of home visits went well, I’d still rather not do them, but if I have to, I hope they all go this well.