Mark Goodge wrote:
On Tue, 01 Jan 2008 11:13:52 +0000, The Natural Philosopher put finger
to keyboard and typed:

Mark Goodge wrote:
On Tue, 1 Jan 2008 10:05:57 +0000, Roland Perry put finger to keyboard
and typed:

In message e.net, at
09:20:43 on Tue, 1 Jan 2008, Mark Goodge
remarked:
Even estate agents coudlk work better from home.
They still need to visit the properties.
And are a typical example of what I might call "overhearing-ware", which
makes most offices I've worked in (none in a sales capacity, that's just
an example) hugely more productive.

You overhear your colleague on the phone (or in person) to a buyer, and
deduce quite a lot about what they are talking about. And it rings a
bell with you, so you wander over and say - "why not suggest this
property, it's sounds like it's just what they want".
That's a very good point.

Also, one thing that seems to be missed by many advocates of
telecommuting is that most people actually prefer to work in social
groups. And, because that's how they prefer to work, that's how
they're most productive when working.
Er, no.

Thats how they can spend their time chatting and 'having meetings'
instead of actually working.

Now you're deliberately being silly.

Of COURSE they prefer it!

Work is mostly essentially boring: Thats why you pay to have it done.


It seems to me that a lot of the
very strong advocates for increased teleworking are those who
themselves fall into the minority of people who don't like spending
much time with others.
They actually prefer to spend it WORKING.

Or reading Usenet, or making themselves coffee, or watching TV, or
buying stuff on eBay, or going for a walk.

Yep all that ;-) *after* you have delivered the set project to deadline
and ascertained it has been signed off. Well you deserve it really... as
maybe you worked until 2:00 to finish it off, not possible in an office
70 miles away when public transport finishes around 12:00 pm.

Teleworkers are just as likely to skive as office workers. They just
skive in different ways.


Actually, they don't. The work has either been done and delivered via
e-mail or it hasn't, if a deadline has been missed in an office there
are a thousand reasons one can pass the buck, the courier was late, the
photocopier broke down, so and so was in meetings and unavailable etc.
etc.

It's almost a cliche that the IT community is
populated by people with poor interpersonal and social networking
skills and who prefer the company of a computer screen to other
humans. So it's not surprising to find a significant number of Usenet
users (who also tend to fall in that demographic) having
over-optimistic opinions of how easy it would be to convert many jobs
to teleworking.

Nicest people around IME. The ones I watched with a jaundiced eye were
slimy generally incompetent management, whose only function seemed to be
bullying their more qualified and skilled staff.

Possibly.

Definitely.

Mark