Gregg wrote: ↑Fri Sep 15, 2023 2:19 am
True Science Fact
My office is down a hallway that leads to a bathroom that was closed 25 years ago to install some equipment in the room.
Down this zombie hallway is a single door off to the left and that's me.
It's the kind of coveted location in a big factory that with a small Somebody Else's Problem Field is virtually invisible and allows me to avoid people who might distract me or worse bring me things to do.
Of the 1800 people at our location, I doubt 18 could tell you where I was if you asked.
Pre-pandemic, yours was a massive win -- a world-class site for what now-disgraced Dilbert used to call an "in-cube sabbatical." I am one of millions of people that now top that routinely, without having had to spend years mastering the political infighting skill needed to score such a glorious hideaway.
Now that I am fully remote, I live 75 miles away from the office in a different metro area (almost in a different state). I'm in a smallish city, and people who live near the office are only vaguely familiar with it. Nobody that lives near the office has ever spent more time there than driving through on vacation, maybe stopping for dinner. Only two other employees in my division live in the same county, and nobody lives in the same city.
Even though I'm quite close to downtown and to a full assortment of big box stores and other essentials of modern life, I'm the only house at the end of a long, narrow and poorly marked private road that's barely wide enough for a single car. Only occasionally does someone drive down the road to access the members-only beach; most people walk. Thus, the only traffic is guests of mine or deliveries I'm expecting. Oh, and I'm 90 minutes from the nearest airport (3 hours at rush hour), so my boss, who lives in Dallas, is unlikely to drop in.
My theory is: "if they can't find me, they can't fire me." You'd think that in the GPS era, any corporate official sufficiently determined to show up for in-person disciplinary action would just put my address in their phone and surmount the hurdles above. But I've got that covered, too. I live on "X Rd." But there's another street nearby, also on a private beach, named "X Drive." Purely by accident, I wasn't paying attention when I entered the change of address in the portal when I moved, and I put in "X Drive." The post office manages to deliver mail reliably when mis-addressed because there's no house on "X Drive" with my number, and its address matching software works properly. But if you put in my number on "X Drive," Google Maps or your iPhone take you to a nonexistent address between two houses on the other street.
Net result: the equivalent of an in-cube sabbatical, but with a wall-to-wall water view above my desk.
