A look at the advantages, pitfalls of working from home

It's certainly not a new trend, but working from home is becoming even more common as a way to thwart the spread of the coronavirus.

Such an arrangement works great for some people, but not so well for others.

I've been doing it for about five years now full-time for a media company out of New York City — after nearly four years of working in a downtown Chicago office. Besides, I have been writing freelance stories and columns for the Daily Herald from my home office on weekends and evenings for about 18 years.

In the interest of providing insight for those considering working from home, or being told to do so because of the threat of an illness, I offer the following primer:

You have to be disciplined, especially if your spouse is also at home, at least some of the time. Your spouse will like things about you being home — taking care of the pet, talking to a repairman on the phone or when at your house, running an errand, or calling and checking on any number of things going on.

Those things don't take a massive amount of time, and, generally, bosses understand they do come up. But you have to pick your spots for those tasks.

Working from home can indeed take on a life of its own in that you are “at work” all of the time and can complete work tasks as needed at most any hour. You can view that as being flexible, or even more demanding.

Also, those who work from home will quickly notice that others don't equate it to “real” work. They figure you're home, so that means you can chat, you can look at a social media post, you can grab a snack or go out to lunch. Luckily, I have deadline times that eliminate the temptation to go out for lunch.

Those in your house, condo or apartment at any particular time, be it a spouse, relative, friend or neighbor, may like to talk to you — even when you are typing or looking over documents.

Overall, it's not a big deal. The number of interruptions at home, compared to working in an office with other people, is likely minuscule. But the interruptions exist.

And if you still have a landline, the number of worthless calls coming in is mind-boggling. So you don't answer them, and I suppose it just makes you think you are in an office hearing colleagues' phones ringing.

I was convinced upon starting to work from home that I would stay in the same routine as if still commuting. Get up early, exercise, take a shower and shave, and put on some decent clothes.

That lasted a few days. More commonly, I work in a sweatshirt and sweatpants during the winter and a T-shirt and shorts during the summer. A four- to five-day cycle between shaves is not uncommon. Showers occur on a regular schedule, as do my daily walks.

The best thing other than saving time and money from no commuting? No meetings — at least none in which you have to commute and be in the same room with others. You dial in or click in on a computer.

At a past workplace, I endured a lot of meetings that could be best described as a waste of time. At least when you call in on a meeting, you can also glance at or respond to emails, lift arm weights, clean out a file or do any other number of simple tasks while still listening and responding.

One wonders why it would take a virus scare to make companies contemplate allowing employees to work out of home offices. It makes all the sense in the world in many cases to do so regardless of health scares.

But it counts on employee discipline. And not all have that trait.

Beef at Boston?

After reading my ideas on where a new Beef Shack could relocate in the area after closing its west-side St. Charles site, a reader suggested the former Boston Market location in Geneva.

It's not a bad idea and one that seems crazy for me to overlook, considering I live quite close to that empty restaurant site at 1873 S. Randall Road off Gleneagle Drive.

But the Beef Shack owner did say he was looking for a spot in St. Charles, so I was probably thinking he'd want to stay somewhere near or along Main Street regardless of how far east or west.

Old newspapers

A historical record of Geneva exists in the online digital copies of the Geneva Republican newspaper from 1878 to 2016. But finding what you are looking for would still be a needle-in-a-haystack type of exercise.

Nancy Hoelscher Bell and her sister, Pat Hoelscher Kessler, are trying to simplify that process by raising money to apply optical character recognition technology to convert those files into ones that can be searched through keywords.

It's a significant project, one the sisters are working on as a way to honor their deceased aunt, Catharine Smith Soderquist. It turns out Aunt Catharine was always annoyed that she couldn't just type in a keyword when searching through the newspaper archives to find specific obits or other information.

But it's also a costly venture, one in which they are trying to raise $32,000 to complete.

“We have $1,700 so far,” Nancy said a week ago. “We need $30,000 more, and I know it's going to take some time to raise all of the funds.”

The sisters, along with Ann Wilson, have “several ideas up our sleeves,” Nancy added.

The ladies are working with the Geneva Library Foundation to deposit and hold the raised funds. The foundation has set up an online link at glf.kindful.com for those to make donations. Contributors also can send checks payable to the Geneva Library Foundation, with “Geneva Republican Newspaper OCR” written on the memo line, to the Geneva Public Library at 127 James St., Geneva, IL 60134.

Any funds raised beyond the $32,000 goal would go to the Geneva History Museum.

Some Italian fare

A reader dropped a note to say how much she and her husband liked the Paradiso Italian restaurant on the west side of St. Charles, in particular saying the pizza and pasta were terrific.

Paradiso is at 2051 Lincoln Hwy. in the shopping strip that also has The Salvation Army store and the Planet Fitness center. However, we noticed something the last time we went by Paradiso that the reader also mentioned. From Lincoln Highway, there is little indication the restaurant is in that strip.

Also, the sign on the restaurant showcasing the colors of the Italian flag downplays the name a bit by stating “Restaurant and Bar” more prominently. That's sort of like diners in past decades that had “Eat” on the outdoor sign.

The word about good Italian food usually has a way of spreading, so here's to hoping Paradiso attracts a few more customers who might not otherwise be lured in by a sign.

Yard waste

Whether this is just another sign that we're aging gracefully, or it has to do with my wife's love of working in her yard, we were quite excited to hear Geneva was going to allow residents to put yard waste bags on the curb with no stickers the weeks of March 16 and 23.

That qualifies as big news around here, one that could save us far more than a few bucks each of those weeks.

It seems to be a fairly nice gesture from the city as well, sort of a make-good of sorts, considering things like a leaf pickup schedule in the fall can become a nightmare because of weather.

dheun@sbcglobal.net