The Company

I work for a company that allows people to work from home. In order to work from home you have to have an office with desk and lockable filing cabinet. The office has to have a door that shuts and locks. You have to be insured. You have to have hi-speed internet and appropriate LAN cables and so forth. If your job requires printing you’d have to have your own printer.

The ‘Company’ provides the laptop. That is all. Because you are only able to work from home for half of the week, the other half you have to come into the office as per usual. They do not provide a laptop bag for your commute. You are responsible for this.

They also pay your monthly internet bill. They used to pay $40 per month for that. If your hi-speed cost more than that, you pay the difference. The Company only pays up to $40. But now they are trying to save some money. Since we only work from home half the week, they only pay half the bill. So at most, you get $20.

This seems silly to me. I am required to have hi-speed in order to work, but you’re not paying the hi-speed bill? So I call my internet provider and I say “I would like hi-speed on the following days of the month, and dial-up for the rest.” They laugh. I amend my statement, “I only want the internet for half the month, it has to be hi-speed, for the rest of the month, I don’t want internet at all.”

Yeah, right. That’s not how it works and we all know it. I didn’t actually try this phone call but supposing I did, I can imagine what they’d say. I pay for the month and by the month for a service, whether I use the service or not is irrelevant. They cannot change my service back and forth on certain days.

So why is The Company only giving me money for half of the bill? Because they are cheap. Other companies set up the home office completely for them. We were required to buy all of these things ourselves and set it up. If you can’t get it working properly there is no support group. So you cry, and die a little on the inside until it’s finally working.

I do like the fact that I can work from home, even though I had to shell out a bunch of money to get things set up properly. I even bought a lockable filing cabinet that I don’t want or need. I bought my own laptop bag so that I could carry the hardware safely to and from work. Since you are asking me to upgrade my internet service (assuming I have internet already) the least thing you can do is compensate for that. You know very well that I have to pay a full month for internet, so why are you only reimbursing me for half?

This is silly. But complaining to you, Mr. Company, is useless. You don’t listen. Ever. And I’ll either have the home office option taken away, or I’ll lose my job entirely. Hardly seems fair, you did open the floor to questions and concerns, did you not?