I came across this article in the Careerbuilder area of MSN.com about working from home. It reminded me of a former supervisor who believed that telecommuting was a complete farce. While upper management was encouraging one telecommute day per week, my supervisor was trying his damndest to stop or at least strongly discourage any of his employees from taking “advantage” of the option.

His take was that people sat at home and watched TV, ate and generally screwed around.

I knew that wasn’t the case with me personally. Other colleagues of mine…I can’t quite say. But for me, I still took my son to my mom’s and I didn’t turn the television on… Basically, it meant that I could work in my pajamas and save on gas and eat some leftovers out of the fridge instead of being tempted by the goodies in the breakroom.

Back to that article…Careerbuilder.com stated that respondents of their survey provided them with some of the following stats:

• - One quarter admitted to spending less than an hour (in a given day) on office work
• - 15% admitted to napping or watching television when they should be working
• - 17% admitted to taking personal calls and surfing the ‘net when they should be working

There are more stats in the article, but the ones above amused me most. When I telecommuted, I tried hard to not take advantage of the situation. Did I put in an eight hour day? Not so sure about that. But then, I doubt I put in an eight hour day at the office, either. With the BSing in the halls, stupid emails or constant birthday lunches, retirement lunches or “let’s just lunch for the hell of it” lunches, I know it was rare to crank out a full, 8-hour, working on ONLY work related issues for the entire time.

But those stats…they’re laughable! Less than an hour on work? Taking a nap? (okay, I’ll admit that I love me a good nap, but work has got to get done first!) And that personal calls and Internet surfing stat…well, look into just about any office cubicle in the greater United States and I’m pretty sure you’ll see a majority of employees on the computer or on the phone…and it’s not work-related. That has little to do with working from home and more to do with human nature.

As for me, I no longer have to deal with a supervisor who thinks telecommuting is code for a paid day off. Every day is a work from home day. Or a work from the park day. Or wherever I want to take my laptop. And the work gets done, sometimes well ahead of schedule. So, for me, the work from home reality means getting work done, no matter what it takes.