The great thing about being a workshifter is that I’m unencumbered by the formal trappings of the corporate office. Well, I don’t actually have a corporate office, but you get the idea.
The downside, of course, is that I don’t have the infrastructure either. And phone lines never go down and hard drives never crash when it’s convenient.
My old, hulking, color laser printer died the other day. To be more precise, it stopped working in the middle of printing out materials for a meeting I had to leave for 30 minutes later. Not optimal.
My community saved me. I called my friend Sheila Butler, who’s also the assistant manager for my building, and asked if I could bring her a thumb drive and some paper and print out the copies on her printer. Ten minutes later I was back in business. (Five minutes after that I did a quick product review and had a new laser jet printer on order from Staples.)
We think about community in many ways. Our family and friends. Our colleagues. Our online circles. But there’s also our workshifting community (and not just this one), the network of small business owners, independents, home office denizens, and others in our proximity with resources and know-how who can help us out in a pinch. And don’t discount the ones among us who do have corporate tech support on speed dial. They’re possibly most valuable of all.
Photo Credit: queefette
