The big picture: It’s hard to find a good office assistant – Austin Daily Herald

I’m not going to lie. There was always a part of me that thought fondly of the idea of ​​working from home. It seems so intriguing when you read it in a novel: sitting at home, leisurely making coffee in the morning, then retreating to your home office that overlooks a lake, from which one begins to unravel an age-old murder mystery that involves the Knights in some way. Templar and a global conspiracy.

I read a lot of books, okay.

My experience working from home, something I experienced on Monday while writing this, isn’t all that luxurious. Instead of an office from a lake house, I look towards our neighbor’s house.

Instead of solving a global conspiracy…I’m writing about what it would be like to work from home. My novel wouldn’t be very long.

Still, I appreciate it. I have the aforementioned coffee and the window is open, letting in a lovely late September breeze. I put on a gentle face and got things done. Could use a larger polished cedar desk and a few more shelves to reflect how regal I am, that would be nice, but you work with what you have.

And at this point, I have my only distraction in this little story in the form of a redheaded office assistant who doesn’t really understand the important concept of a workday like he perhaps should.

It should be said up front that Buster is not very good as an office assistant. In fact, he’s quite entertaining and doesn’t let himself be dictated to. Granted, I picked him up from his bed, which is my desk chair, so I guess he has a right to be somewhat annoyed by my sudden appearance upstairs on a Monday afternoon.

The office is Buster’s bedroom most of the time. This is where he retreats during the day and later at night, making it his bedroom, but sometimes he just needs to learn to share.

He disappeared shortly after I dropped him off so I could sit and work, but shortly after he returned, taking full advantage of the fact that I was home and demanding some attention. This led to him jumping out the open window to take stock of the outside, then trying to jump onto the back of my chair.

To my knowledge it only does this when I’m sitting in it and to be honest I’m not really sure why. It’s not like he looks very comfortable sitting on the back of a chair, especially this one.

Then I decided to try moving to another desk to see if maybe this one met my needs a little better. In doing so, I moved the chairs because the chair in this office is covered in my office assistant’s hair.

I tried this for a while, but was interrupted by Buster first using the fabric back of the other chair as a scratching post, then trying to climb onto the back of my original chair again, which was rather surprising considering I was sitting in it.

I returned to the first desk, but forgot to move the other chair back. That’s when I heard a commotion behind me and discovered that the chair was giving Buster access to a new frontier that he really hadn’t been able to reach before.

Soon after, he curled up on a shelf that couldn’t support his weight for long, let alone leave enough room for the items on said shelf.

And now he’s scratching his back on the chair again and trying to climb into places where he shouldn’t be. Just a moment.

Back on the back of the chair, my office assistant looks at another shelf that can’t support his weight or girth. Oh, and those papers I brought home for work that are lying around on the floor? They have become a cat’s bed, because why wouldn’t interview notes serve that purpose?

Yes, I quite liked being able to work from home, but I may need to rethink how often I do it. Office assistants are supposed to support you in the work you need to do, not drag tinkling toys from the other room in the hope that it’s play time.

I mean, it does, but only for a little while. I still have a lot of work to stop.