I Might Need That Later
I didn’t notice. I use a messanger bag to carry my stuff back and forth to work.
(Yes, it’s really a “man purse,” but I would never mention that!)
Today it was too ight and I never even noticed. I picked it up, headed to my car and started my 45 minute drive to work. I drive alone. Yes, that bugs me too. I work in a building with 800 people, most of whom do shift work. Why Utah Transit Authority doesn’t have a bus stop closer than half a mile is beyond me. At least I swapped out my Suburban for Iron Man and doubled my gas milage.
The coloring bears a striking resemblance to a certain super hero costume.
One of the consequences of driving alone is that you have lots of time to think. My thoughts can drift all over. I thought about what I did yesterday. I thought about the camping trip I have next week. I thought about the morning meeting I have coming up today. I thought about how I accidently killed my son’s hermit crab. I thought about . . .OH NO!
My bag sits right behind my seat so it’s in easy reach, even if I can’t see it. I reached back and searched the inside of my bag with one hand while trying not swerve too badly. Interestingly I felt the need to turn off the radio to complete my search. Nope. It’s not there. Well, that sucks!
I’ve forgotten my laptop.
I have a home office set up with dual monitors and a docking station. It mirrors my work setup, except that at home the monitors are 19″ and at work they are 23″. And my laptop is right now safely tucked into the docking station on my desk.
A glance at the clock tells me that I’m about 30 minutes into my commute. Turning around means 30 minutes home, then 45 minutes back to work. And I normally leave early enough to beat the worst of the traffic. An hour delay is going to place me smack in the middle of morning traffic. Call it more like a two hour delay.
What would you do?
In my case, I considered the question,
What do I really need my laptop for?
Email? Nope. My phone (an Android Moto) has full email access, although typing is a pain.
Calendar? Nope. I never take my laptop to meetings. I use my iPad.
Documents? Nope. Everything important is on a SharePoint server.
I think I’m okay. I turn the radio back on and continue on to work. I did briefly think, “Why do I even have a laptop?” Plenty of reasons, but, of course, for a single day, I could do without it. I also started thinking, suppose it had been reversed? Suppose that instead of my laptop, I had forgotten my phone? What would I do?
What would you do?
What do I really need my phone for?
Receiving phone calls? Yeah. I have a desk phone, but after three rings it forwards to my cell. My desk phone doesn’t even have voicemail.
Making phone calls? Yup. I don’t know anyone’s phone number any more. It’s all in the contacts list on my phone. Normally, I make calls on my desk phone by first looking up the number on my cell phone.
Email? Yeah. I spend a lot of time away from my desk. If we have an service outage, I need the details right away. The email to my phone tells me that.
Calendar? Oh yeah. I have few enough meeting that they are an exception. My phone warns me 15 minutes before the meeting starts. And most of my meetings are online. I need to login from my phone.
If it was my phone, I realized I would need to turn around and blow the two hours to retrieve it.
Wait! I didn’t. . .
Whew. My phone is there. I’m fine.
Rodney Bliss is an author, blogger, columnist and IT Consultant. His blog updates every weekday at 7:00 AM Mountain Time. He lives in Pleasant Grove, UT with his lovely wife, thirteen children and grandchildren.
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