Ms. Right or Ms. Right Now

So, you are all thinking that I'll spend some of your precious reading time espousing on the value of a good relationship and the importance of choosing the right partner? Well, sort of.

It's not the romantic relationship that I'm talking about. I'm talking about a business relationship. A friend who is expecting recently mentioned that she had discussed doing part time work with her boss post baby and was flatly turned down. The reason?

Well, it's more complicated than one sentence can really describe. I can see the scenario here and this is complete conjecture. A busy boss, gets out of an exec level meeting, walks back to her set of offices/cubes to dish out work to her minions. She needs them right there, right now. Or does she? Could she perhaps put together an email and send off specific duties via the web to be completed by clearly stated deadlines? Of course, she can. Or she should be able to do. (As a side note, I am using she here, but it's really meant to be he or she.)

I think that we're still a couple of decades away from being able to work in such a virtual environment. Of course there are plenty of companies that operate virtually already, but it's not mainstream yet. It won't be until The Boss starts being able to type just as quickly as she can speak and minions start being just as responsive to written orders as they are to verbal ones. How long do we have until this virtual world takes over? I'm not sure. Probably at least another decade.

So, what does this have to do with being Right or being Right Now? I think, and hope, that in the virtual world, more and more women can work part time from home and thus be Ms. Right and not Ms. Right Now. With the baby boomers retiring we'll need all the extra manpower, or womanpower I should say, that we can get. Also, I think that it will be liberating for the generation of moms who had to choose and for those who will follow them.

I am lucky enough that my work can be done from my computer at home, part time, when I get to it and in a big part that's because I work for myself. Most others are not this lucky. They require actual employment at, as James Bond said "an honest job". With benefits. And a steady paycheck.

So, the next time you snub at someone who works part time, give some real thought to how much time you are really needed at your job and how much time you surf the web. I'm guessing it's only 60% or so.