I love ROWE. It’s the best thing that’s happened to me since working at JP. With ROWE, all that matters is that my clients are happy. If clients like my work, I meet all deadlines, and I deliver on what’s expected from me, I can manage my time however I want. It’s AWESOME.
One of the many cool parts about ROWE is that I can travel while working. Because of it, I can take advantage of great flight deals with flexible dates and travel throughout the US to visit new baseball parks. That’s one of my life goals: visit every MLB stadium and collect a baseball from each team as a souvenir.
In the summer, I took a trip in the middle of a workweek to Pittsburgh. My team, the Seattle Mariners was playing the Pittsburgh Pirates at PNC Park. This only happens every four or so years because they are in different leagues, so I figured it was the perfect excuse to travel! Why not visit a new place, check out one of the best stadiums in the league, and get out of Fresno during a heat wave?
Day 1
On the first day, I made the best of a very long flight delay. Because of bad weather, my flight was delayed 14 hours. It honestly wasn’t too bad. I made SFO my own private office and took advantage of its exceptional Wi-Fi signal. From Gate B47, I got on my laptop and was able to work on a client’s site architecture for a new website, some page designs, and some content upload. The entire time I was in communication with the client’s account manager and other designers in our office via Slack, one of our internal communication tools. Slack is one of the best free apps and you can read why its so great here.
Day 2
Once in Pittsburgh, I logged some work time from my room on projects that included fixing an email template to make it responsive to mobile screens and uploading some more content. Later that day, I took a bus into Downtown Pittsburgh and walked to PNC Park where I caught the first ballgame of the series. I sat right behind the dugout and the Mariners won!
Day 3
During my second day in Pittsburgh, the entire JP office met for our internal monthly recap meeting. Even though I was clear across the country, I attended via Google Hangouts. Later on that day, I also worked on design research, prepped for a client meeting scheduled for the following day, created some business cards, translated Spanish copy for the social media department, and designed page layouts for a new website.
All in all, I worked from four different locations including the bleacher seats in PNC Park and Gate C14 in Pittsburgh International Airport.
I Love ROWE
This is why ROWE is awesome. I did not have to request time off, use vacation time, or be present in the office to clock in and out. I got all of my work done from 2,550 miles away with just my laptop and an Internet connection. And best of all, I got my souvenir baseball!
P.S. These were my main trip expenses:
Flight – $10 and about 25,000 miles from my credit card points
Lodging – Free (www.couchsurfing.com)
Baseball Tickets – $60
Transportation – $10 (I took the bus everywhere)
–Pablo Ruiz De Chavez, Web Developer
