The purists might not have accepted Fuller into the telecommuting fold, since he was still spending at least one-quarter of his forty-hour week in other people’s offices. To me, though, he was all the better an illustration of how people and companies could gracefully change over.
As an in-house consultant, Fuller went from office to office, telling, for instance, how the Naval Academy could set up a cost-analysis formula for its laundry or how a base commander could consolidate two computer systems. His “clients” were not completely “on-line.” And he appreciated the value of face-to-face meetings where he could smooth ruffled feathers with southern humor. “I may look like another alligator,” he would tell bureaucrats intimidated by the presence of a management consultant, “and I may be taking you away from your work, but I need information from you to help you do it better.” Fuller would also stray into his boss’s office from time to time for library research and to remind people he was still breathing.
Every few days he reminded them in other, more meaningful ways. He would load up his little Heath computer with disks containing the report he was working on and a communications program. The computer would then pipe the output to his modem, which sped the results to a Wang word processor in his office—well, his former office.
A secretary would capture the information on a disk, watching in appreciation as Fuller’s work flashed across the Wang’s screen at several hundred words per minute.
“The secretaries don’t admit to being threatened,” he said. “They’re still busy transcribing the stuff the other guys bring in. And if the others were transmitting it like me, they’d still need to do the final formating, editing, the modifications required of these things.
“Besides, there’s got to be someone there who answers the phone.”
Baby-sitting a computer by the phone doesn’t sound like the most challenging task, but one day many of the secretaries themselves may work at home.
Granted, some management-level workers worry that telecommuting would lower their own job status by forcing them to work keyboards. “If I were a civilian at some companies and I sat down at a keyboard and composed my day’s work,” Fuller admitted, “a clerk or administrative-type person might complain to the personnel office that I was clerical rather than professional and should be demoted.
“As the younger generation of managers grows up with keyboards and rises higher in the power structure,” Fuller said, however, “you’ll find the stigma fading.” By century’s end, moreover, a voice-controlled computer might sell for less than $1,000. Good-bye, typing! You may still use a keyboard, actually—but just to clean up sentences where the computer confused “sleigh” with “slay” or muddled similar combinations.
Should you, then, even today, follow Fuller’s example and make yourself a telecommuter?