When Remote Isn’t Remote
When Emily wrote her first Qualified Fact (finally revealing the mysterious story of the time she nearly killed our founder, Brent), I drew her dot riding a snowmobile. (The dots have a long and storied history in Unqualified Opinions, and have made the leap over to Qualified Facts, because of course they have. Anyway, I’m the one who draws them.) It took maybe 10 minutes. She’d posted it to the PE Slack channel before I had the file closed.
I’m the only fully remote person at a company that loves being in a room together (they even risked their lives for it). Permanent Equity runs on gathering: the team lunches (shoutout Chef Alane!), the pickleball games, the face-to-face stop-ins, the oddly competitive Run to Rocheport 5K we do each fall, the quick trips to Logboat, the inside jokes that bubble up when people are in the same place, enjoying one another’s company.
From a few states away, none of that reaches you by default. Staying in the mix is real work. (I’ve frequently joked that my monthly-ish trips to Columbia are at least partially to remind my coworkers that I exist.)
But the work it takes to stay connected can be work that’s fun. There’s a blurb on the back of Tim’s latest collection of Unqualified Opinions from Alex K. that runs “I have become quite invested in the Permanent Equity team.” Helping Tim with Unqualified Opinions, and now herding cats for this whatever-it-is, turns out to be the best tool I’ve got for staying locked in (outside of the running Slack convos that regularly feature pictures of our kids and sports results from relevant teams). I get the stories first. I get to help build the inside jokes, because I get to draw some of them. A snowmobile turns up on a Wyoming retreat and then it turns up in ink. This whatever-it-is is the staying connected. I, too, have become quite invested in the Permanent Equity team.
And it runs both ways. When I do come back to the office, people work to make it feel like I never left. I get the lowdown from Holly, talk books with Emily, and get to give Tim and Taylor updates on developments in professional wrestling (they indulge me, even if they haven’t watched the product since the days of The Undertaker).
What I’ve learned from being the only remote employee at a deeply in-person company is that community is less the room and more the small, deliberate things people make to reach whoever isn’t in it.
(Yes, I am aware of how many parentheticals are in this Fact. Like inside jokes in the PE office, they’re load-bearing.)
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