My Daddy Works in His Underwear

When Mark Dobosz considers why he works from home, he need only look in the eyes of his three children.

And he needn’t go far to do it. As a teleworking dad since 2003, Dobosz has had his children close at hand each work day. And with that in mind, the vice president of development for SCORE (the Service Corps Of Retired Executives) and executive director of the SCORE Foundation penned the winning entry for this year’s Work @ Home Father’s Day “Why I Work From Home” Essay.

And though a teleworker, Dobosz travels extensively. Yet the quote of W.S. Gilbert, the English essayist, poet and creator of 14 comic operas (as part of the duo Gilbert & Sullivan), as residing in Dobosz’s email signature, sums up what’s really important: “It isn’t so much what’s on the table that matters as what’s on the chairs.”

With that, the following is this year’s winner from the Work @ Home Father’s Day “Why I Work From Home” Essay Contest…

“An old proverb says, ‘When baking bread, you should bake bread.’ A telecommuting father proverb would probably say, ‘When you are working from home, you should enjoy the pleasure of having your work and family together in your care.’

“Working from home and telecommuting as a father has probably been one of the most liberating of all activities ever created for the male species. While the machismo perspective would be to reflect that a Dad can now do ‘everything,’ the more realistic enlightenment from working at home is that you don’t have to do everything. In fact working at home and telecommuting bring you more in touch and ‘doing the things’ which are really most important in life - family, providing for a family, your friends and believe it or not – yourself.

“Being a work@home Dad and telecommuting Father has taught me the gift of simplicity. Having my work and family intertwined allows me more effectively to live and focus on the simple – to recognize my own nobility of purpose.

“Being a work@home Dad has taught me to appreciate the proverb, ‘When baking bread, you should bake bread.’

“Better yesterdays are impossible to create. Definite tomorrows are only realized when they become today. The only certainty is found in this instance, this experience, this current reality. I am so grateful to be a work @ home Dad.”

And we’re grateful for your entry, Mark. For your efforts, you will receive a collection of home office supplies - and our thanks…

This column was written in 2001

It’s been 12 years since I started working from home, and almost a decade since we introduced our first of three kids to this gig.

One thing I’ve learned is that everyday has the potential to be Father’s Day – if you expand your mind and more broadly define what Father’s Day means to you.

It can be a child’s milestones – his first steps, words, or mischievous deeds. It can be the pinches of a sandwich shared with a child too young to bite off her own. It can mean taking in Disney’s The Lion King during the lunch break — every lunch break, for weeks on end, until the child bores of the movie, or cutting loose to shoot some hoops or play horsey on the bed.

Oh, sure, with the mind-numbing chords of Teletubbies fading into the ubiquitous banter of Barney in the background, we sometimes can feel we’re no less than help hired to watch the kids while the spouse works or plays during the day.
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