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Stuff: I am a tele-commuter. Unlike the wave-slaves and rat-runners that struggle to work through the traffic or on the train every morning, I work from home. I've been doing this for several years. It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? Well, parts of it are wonderful, but there are big drawbacks too and I can quite see why it hasn't really taken off in the big way everyone predicted it would. My position is slightly unusual in that I don't have a boss. As the CEO of my own company I have to motivate myself to work and set my own deadlines, just as I would if my company owned an office which I traveled to for work. That just adds to the problems involved in working from home. No Commuting My office is in my home, so I don't have to spend time traveling to and from work. No commuting. No crowded trains. No traffic jams. I just get out of bed, and there I am - at work. But this isn't as good as it sounds. The flip side is that since my office is my home, my home is also my office. Whenever I am at home, I am at work. I cannot switch off when I get home and concentrate on personal matters. I can't use the time commuting to wind up for work, or down for the evening. I can't have a quiet evening in watching the TV because the phone is likely to ring with something to do with work. In fact, I rarely watch television "live" - even if I am home, I video the things I want to watch, so that if I do get interrupted I can pause the program and won't miss anything. It's like living in your office 24 hours a day. No Dress Code I am a total slob. I hate dressing up. I always resented having to wear smart clothes to work, even when I never came into contact with members of the public. I felt that since I was hired for my abilities, not for my looks, I should be allowed to wear what I felt comfy in and just get on with my work. So working from home is a joy, in that I don't have to wear smart clothes. I can slob around in any old stuff - I don't even have to get dressed if I don't want to. I can work in my underwear! In my pajamas! Even totally naked!! There is a series of Dilbert cartoons where Dilbert starts tele-commuting. He discovers he can work in his dressing gown, unshaven and slob-like. When he has to join a video-conference with his boss, he holds a little glove-puppet to the camera, to disguise his slovenly appearance. I know just how he feels! Setting My Own Hours I don't have to work 9-5. It's entirely up to me when I do the work I have to do. So long as various things get done by their deadlines, I can pick my own hours. Since I am a night-owl, I choose not to get up early. Most days I start work about 10.30am. I don't wake up till 9.30 or 10.00. Like Garfield, I am not a morning person, so this really suits me. In the past, when I worked in offices, I got up to go to work at 7.00 or sometimes earlier, but I never liked it or found it easy. However, this in itself can cause problems. If I don't start work till 10.30, then I either work later in the evenings to make sure I do a "normal" number of hours each day, or I stop at 5.00 or 6.00 because I am going out with friends who work regular hours - and that means I haven't worked a full day myself. Ok, no boss is going to shout at me for that, but there is a lot of work waiting for me to do it. Sometimes I do find myself working till 10.00 at night or even later. Either there's an emergency and things just have to be done, or I get absorbed in what I am doing and just don't realize how late it is, until I notice my back aches and my eyes are blurring because I haven't moved from my crouched-over-the-keyboard position for several hours. Another thing that makes me likely to work late hours are timezones. I live in the UK, but my company operates primarily in the US - that's where the majority of our customers are. The east coast of the US is 5 hours behind the UK, the west coast 8 hours, so when it's 11.00 at night here and most sensible people are going to bed, things are only just starting to get busy in our games as people get home from work and log on. Perhaps it's just as well I am a night-owl! No Weekends Off Everyone looks forward to the weekends - two days off in which to do home-type things, to relax or party, not to worry about work. Then there's public holidays which provide extra-long weekends. Not for me. Weekends for me are just the same as any day. In fact, the busiest days for me are Saturday and Sunday because I publish a newsletter (the Federation Chronicle) every Sunday which requires me to write some articles, proof-read the whole thing and upload it to the company web site. If friends organize an outing for a weekend which I want to take part in, I have to know well in advance so I can make arrangements to do the work on the newsletter earlier, or take the decision to publish it late. Public holidays, it's just the same. Since the online computer game business is about leisure, and our games are busiest when people are at home not at work, it follow that evenings, weekends and holidays are the times when I have most work to do. You may be out enjoying the sunshine on a bank holiday; I'm likely slaving over a hot computer. Take Off When I Want To Of course, it's not all bad. I may not get weekends and holidays off, but I can take time off whenever I want to. If I wake up one morning and feel like going out for the day, I do. Provided I don't do this so often that I don't ever get any work done, I can go shopping, go to the cinema, meet up with friends or take whole days out, when other people are trapped in an office. This is particularly nice in the summer when the weather is sunny. When I add it up, I probably work more hours in a year than someone who works a 9-to-5 job. I just pick the times I do that work, rather than having the times imposed on me. Motivations and Disturbances When you work in an office, the boss can see if you're working or not. At least, he or she can see if you're at your desk or not. Sure, it's easy to pretend you are working when really you aren't but eventually someone will notice if you're not producing anything at all, and begin to ask questions. At home, there is nobody to see if you are working or not. Nobody forces me to sit down at my desk and do my work. Some of the work I do is boring and tedious - basic administrative work that I find really unpleasant. Filing, doing accounts, keeping records, that kind of thing. It's all too easy to keep putting that work off with nobody to tell me to get on with it. There are a million distractions at home that keep me from work. I live alone, no partner or kids, but even so there are books to read, videos to wash, housework to do, windows to stare out of... Actually, you can always tell when I have a job to do that I really don't want to do. I dislike housework but there are times when housework is preferable to the work I don't want to do. When my house is clean and sparkling, it generally means I have been avoiding work. With no set hours during which I have to work, and nobody to keep my nose to the grindstone, I have to have self-discipline in order to ever do any work. It's not easy. I've been working from home for years, and even now I sometimes go through phases where it's hard to motivate myself, and I don't get much work done. It's no wonder that bosses are reluctant to allow their employees to work from home. They fear that without being under constant supervision, people will goof off. They are probably right! |
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