Saturday 17 May 2014

Office v home working and what will happen if I get an urge to tidy up my sock drawer?

Our office closed down, which means I will be working more from home. Technology makes it increasingly easy to work from home, but for me this simply spells disaster.
For some people, working from home is ideal; you can get out of bed at 8.55am and roll onto your computer - begin to answer work emails in your dressing gown while slurping your bowel of Kellogs.
A guy in my office claimed it was ideal as his clients could relate to him better when they hear his dog barking away in the background of his conversations.
For me, this is a far more problematic set up. I need routine, structure and face to face social stimulation. I need some sort of office banter, even bad office banter.
Each day, when I would drive to work, I would reverse onto a busy London road, which is not the most relaxing way to start a day. I would often have to battle my way through West London, avoiding cyclists and pedestrians to get onto the A40.
At work, I would be more likely to get randomers calling me on the office phones like the woman who thought she had called a beauty salon and our parallel conversations were rather confusing.
I would, however, prefer to do this than work from home. After all, the journey gave me time to listen to Radio Four, I can have lunch with work friends, I can gossip with the receptionist and as a journalist, I can pick up good interview techniques from colleagues.

At home, the issues:
-Distractions, from flatmates to simply having an urge to tidy my sock drawer.
-The fridge is metres away so obesity is simply part of the deal. I could become one of those people who needs to be lifted by a crane as it wasn't ever necessary to leave the flat so I wasn't to realise what was happening (arguably slightly far-fetched).
-There are so many more laptop issues when working from home - so your boss thinks you are being a shirker, but really you are having a panic attack as your laptop won't connect to the system.
- People tend to be ruder on emails than they would be face-to-face, which results in me simply getting in a flap.
-There is a risk that I could spend the entire day inside my pokey basement flat, which may result in me developing hermit-like personality traits.
-There is no real reason to sport bright pink lipstick.
- There is no one to relay the ins and outs of your entire weekend to.