Salute to Spouses Blog

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Working from home? Slackers or better employees?

I work from home. Get your jealous ohhs and ahhs out now. Let’s get the big points out of the way first.

Yes, I have worked in my pajamas and even attended meetings with my boss sans proper attire – sorry Morgan.

Yes, I answer the phone and talk to people who I am not working directly with - my friends neeeed me!

Yes, I check Facebook, while at work and no one can see. Hah! Until my boss notices the way cute pics I posted of my kids’ first day of school.

No, I have never drank while on the clock – that would be too obvious. Remember, they have to read what I write.

But it’s all fun and games until a kid gets sick; or the repairman has to come and fix the dishwasher – loudly, while you’re on the phone for a work related call; or your husband comes home in the middle of the day and assumes you can hustle and search the house for whatever he’s forgotten this time because how could you possibly have anything else to do?

Working from home, if you do it right, is a lot of hard work. In fact, I’m just a wee bit jealous of my husband’s cubicle.

See, at home I feel the need to be constantly accessible. I check my work email all day long, until I go to bed at night. I constantly have a story open on the screen that I am making adjustments too. I troll the internet looking for sources and information.

There is no way to simply walk out the door and head home for the night, leaving the job behind. My home is my job.

And balancing the two can be tricky.

If I have a sick child, I still go to work –with the child in my lap sneezing and coughing.

Household chores are done in spurts between work items.

Babies only scream and cry when you are on a work call, not a friend call. It’s some, unwritten rule of the universe.

And if one more person knocks on my door while I’m on a work phone call, causing my dog to bark wildly, I may lose my cool.

The ups to all this? I get a heck of a lot done.

Because the line between home and work is blurred, I have to stay on a schedule. There are no co-workers to stand and chat with, no potty breaks to fill in the ever so-slowly moving minutes. I have to get it done and be on to the next item.

When my former editor at a newspaper I worked for allowed me to work from home during my husband’s deployment, she was asked how she knew I was actually working.

She told them, and me, I get a heck of a lot more done from home. 

Apparently, I’m not the only one.

The technology firm Citrix commissioned a Wakefield Research Study to examine the art of working from home. The study was an online survey conducted among 1,013 American office workers.

While the results found some not so surprising facts: 43 percent had watched tv or a movie on the job, 35 percent did household chores and 28 percent have cooked dinner, it also discovered that kind of multi-tasking is good for business.

Employees who had the freedom to catch the last 10 minutes of an afternoon viewing of their favorite show, also went back to the computer and pounded out a lot more work.

A British Telecom report found employees working from home were 20 percent more productive. Another report by the Computer Technology Industry Association also had the same findings.

I’m sure somewhere out there are statistics too about how much money is saved when companies do not have to provide offices, parking, electricity and, in some cases, even computers and phones for employees.

I miss having co-workers. I miss being in an office. But watching my baby crawl for the first time, while on a business call, rather than hear about it later from a babysitter, makes all the extra work worth it.

That, and my jammies are really comfy.

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