Would You Really Prefer Working From Home?

New Age

Working from home is hyped as the New Age working routine: no carbon miles, saving companies' money, etc - actually it just gives a new lease of life to Jehovah's Witnesses and Bettaware reps who want to be your friend.

Online

You have a PC and fax that has funny turns, but it's automatically assumed you'll be bristling with technology - you'll feel marginalized because you can't even have a proper systems breakdown.

Phone

In the office you know when someone is 'in a meeting', but when you call from your home office you'll always seem to ring people at the wrong moment. Of course, they can ring you anytime, but saying 'sorry, I'm just dealing with the cat's litter tray' doesn't have quite that same ring of self-importance.

Quest

Even if your small business is deeply unsuccessful, you must still look on it as a Journey of Self-Transformation - although your bank manager may find it difficult to see this as a reason for extending your loan.

Real Office

Always try to pretend that you've got one and that there's not really a giant Cabbage Patch doll staring at you from the spare bed.

Small Businessman's Club (sic)

Not always what you'd expect - not if you don't happen to be a dog shampooist, burglar alarm salesman or a trainee aromatherapist, that is.

Training

Look back with yearning at all those useless training courses you attended. But just think of all the extra time you'll be able to spend, yes, overworking.

Would You Really Prefer Working from Home?

Appearance

Well, just look at you: slopping around in your jeans doing a little light emailing. That's what you think: it'll soon dawn on you that, unless you're power-dressed and wearing enough cologne to damage the ozone layer, no-one will take you seriously. Not even you.

Bedroom

Do you really want to spend a lifetime suffering from Mrs Rochester's Syndrome - padding around a bedroom, sorry, office, in your slippers?

Cats

Cats, once happy to grub around outside, will now meow plaintively and claw at your window, like Cathy in Wuthering Heights. Passers-by make comments about the RSPCA.

Dogs

Also disturbed by your new daylight appearances.

Enigmas

Working virtually means you won't know your clients' favourite colours/ personal relationships/ lucky Lottery numbers/ glove compartment contents. You'll wonder what picture they have of you - then again, perhaps you'd rather not know.

Front door

Whatever you do, don't open it - it'll be a can't-believe-his-luck Mormon or if you're very lucky the Bettaware person who wants to be your best friend.

Gossip

Deprived of office gossip, be warned: you may find yourself becoming abnormally interested in your partner's boring work colleagues - a pathetic gossip junkie's secondhand fix.

Home

In a real office everyone is supposed to work with a common aim - at home, when you emerge grim-faced from your 'office', you'll find others grazing semi-comatose in front of Murder She Wrote and asking you where the chocolate spread is.

Instant nostalgia

All-of-a-sudden irritating colleagues will appear pleasantly-eccentric; overreaching management just a victim of the system. You'd really give this up just to get on first names with your Avon representative?

Jealousy

You will feel that every client on the phone automatically knows you're sitting on a hideous, purple quilt that looks like something worn by Abba's Agnetha in 1977. This can induce 'real office' envy very quickly.

Keyboard

If you're not slumped in front of one for twelve hours a day - a prime candidate for RSI - then you must be the new part-timer.

Lonely

If you finally solve your people problem you'll have to face up to the next one: solitary confinement. But don't worry - the cat will try to cheer you up by meowing down the chimney with full Dolby sound effects.

Motivation

At 'proper work' (as you'll have to think of it) you could always read the company's mission statement if you were desperate for a laugh. Now you'll stare at the pile of red bills, have another cup of coffee and, to raise your self-esteem, remember that you were once commended in a cycling proficiency test.

The Corporate Bullshit Detector: L

Leadership skills - Better write yours down for the boss - you won't be around forever.

Leading-edge - Your company is probably leading-edge in the same way that London Underground is a transport system or Victoria Beckham is a singer. Best not to inquire too much, really.

Leave it up to the man on the coalface - Probably a woman, but a mere detail, honestly.

Let's put that in the lift and see which floor is stops at - Probably yours.

Life-cycle assessment - Is there any real reason for your company and its systems, products or services to exist? Don't answer that.

Low-hanging fruit - Easy pickings for your company that even it might get right for once.

Corporate art: weird or just oxymoronic?

Corporate art always seems a bit weird and oxymoronic. Did the artist really sit down with the brief to produce something that matched beige and wouldn’t put people off their BlackBerrying? Or was it just a bit of luck that they had something lying around that didn’t involve any body fluids? Or is it just seen as another expensive outlay that may, like the rest of us, one day be worth the investment?

But, whatever the reason, most of us are unlikely to have a Rothko hanging outside our office, like David Rockefeller, whose White Center was recently sold for $72.8 million. At best we’re more likely to be given inoffensive (we all know we’re talking a Monet print here with enlarged lily). At worst we’ll sit in the same meeting room for years and wonder what kind of mind could produce a grotesque leather clock with drooping handles, a view of the Essex countryside with wonky steeple and a Breton woman in costume on melamine? And, no, we’re not talking post-modern, post-ironic Hoxton gallery here.

Only such is the noxious effect of yet another four hour ‘speed’ meeting that perhaps we’d hate it even if it was a Picasso. Sad, but true.

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