So yesterday I was emailing with my sister. I’m trying to plan a family picnic for this weekend and sent my sister the details in hopes she could attend. She told me that it was nothing personal but she’s not sure because she’s busy. “it’s not like I’m home all day like you.”
Oh no she didn’t!
You know exactly what I’m talking about and why this made me so angry. In fact, I waited a day before talking about this because I didn’t want to come off as unhinged. Why do people feel just because you work at home you’re a hobbyist? You know what I think? I think people who work at home work harder, longer hours than our suit wearing, water-cooler talking, back stabbing, congested commuting counterparts and here’s why.
- Because we don’t commute, we work the hours others spend on the road. For instance, my typical day is from 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Sometimes longer. We’re always at our computers and always drawn to our offices – even during “non-working” hours.
- We don’t spend the days gossiping with co-workers. No water cooler, no rest rooms, no he said, she said.
- We’re not running out every hour or two for coffee or smokes.
- We’re not distracted by regular meetings, birthday parties, other employees’ phone calls and stuck elevators.
- We don’t rely on other people to tell us what to do and how to do it. We’re independent and count on ourselves to get the job done.
- We’re (mostly) not embroiled in office politics or backstabbing.
- We don’t always take a lunch hour – or even a lunch half hour. In fact, if my son is out of the house I generally work through a traditional lunch hour.
- Instead of focusing on one project or job, we have our hands in several pots.
- Cube farms and crowded offices are distracting. There’s just too much going on for one person to sit and focus for long blocks of time like the average freelancer. There are studies showing so much time is wasted because people who work in a traditional office chit chat with co-workers and run out to pick up food and drinks more often. If we get up to break, we’re back at our desks in five minutes.
The truth is, not too many people can hack working at home. It’s too disciplined. You have to have a strong work ethic and be able to work without others around you. Sure, we have our time wasters, (I’m talking to you, Twitter), but that’s minimal compared to an office gossip session.
What do you think? Do freelancers and work at homes work harder? Why?
Actually, I spent the first half of my career in an office, and yes, that’s all true. Very, very true. Sometimes I miss it, actually. At any rate, amen to all that, Deb. And the next time a relative asks me,’So what kind of writing do you do?’ (even though they just asked me at the last family gathering, always a half-second before their eyes glaze over with boredom), I am going to reply, ‘The profitable kind, the kind where you work your butt off.’
Correction: four different offices in four different cities, so I think I got a pretty good sampling of office culture. Oh, and Deb, at the next opportunity, you should say something to your sister like, ‘It’s not like I have co-workers to help me out like you do,’ or some snarky comment like that. OK, two wrongs don’t make a right, but it sure would feel good! Besides, maybe you technically do have co-workers now that you’re at Blog Talk Radio? Anyway… food for thought.
Aaaaaaargh!! I’m a board hog!! In response to Lara’s earlier post about her husband who works outside the home as president of his own manufacturing company, I think that’s different from the garden variety cube dweller under discussion here. Bottom line: successful entrepreneurs are ALWAYS going to work harder. The only problem is, work-from-home writers/editors (especially women with children) are often viewed neither as entrepreneurs, nor as successful.
I got this crap from almost all of my extended family, to the point I just wanted the earth to open and swallow them all. Some mean it maliciously, others think the ‘jokes’ are funny, and all of them make me po’ed.
One day one of them asked if I was still freelancing. I said ‘No, I got tired of having to guesstimate my income each month, so I’m working for a traditional company’.
I meant this as ‘I’m still working at home writing, but I’m doing it for one company and I get a fixed monthly salary.’
They took it as ‘I’m driving to a business and working all day, and finally have a ‘real job’”
This person began asking me about it – hours, work, position, etc.
I said I was working from 8AM to 5PM 5 days a week, that I had to collaborate with different departments and compile the information and research, turn it into a manual any idiot could read, that I had to process lower-rank writers work into the system and edit it where necessary before shipping it off to the head editor, and that I was responsible for gathering the monthly invoices from all of the writers and entering them into the system.
She said something on the lines of ‘sounds hard, are you ready for a real job after playing around at home?”
I told her I was working from home. She hasn’t mentioned anything work related to me again.
I think we do work harder. We have to make our own work and not have it handed to us. I’m an introvert so I can work for hours without taking a break or talking to anyone. Even in the periods when I have little work, I look for work, organize files, and update my blog.
No, I actually don’t work harder or longer hours now that I work from home. I hated my last job in Corporate America, but I was paid well for an 8-hour day. I don’t make as much money now, but I make enough to pay my bills, save money and pretty much buy whatever I want. If I had to work 8 hours a day on my writing business, I would be incredibly miserable. I like the freedom to spend each day as I wish. (I have to add here that I don’t have kids.) Last Friday I played miniature golf and I just finished a real estate investing course. Next Saturday I am going fishing for the first time. This is why I wanted to work from home. I wanted to pursue my interests and enjoy my life, not have work be my life. If I have to work hard, long hours, I might as well return to Corporate America. It pays better and I get paid vacations and holidays.
But I can understand being upset if you work 10-hour days and then someone implies that because you work at home you must not do much. In my case that would be true.
Annoyed Writer – I love your tactic. Very smoooth. It cracked me up.
Ah, Deb, I read this post this morning and chuckled because I go through the same thing with both my live-in boyfriend and family. On my mom’s days off, she’ll call and ask if I want to go to an art fair, lunch, or a museum during the day – once a month, I will take her up on her offer, but that means I’m working late that night or all weekend to make up for that missed day.
Today, my boyfriend came home and mentioned he went out to lunch with his coworkers and they were asking about me. The girls said it must be nice that I’m home all day because I can do the cooking and his laundry and the bills and what not. That’s not true however, and he asked me tonight,after explaining his conversation, why I didn’t do those things (we split everything evenly now). Instead of being a mature adult, I walked into the other room and didn’t talk to him for a few hours, but I was pretty upset. I came back and told him that I could do all those things during the day, but if that’s the case, not to expect me to be able to pay any bills; otherwise, he could hire a maid.
He shut up after that.
Well said Deb, I work from home as well and get comments like this all the time especially from my husband who cant understand why I cant get a ‘real’ job with the all important benefits et al. I don’t have children so apparently I don’t have a justification to work from home. It doesn’t matter that I like working for myself as I have always run my own business even when I lived in my home country and have no interest in working for anybody else.
When I first read the post, I was in total agreement – FRY THEM ALL!
As I read through the comments I reflected more on my own life. It’s no wonder people are jealous of those of us who work at home. We really do have it made. There is very little about our jobs that we can’t stop for five minutes to watch the kids put on their play or have a meal with the family or just go outside and throw the ball around.
Many of us that right (and have a lap top) also have the ability to take the office with us where ever we go. We can write while we take our parents to the doctor’s office – or while we wait for the kids at their practice.
I do think it takes a special breed to work at home – like Deb said in the post. We are self-motivators and self-employed (just like those that own a business that is based outside the home). And most of the time we are the great multi-taskers – able to balance writing, laundry and lunch all at the same time.
Don’t get mad at the people who can’t relate (or who are so jealous that they want to make you feel guilty). Just smile at the knowledge that you do sit around all day doing the things that you love surrounded by the people and the atmosphere that you love – and you get paid to do it!
I often find myself working late into the night. If I am close to a solution, I keep working without even noticing the time. Come 5:00 pm, out of the home office workers are out the door. Often they slack off at 4:00 pm. I know for a fact that most out of the home office workers still a great deal of time from their employers. I can count the number that I know spend half the day wasting time on the internet, blogging and just surfing.
I keep thinking that it would be great to find a job out of the home so I won’t work so hard all the time.
The big difference between your “average” employee that spends time doing eprsonal stuff at work, goes on food runs and chats at the water cooler, and the “freelancer” is that the “cubicle dweller” gets paid for all the extraneous activities no matter their productivity, and the “work at homer” gets paid based on their productivity. For a entrepreneur, what you invest makes a big difference. I am sure to let people know that I am busy. My husband sure knows, he’s stopped expecting dinner to be ready when he gets home…we still cook together just like when we both worked outside the house.
I loved this rant, Deb. I’ve also linked it on my blog -and also went off on my own tangent (which happens regularly at the “Sarcasm Cafe”).
Feel free to visit my Mojito-inspired tale: http://sarcasmcafe.multiply.com/journal/item/91?mark_read=sarcasmcafe:journal:91
Best,
~v.v.
You got it! I used to work from home. I understand completely. I got tired of hearing, “Why can’t you do it? You’re at home all day” as if ‘at home’ translated to ‘eating BonBons and watch soap operas.’
I enjoy working at home so much that when it’s time to “get a real job” I’ll probably continue to be self-employed. Dh had a great opportunity during college summers working on software. Guess what? He gave it up. He tried “working at home” during college summers. His mom expected him to run errands, cook dinner, clean, etc. all while his unemployed brother sit and watched. He got so frustrated he gave up the job because as a college student he still wasn’t in the mind frame to tell his family to shove it. Basically, the software was cutting edge for the industry and the time period, and the end result would have most likely been lucrative. Unfortunately, his family didn’t respect his personal space and he didn’t know how to navigate unreasonable demands when he was “at home all day doing nothing.”
So, yes, it’s unfortunate how single-minded people can be when it comes to not recognizing working at home as real actual work.