“Yeah, but you don’t have to sit in traffic, so it doesn’t
count.”
“You must love spending all of that time with your
children.”
“It must be nice to have such a flexible schedule.”
“It must be nice to be in your pajamas all day.”
These are just a few of the comments I have heard over the
years when I tell people that I work from home.
While some of the above comments may have a bit of truth to them,
depending on the job you have as a work-at-home parent, they are still a bit
insulting. All four of those comments
completely diminish how hard I work at my job.
It’s almost as if the person saying them is saying, “Yeah, I know you
work really hard. Wink, wink.” Call me a work dork, but I am proud of what I
accomplish at work. So, passive
aggressive comments that insinuate that I don’t work that hard because I’m not
physically in an office are actually pretty offensive. There are tons of mommy wars between
stay-at-home moms and working moms, and I don’t really want to be a part of those
wars, but what about the work- at-home mom?
Don’t get me wrong-there are some really wonderful benefits
to working from home, such as being able to start dinner immediately after
work, rather than making a meal after sitting in an hour’s worth of traffic. There is also the awesome ability to drop my
girls off at their nightly activities like gymnastics or theatre, rather than
constantly missing things like that because I get home from work too late. There is also the fabulousness of living in
Florida, rather than in the Northeast where our home office is. Looking out my windows and seeing sunshine
and palm trees each day does wonders for my mood if I’m having a stressful
moment. Having access to food in my
kitchen, rather than on-the-go meals makes having healthier breakfasts or
lunches a possibility. Having peace and
quiet also plays a huge role in my productivity. I don’t have anyone standing over my shoulder
waiting for me to finish up on what I’m doing so that they can be next in line
to ask me to do something else (yes…this really happens in an office
environment). I also don’t have any
office chatter going on all around me, or various smells of random lunches
being heated in the microwave (don’t you hate when people bring fish into the
office?). So, yes, there is an ample
amount of reasons why working from home is great. This blog post is not meant as a place to
complain about working from home. I
simply want to inform people that my job isn’t fluff. It’s hard, and the work I do matters just as
much as if I were in a physical office.
Usually upon learning that I work from home, most people
assume that I have a sales or consultant-like type of job where I make my own
schedule. This is completely not the
case. I don’t have scheduled hours, but
I typically work from 8am to around 5, 6 or 7pm. Sometimes, I stop working at 5pm, only to go
back a few hours later. My schedule
depends on what is needed at work, and I am on call pretty much all of the time. Just as people who physically go into the
office every day, I don’t work around my life.
My life works around my job. And
I don’t say that in a negative way. I am
just trying to explain to those who think my life is easy peasy, that working
from home has the same requirements as working in the office. And if you are neurotic like I am, it can
sometimes be even worse.
While working from home definitely has its benefits, one of the
biggest pitfalls, in my opinion, is my fear of not being readily available when
someone needs me, which makes me feel guilty about taking breaks. Over the last year, I have forced myself to
start taking breaks, but that is a whole different topic (hmm…maybe even something
to consider for my next blog post). Another
pitfall is getting lost in the weeds.
Working from home makes networking and reaching out to team members,
business partners or clients essential. You
need to remind them that you are there because you aren’t a physical presence
in the office. Because I worked in the
office prior to telecommuting, I’ve never had a huge issue with this because
most people know who I am. But it’s
still important, especially when dealing with new faces, to introduce yourself via
phone call and explain what it is that you do and how your role can benefit
them. It is also really important to
speak up during conference calls, because experience has shown me that if you
aren’t in the room, people almost always forget that you’re there.
Working from home also requires a ton of discipline. If you aren’t paranoid like me, then sure, throwing
a load of laundry in the wash at lunchtime isn’t a terrible thing. But if
you don’t have much self-control, or if you are a social media junkie, or if
you are susceptible to ADHD-like behaviors, you might want to nix the idea of
working from home. Staying focused is
imperative and distractions can be more amplified when you are alone in your
own home.
A note to those who think I sit around watching movies with
my children all day, this is also not the case.
My children have never known a life where I went to work in an
office. I have worked from home since my
oldest daughter was about two years old.
So, if they are home while I am still working, they know that they are
never to enter my room. They also know
that they aren’t allowed to yell or scream.
The term “inside voices” has a completely different meaning in my home
during my work hours. From the time they
get home from school, they are aware that they need to do their homework, make
themselves a snack and fend for themselves until I open my door. Granted, I have really amazing children who
have never caused me a moment of stress when it comes to working while they are
in the house. I am never worried that
they are going to barge in while I am on a conference all, or that they will
start playing the tambourine while I am in the middle of doing something that
requires my complete attention. But I
also attribute that to the fact that this lifestyle and my expectations of
their behavior while I am “at work” have been ingrained in them from a very young
age. They truly don’t know anything
else.
Having said all of that, the point of this blog post is
this- the next time someone tells you that they work from home, don’t
automatically assume that it is luxurious or that they have it easy. Flippant comments that might not mean any
harm may actually wind up coming off as hurtful. I promise you that we work just as hard as
those who commute to an office, we truly value our work, and for the record, we
don’t sit around all day in our pajamas eating bon-bons.
