Working from home not all it's cracked up to be

In the 1970s there were many prognostications of what life would be like when the century was to turn, 30 years hence. Aside from “nuclear winter” (a post apocalyptic new ice age), and the “Population Bomb” in which unfettered growth in humanity’s numbers were to render the planet uninhabitable, there were also to be some very, very nice things in the forthcoming era.

They included ever-increasing leisure, since technology was to render us not needed at the office from 9 to 5, and therefore we were going to have to find things to occupy us with all that free time we were to have. That was combined with the fact that we no longer, in effect, would even need to go to that office, since we would be able to, and encouraged to, work from our home offices until such time as our retirement at around age 50. After that time, we would have at least 40 years (increased longevity, you understand) of good and healthy recreational time. Indeed, the world would be a vast panorama of garish garb wearing cycle weenies cluttering our highways and byways even more than they currently do.

So, let’s look at just one facet of those prophecies. Prophecies that were by-and-large bullshit. Let us consider “telecommuting”. Our cities and towns are blighted by constant growth in corporate offices, educational institutions and other beehives that seem to suggest there must be a working populace to fill them. Why the hell aren’t these people working from home? Technology today would, in fact, enable virtually ‘all’ of us to avoid the morning and evening commute. We’d only have to hit the office in order to attend the odd time-wasting ‘meeting’ (have you ever attended a meeting that wasn’t time-wasting? I haven’t), and that would be about it. Otherwise, it should be up in the morning, grab a cuppa in the kitchen, and head down the hall in your jammies to let the day begin.

Why isn’t that scenario more commonplace? Well, maybe for reasons that have less to do with practicality and more to do with human psychology. The point being, most people actually want to go to an office. Well, maybe not a ‘Dilbert’ cubicle per se, but to at least have a place-of-work at which they must attend. It gives them validation. It makes people feel that they have a niche in the wider world, and that they have talents sufficient to make their overlords want to have them there.

So, whine as we might, we like to have to suit-up and head for the morning gridlock. Going to offices has bonuses. You can: get a bit or legitimate work done (maybe); chat up comely members of the opposite sex and fantasize about affairs with them (most clandestine sexual liaisons arise from a workplace commonalty); chat with your colleagues; bitch about the management; go for coffee; go for lunch; watch the clock; go for a pee; watch the clock again; drink more coffee; go for another pee; shuffle some papers; watch the clock; go home; whine to your spouse about how taxing your day was and how you wish you could work from home. Yep, you had a fulfilling day, and there's no denying it.

Well, after years of toiling in various workplaces, I now work from home. Let me tell you, it isn’t all wonderful. Its deficits include:

Getting company-starved. I am a naturally outgoing person, and a paucity of human interaction can drag me down.
Procrastination is seductive because there is nobody watching over a body.
There is nobody to bounce ideas off – something that is helpful to a writer.
One’s own company gets excruciatingly boring.
If one is really bored one can play solitaire virtually forever (or even scan questionable and salacious sites) and there is nobody to catch one in the act.
One can call it quits at any time. Sometimes at a ridiculously early time if nothing much is happening.
Things that need to be done around the house – cleaning gutters, cutting the grass, unclogging a sink – are omnipresent and there is no way to escape them.
If somebody – like Wendy, for example – is around, then the temptation to go out for coffee is very high.
If somebody – like Wendy, for example is ‘not’ around, then the temptation to split for coffee is still very high. After all, there are my cherished ladies in the Starbucks at my supermarket. Sometimes I just need the chat.

Now, I once longed to be in a place where I could work on my own in my own place. And, don’t get me wrong; I have no desire to go back to an office, because the benefits of working from home still outweigh the deficits. But, I can still understand why telecommuting has yet to take the workaday world by storm. It’s because too many people don’t really want it to. They want the right to get out of the place and leave all the cares and stresses of the domestic scene behind them.

People are very weird.