When I tell people I work from home, there is a standard response. It is one of pure envy. ‘Lucky you!’ they exclaim. ‘I would love to work from home. You have the best job in the world!’
It’s quickly followed by: ‘Do you work in your pyjamas, while watching daytime TV? Do you pretend you can’t answer the phone because you’re in a meeting, when really you’re painting your nails?
‘Can you say the broadband is down and take a shopping day? It must be so much fun to stay out late on a week night and then lie in until midday.’
All the while, I smile and agree that yes, I am incredibly lucky, because working from home is, indeed, the best work set-up known to (wo)man.
And I don’t believe a word of it.
When I had an office job 18 months ago, I thought very differently. Like seemingly everyone else toiling away with a dreary daily commute, I dreamed of working from home.
Who wouldn’t wish for a ten-second commute instead of an hour on a packed train? And escaping not only office politics but the fashion parade was certain to save me time and money.
Naturally, then, when voluntary redundancy became an option, I accepted. And I have since discovered that the joy of working from home is a complete myth. Utter baloney.
Of course, I have committed all those slovenly work sins mentioned above — but they get boring after a week. Yes, I can set the alarm for 10am and answer emails from my laptop in bed.
Then, while taking a work call, I can load the washing machine and tidy the living room. I am always in when a package is being delivered, there are no last-minute emergencies when I can’t get to the post office before closing, and I don’t waste money on morning takeaway cappuccinos or sugary snacks to dull the office tedium.
Sadly, none of these apparent advantages make for a productive work life. When you have a job and you want to exercise, you can go before work, at lunchtime or after work. If you work from home, you can go whenever you feel like it — which, in my case, means never.
You can also cook yourself healthy meals from scratch, instead of eating an overpriced sandwich at your desk. Which means wasting an hour making fresh soup and garnishing it with four rounds of butter-soaked toast.
Add to that the calories not burnt rushing to the bus stop or climbing the office stairs, and I’ve put on a stone.
My retired mother and my sister on maternity leave love the fact I’m around for daytime chats, so my work hours disappear gossiping on the phone.
Friends who are at home with small children don’t understand why I can’t pop round on random weekday mornings. Nor do they accept the ‘I’m working’ excuse when they have a childcare crisis they want me to step in and sort out.
But it’s the self-imposed solitude that is the hardest thing. My most regular daily conversation is with my newsagent, who thinks I have half an hour to chat each morning — though I’m the one who gives him this impression. The truth is that I cherish these exchanges, which are often the only human contact I’ll have until evening.
My worry is that as more people buy into the idea that working from home is perfect, they are giving up decent jobs to isolate themselves at home. Technology allows us to work from practically anywhere, and the recession persuaded many people to re-evaluate their lives and set up a small business from home.
‘I never thought about the downsides of working from home before I left my job,’ says my friend Louisa. ‘I just envisaged lovely lie-ins, lunch with friends and a relaxed lifestyle.
‘However, it’s anything but relaxed. My office phone is my home phone, so I spend every evening answering calls from workaholics who are still in the office at 11pm. They’re expecting to leave a message, but when it rings I can’t ignore it. But after the call, I can’t sleep. So I never switch off.’
Worse still, Louisa lives alone. She tells me: ‘Some days I don’t see anyone and I find myself going stir-crazy.
‘I try to have an active social life, but well-meaning friends often say: “I’ll pop round.” I don’t want them to pop round — I’m desperate to get out of the house. Equally, they don’t understand that it’s often the end of the world if they cancel on me. They just don’t realise they’re my only human contact that week.
‘And when you’ve got no one to put things in perspective, the smallest things become huge.
‘If I call three people and not one calls me back that day, I don’t think: “They must be busy.” I think: “They hate me.” I know it’s ridiculous, but living and working alone, you can’t help it.’
Penny Matthews also found out the grass isn’t always greener. She set up her own design company 11 years ago when she divorced. Her mistake, she thinks, was to work from home.
‘It was awful,’ she says. ‘The children distract you, because they don’t respect the fact you’re working. I would work with the TV on and take breaks to do housework. Even when I was being productive, you don’t get the sort of mental stimulation you find in an office. I went stir-crazy with no one to talk to.’
After 12 months she found some office space, but had to give it up later because it was too expensive. Then, two years ago, she set up 4ortyplus.co.uk, a website for women over 40. At first, she worked from her garage, but she’s managed to get office space again.
‘I advise all of my readers that they are better off going out to work than staying at home,’ she says.
‘Women with small children might have to work at home out of necessity, but they’d find it easier if they got a part-time job out of the house. You end up getting angry at the children, who don’t understand why, and you never have any time to yourself.’
Having time to herself was what made my friend Rachel look forward to returning to work after six months of maternity leave with her first child.
‘Someone pointed out the commute would not be interrupted by feeding, crying, washing or cleaning,’ she says.
Now she can read a book on the train to work or just stare at her shoes. If she worked from home, she would never get away with locking herself in a room for some ‘me-time’ every morning.
Part of the problem is that over the past few years we’ve been bombarded with stories about new mothers becoming multi-millionaires from companies and enterprises they’ve set up from home during their maternity leave. These so-called kitchen-table tycoons are estimated to have generated a turnover of £4.4 billion — more than some FTSE 100 companies.
So thousands of women, lured by the thought of not having to shell out a fortune on childcare and being their own boss, have chosen to give up their office job and start working from home.
Yet frequently they regret their choice. ‘When I started working from home, I missed the camaraderie of working in an office,’ says writer Anita Naik, 43.
‘I missed the structure of office life and people to talk to when I’d had a bad day. I also found the distractions immense.’
Coping with a four-year-old, a new baby and work seemed impossible.
‘I kept thinking that perhaps a job out of the house would be easier,’ she says. ‘It took me six months to settle and I realised I had to be strict with myself.’
Even so there are problems: ‘I can never really lose myself in work because I can hear what’s happening downstairs (the children have a part-time nanny), and between writing and interviewing, I have to rush about doing chores.’
She has met so many women in the same boat that she decided to write a book — Kitchen Table Tycoon: How To Make It Work As A Mother And An Entrepreneur (Piatkus, £7.99) — to advise them on managing a new home business with a family.
But there’s no such book for those of us without children, so I’ve had to make a few changes to my life to make things bearable. Over the past few months, I’ve done some shifts in an office.
On the first day, I was like an excitable schoolgirl getting ready for the start of a new term. I put on as much make-up as I could and skipped into work.
But would I swap working from home to commuting to an office every day? Ask me later. It’s 2pm and I need to get out of bed and get dressed.
It’s quickly followed by: ‘Do you work in your pyjamas, while watching daytime TV? Do you pretend you can’t answer the phone because you’re in a meeting, when really you’re painting your nails?
‘Can you say the broadband is down and take a shopping day? It must be so much fun to stay out late on a week night and then lie in until midday.’
Living the dream? Working from home means trying to avoid dozens of distractions
And I don’t believe a word of it.
When I had an office job 18 months ago, I thought very differently. Like seemingly everyone else toiling away with a dreary daily commute, I dreamed of working from home.
Who wouldn’t wish for a ten-second commute instead of an hour on a packed train? And escaping not only office politics but the fashion parade was certain to save me time and money.
Naturally, then, when voluntary redundancy became an option, I accepted. And I have since discovered that the joy of working from home is a complete myth. Utter baloney.
Of course, I have committed all those slovenly work sins mentioned above — but they get boring after a week. Yes, I can set the alarm for 10am and answer emails from my laptop in bed.
Then, while taking a work call, I can load the washing machine and tidy the living room. I am always in when a package is being delivered, there are no last-minute emergencies when I can’t get to the post office before closing, and I don’t waste money on morning takeaway cappuccinos or sugary snacks to dull the office tedium.
Sadly, none of these apparent advantages make for a productive work life. When you have a job and you want to exercise, you can go before work, at lunchtime or after work. If you work from home, you can go whenever you feel like it — which, in my case, means never.
Back to the grindstone: Sophie Morris was like an excitable schoolgirl when she got the opportunity to work in an office again
Add to that the calories not burnt rushing to the bus stop or climbing the office stairs, and I’ve put on a stone.
My retired mother and my sister on maternity leave love the fact I’m around for daytime chats, so my work hours disappear gossiping on the phone.
Friends who are at home with small children don’t understand why I can’t pop round on random weekday mornings. Nor do they accept the ‘I’m working’ excuse when they have a childcare crisis they want me to step in and sort out.
But it’s the self-imposed solitude that is the hardest thing. My most regular daily conversation is with my newsagent, who thinks I have half an hour to chat each morning — though I’m the one who gives him this impression. The truth is that I cherish these exchanges, which are often the only human contact I’ll have until evening.
My worry is that as more people buy into the idea that working from home is perfect, they are giving up decent jobs to isolate themselves at home. Technology allows us to work from practically anywhere, and the recession persuaded many people to re-evaluate their lives and set up a small business from home.
‘I never thought about the downsides of working from home before I left my job,’ says my friend Louisa. ‘I just envisaged lovely lie-ins, lunch with friends and a relaxed lifestyle.
‘However, it’s anything but relaxed. My office phone is my home phone, so I spend every evening answering calls from workaholics who are still in the office at 11pm. They’re expecting to leave a message, but when it rings I can’t ignore it. But after the call, I can’t sleep. So I never switch off.’
Worse still, Louisa lives alone. She tells me: ‘Some days I don’t see anyone and I find myself going stir-crazy.
‘I try to have an active social life, but well-meaning friends often say: “I’ll pop round.” I don’t want them to pop round — I’m desperate to get out of the house. Equally, they don’t understand that it’s often the end of the world if they cancel on me. They just don’t realise they’re my only human contact that week.
‘And when you’ve got no one to put things in perspective, the smallest things become huge.
‘If I call three people and not one calls me back that day, I don’t think: “They must be busy.” I think: “They hate me.” I know it’s ridiculous, but living and working alone, you can’t help it.’
Penny Matthews also found out the grass isn’t always greener. She set up her own design company 11 years ago when she divorced. Her mistake, she thinks, was to work from home.
‘It was awful,’ she says. ‘The children distract you, because they don’t respect the fact you’re working. I would work with the TV on and take breaks to do housework. Even when I was being productive, you don’t get the sort of mental stimulation you find in an office. I went stir-crazy with no one to talk to.’
After 12 months she found some office space, but had to give it up later because it was too expensive. Then, two years ago, she set up 4ortyplus.co.uk, a website for women over 40. At first, she worked from her garage, but she’s managed to get office space again.
‘I advise all of my readers that they are better off going out to work than staying at home,’ she says.
Perks of the job: Slovenly work sins, like working from your sofa, get boring after about a week
Having time to herself was what made my friend Rachel look forward to returning to work after six months of maternity leave with her first child.
‘Someone pointed out the commute would not be interrupted by feeding, crying, washing or cleaning,’ she says.
Now she can read a book on the train to work or just stare at her shoes. If she worked from home, she would never get away with locking herself in a room for some ‘me-time’ every morning.
Part of the problem is that over the past few years we’ve been bombarded with stories about new mothers becoming multi-millionaires from companies and enterprises they’ve set up from home during their maternity leave. These so-called kitchen-table tycoons are estimated to have generated a turnover of £4.4 billion — more than some FTSE 100 companies.
So thousands of women, lured by the thought of not having to shell out a fortune on childcare and being their own boss, have chosen to give up their office job and start working from home.
Yet frequently they regret their choice. ‘When I started working from home, I missed the camaraderie of working in an office,’ says writer Anita Naik, 43.
‘I missed the structure of office life and people to talk to when I’d had a bad day. I also found the distractions immense.’
Coping with a four-year-old, a new baby and work seemed impossible.
‘I kept thinking that perhaps a job out of the house would be easier,’ she says. ‘It took me six months to settle and I realised I had to be strict with myself.’
Even so there are problems: ‘I can never really lose myself in work because I can hear what’s happening downstairs (the children have a part-time nanny), and between writing and interviewing, I have to rush about doing chores.’
She has met so many women in the same boat that she decided to write a book — Kitchen Table Tycoon: How To Make It Work As A Mother And An Entrepreneur (Piatkus, £7.99) — to advise them on managing a new home business with a family.
But there’s no such book for those of us without children, so I’ve had to make a few changes to my life to make things bearable. Over the past few months, I’ve done some shifts in an office.
On the first day, I was like an excitable schoolgirl getting ready for the start of a new term. I put on as much make-up as I could and skipped into work.
But would I swap working from home to commuting to an office every day? Ask me later. It’s 2pm and I need to get out of bed and get dressed.
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