Home Office Workers Deserve More Respect

Well, here we go again. The most popular article these days about small office/home office workers is about how self-employed people secretly take naps (“Take Your Perks Seriously [and Lying Down]” by Daniel Akst, June 16).

Wake up and smell the coffee. I don’t have time to nap--I have a business to run and work to do.

Being self-employed and working at home is a business, just like any other business, except we usually work much longer hours. I start working at 5 a.m., and my workday isn’t over until about 6:30 to 7 p.m. I work Saturdays and Sundays as well, averaging about 80 hours a week. I take a half-day off from work about once every four weeks and a full day off once every three to four months, and my last vacation was in 1987. Five people subcontract work from me; they work 60- to 70- hour weeks as well.

My biggest image problem comes from non-self-employed people who think that I watch TV all day, or cook, or garden and, now--thanks to yet another article--that I take a nap every day.

The self-employed, work-at-home business person constitutes a large section of the working population of Southern California, and as such we deserve a little respect, thank you.

The other articles in the section were as serious about self-employed businesses as the “normal” Business section is about the rest of the business world. A frivolous article about taking naps should not be taken seriously enough to make the front page of the section when other serious articles that are true to the genre are hidden deep within the section.

ELIZABETH HALL

Huntington Beach