THE MYTH OF THE HOME OFFICE
I know what you think: Life would be perfect if you could just give up the rat race and work at home. Every new piece of hardware or software makes it that much more tantalizing. Technology has brought the world to your doorstep. Why, then, would any sane person want to go someplace else to work every day?
Listen to me carefully. I have been at home for 15 years, since the days of the IBM Selectric. I am the voice of experience, and I say: Stay right where you are--wedged between the gal in the mini-Mercedes who’s applying mascara with the right hand and primping her hair with the left and the guy in the Land Cruiser who has Variety propped against the steering wheel while he shaves off that chic weekend stubble. Let the lady in the traffic copter lull you with news about the spilled truckload of frozen fruit that has transformed the freeway between you and your destination into a smoothie. Try to find a single FM station that plays rock from the decade when you cared about it. You’re halfway to the office; only 20 more miles.
You think that’s rough? Step over the threshold into my home office and find out what trouble really is.
We can talk about the commute first, if you like. Mine takes about a minute and involves walking down 15 stairs, sharp right, another sharp right, and I’m there. The problem is that there is still here, if you know what I mean. I am at work and at home, and the commute between those two worlds is a killer.
Despite the large “No Solicitors” sign posted by the front door, I do wind sprints from the back of the house every day. I toy with the idea of not answering the door during work hours, but what if it’s the Federal Express lady with a large check that requires a signature? What if she has my contract? What if it’s a messenger from the producer who optioned my last book?
Yesterday it was a wildly respectable-looking young man in an emphatically striped dress shirt and tie, rather elegant braces and a pair of gabardines fresh from the dry cleaners. Just the sort of fellow to deliver a surprise check from the MacArthur Foundation. I opened the door.
“Hi,” he said, pressing a business card into my hand. “I was just wondering when you folks are going to sell your house.”
For this I got up mid-paragraph.
“Not in your lifetime,” I reply, and trudge back to work.
Add the people who think that our lawn/roof/exterior paint need work--and the ones who want to detail my car or help me find a new religion--and you get a good sense of the overlap. And don’t forget the phone solicitors, who believe that anyone home during the day has nothing better to do than entertain come-ons for everything from credit cards to storm windows.
In a perfect world, I suppose, I would have a separate business entrance, like those Hancock Park mansions with the discreet little plaque that reads “Service entrance at rear.” And, of course, a dedicated set of phone lines. There would be a cleaner separation of church and state.
But this is not a perfect world, despite what the shelter magazines would like you to think. Having run out of ways to make a bathroom upgrade a must-read, they have embraced the home office as the last great decorational frontier. They see it as an Eden of cyberspatial bliss--the sleek modern desk that looks half the length of a football field, the ergonomic chair that’s as much fun as a shiatsu massage, the bank of picture windows that face the Pacific. There is always enough room for an overstuffed chaise in the corner. A skylight. A private bath.
I have only one question. If there was such a room in your house, don’t you think that by now you would have started living in it? What kind of person would have a room like that lying fallow, just waiting to be claimed as an office?
No one, that’s who. My home office is the back bedroom of a vintage 1917 house. I mention the date because that was the era when people took the word “bedroom” literally. It was the place you went to sleep. Not to eat, not to watch big-screen TV, certainly not to work out.
This room is a little, lonely old place, the runt of the real estate litter, the 11-by-11 box nobody in this family wanted.
But here I sit, surrounded by all the stuff I would have in an office, only closer to the laundry room: The computer, the printer, the two-line phone, the digital message machine, the fax, the copier. The only schlep in the crowd is me.
My self-respect demands that I not work in my pajamas. But between them and a suit is a vast sartorial wasteland. Pick your euphemism; it boils down to T-shirts and khakis, turtlenecks and jeans, running shorts and tanks.
I never let on, though. My verbal style is pure power suit; I sound as if I’m sitting here in head-to-toe Armani. I have to make a good impression. Since I deal mostly with Manhattanites, I run the risk of being doubly oppressed: They don’t take us seriously already, because we live in Los Angeles. If they think I go to work in anything less than basic black, I slip another rung on the credibility ladder.
The problem is that New Yorkers never aspire to being at home, since the places they live in have living rooms the size of a valet parking kiosk. They live in public spaces--restaurants, clubs, office buildings, pocket parks, other people’s country houses. They regard anyone who wants to stay home with a mixture of pity and bewilderment, since they equate success with the amount of time they don’t spend there.
And they (like some of you) think that the dirty little secret of the home worker is that we don’t really work--that the unsupervised life is quite worth living, thanks, filled with daytime TV talk shows and jaunts to the gym. Nobody thinks my phone machine is on because I’m doing an interview on the other line; they assume I’m out blading or going to the bargain matinee flick.
We are still marginal beings, those of us who work at home. People who are embarrassed to admit that they do not work at all say that they work at home. People who have been downsized and would return to an office in a minute say they work at home. We are not an illustrious bunch; we sit at the fringes of the workday world.
And we sit there alone, misanthropes trying to make good. No colleagues, no camaraderie. I have had to develop ancillary relationships over the years: I can tell you more about the nice woman at the dry cleaners than any of her other customers can. I have bonded with the mailman and the Fed-Ex lady, whose name I know, as well as her age, her place of birth and her preference in chocolates. One of my best friends is a work-at-home writer and, maybe once a month, we get together for lunch and babble like maniacs. We go home sated--human contact! If she ever moves away I may have to take an office job.
Still, I would be loath to give this up. Why? I get more work done than most of you. I face none of the distractions that trip you up: the coffee break, the water cooler chat, the endless meetings, the business lunch. I may be lonely, but I am driving in the equivalent of the carpool lane of corporate life.
My day does not have rest stops built in, like yours, so I tend to work straight through. I have to be very careful when answering the phone between 12 and 1; the outside world is divided between people I can chew in front of and those I can’t. In the early days of work at home I ate the occasional sandwich or crunchy salad, in the kitchen or even the dining room, as though I were a normal working person. But I’ve become more sophisticated and obsessed: Now I lean toward foods that can be eaten desk-side, silently. Yogurt is always good. Or soup. Anything out of the blender.
My office is always there for me, like some New Age pal. My husband needs two keys to get into his office building at night or on the weekends. My office always beckons. After my daughter has gone to bed. When I would rather be baking a pie. When I slump onto the couch at 9 at night, ready to kick back like any other overextended adult--and I notice, just down the hall, the beam of light from my desk lamp.
You have no idea how hard it is to walk in, turn it off and walk right back out without looking at my calendar or checking my e-mail. I am training myself to turn that lamp off at the end of the day, so I will have no reason to go back later on.
Be forewarned. You can still save yourself, but the home office is my destiny. My social skills have atrophied from underuse; I’m not sure I could go back into a normal workplace. My ability to function in a vacuum, though, is as highly developed as a “Baywatch” hamstring. I think extreme self-discipline is genetic, like every other disease. Some of us are born to work--and we can do it at home--and some of us are better off having it thrust upon us, in a real workplace, by a real boss. If you go home, you have to do all the jobs: receptionist, assistant, gofer, administrator, accountant, talent, executive. I am my own bureaucracy.
Are you sure you want to trade the commute and the daily pantyhose for that?
Remember Thomas Wolfe; he almost had it right. You can, in fact, go home again. The question is, why on earth would you want to?
