Trophy Husband
A Survival Guide to Working at Home
By Steve Brewer
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2003 Steve Brewer
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Introduction
More than 20 million Americans now work out of home offices, tethered to the rest of the world only by our modem cables. We choose this isolated way of life so we can escape the hassles of neckties and commuting and co-workers who snore.
The cost of working at home is high. We spend our days buried in paperwork, a phone to each ear, a child on each elbow, a dog humping one leg. We have many responsibilities and never enough time. We always seem to be driving somewhere, just as soon as we find our car keys. It’s a chaotic, haphazard, sticky-jelly-fingers way of life. And everyone I know wants to try it.
Women fought for centuries to escape the isolation of the house and get out into the parallel universe of careers and lawsuits and balloon loans. Now, they (and their men) are fighting to go back home, where they can work by themselves.
A thorough examination of this societal shift reveals why perfectly sane adults abandon decent offices to spend all their time elbow-deep in dirty dishes. It’s the same reason sociologists use to explain every cultural transition: It’s the Baby Boomers’ fault.
Among Baby Boomers, dual-career couples became the norm. At the same time, Boomers (who want it all) wanted to have children and a traditional home life like they saw on “Leave It to Beaver.”
Many couples concluded it was more efficient for one spouse to work at home. Their lives were already way too busy. Why not double up some of the demands? Surrounded by computers and fax machines and children and jelly sandwiches, the work-at-home spouse can maintain family values while still contributing to a high-technology economy.
At least that’s the cover story. In truth, telecommuting gives Baby Boomers a way to wear sweatpants all day.
Every day is Casual Friday when you work at home. No, worse than that. Every day is a chore-filled Saturday, a time for old college T-shirts and mismatched socks and sturdy shoes to cushion aching feet as you race around the house, chasing pets and putting out fires. At home, you dress every day as if you’re about to do some work up on the roof.
Of course, the home-office trend goes far beyond mere sweatpants. Working at home is all about freedom. We want to create our own work environments, set our own hours, produce at our own pace. We want “Oprah” breaks. We want to bake brownies during business hours and have them all eaten before the kids get home from school.
Working at home:
--We can shape our own schedules. (Most folks find that the hour before lunch is a good time to actually do some work. Unless a deadline is looming. Then, three o’clock in the morning looks pretty good, too.)
--We can cut the daily commute out of our lives so we can spend more time driving our children to soccer games.
--We can keep tidy houses while still functioning at our computers and fielding calls from headquarters. This is why most telecommuters have baskets of laundry next to their desks.
Women, with their multichannel brains and their cool efficiency, seem more suited to the daily maelstrom of running a business at home. But now millions of men have home offices and an estimated half-million identify themselves as househusbands. This untraditional model poses a threat to an already unstable society and to all garments labeled “Dry Clean Only.”
Most Boomer men received no training in housework when we were growing up. Mom did everything. Now, in a middle-aged rebellion against the dreary workaday existence that ensnared our fathers, we’re becoming our mothers. And we’re simply not qualified.
Men were able to disguise their ineptitude before, back when they trooped off to work and the women stayed home. We men seemed capable and aloof, out there in the trenches. Wives didn’t know that much of our workday centered around the water cooler or that co-workers shook their heads sadly at the mention of our names. All the women knew were whatever lies we told them, and that we brought home a paycheck each week.
But now, men are moving their jobs home, thanks to modern technology and flexible hours and an economy that rolls right along regardless of whether anyone shows up at the office. We yak on the phone and slurp French Roast and e-mail jokes back and forth and generally accomplish as little as we did before. Only now we’re neglecting the housework as well as our corporate duties when we play Tetris at our desks.
A man might escape his employer’s scrutiny, but there’s no hiding the fact that he goofed off all day when the Little Woman comes home to the Big Mess.
Becoming a househusband is a big adjustment, and requires men to think in new ways. For instance, it’s difficult for a man to concentrate on preparing a nutritious supper when ESPN is showing a twi-night doubleheader. It’s hard for a man to keep his self-respect when he’s down on his knees on a sodden carpet, staring into the works of a toilet, a look of grim determination hiding the fact that he knows absolutely nothing about plumbing. And it’s hard to get any work done when children are running through the house, flicking boogers at each other and chanting, “Uranus is gaseous!”
It’s tough duty on the home front, but you men out there can learn to master it. Oh, there will be days when you long for a necktie and a cubicle. Or, at least, a water cooler. But if you work hard and pay attention, you can become a model househusband, one your wife can show off with pride at office parties. Women will ooh and aah when you flex your knowledge of stain removers. Other men will envy your tan.
And the rest of the time, you can be a hermit, a woolly denizen of Greater Sweatpantsia.
I’ve worked at home for more than four years now, and I’ve learned about plumbing and taxes and laundry and roofing tar. I’ve learned how to handle the stress of working alone, setting my own goals, keeping the household together and the kids out of the emergency room.
I’ve shared my findings in a weekly column called The Home Front, which appears in The Albuquerque Tribune and other newspapers around the country. And now I’ve collected those observations into this book.
Altogether, the following chapters make (Attention, IRS! Deduction alert!) an Expert Guide full of Handy Tips that could help you, the Consumer, decide whether to Try Working At Home and, better yet, Survive It.
So study this book carefully. Recommend it to all your friends. Give copies to loved ones for holiday gifts. Together, we can start a Movement, one of capable people working at home, of harried parents banding together, of men learning to cook.
Most importantly, we can sell lots of these books, so I don’t have to give up being a hermit and get a real job.
Chapter 1
The Zen of Working at Home, or Are You Ready, Grasshopper?
If you’re thinking of starting an at-home business, you must first check your mental readiness. Can you work productively without adult supervision? Do you panic when faced with unstructured time? Are you too attached to your necktie, your co-workers, your salary to leave your workplace behind?
It takes years of mental and financial preparation to work at home. Only the strong of mind and spirit (and wallet) can withstand the daily onslaught of housework and home repairs, computer crashes and culinary catastrophes.
Here's a handy quiz to test your mental preparedness. Think of it as a checklist of your coping resources, similar to those inventories of canned goods kept in bomb shelters.
The test is self-scoring. There are no wrong answers. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll soon realize you’re crazy as a loon to even consider leaving your regular job.
Question: The thing I fear most about working at home is:
a) Solitude.
b) Forgetting the niceties of social interaction, such as table manners.
c) Creeping insanity.
d) My children.
e) All of the above.
Q. The thing I would most enjoy about working at home would be:
a) Solitude.
b) Setting my own schedule.
c) Smoking at my desk.
d) “Jerry Springer.”
Q. When I’m working, I like to wear:
a) Stylish clothes that catch the eye.
b) Conservative business attire.
c) Sweatpants.
d) Nothing.
Q. When the doorbell rings, I know it will be someone trying to sell me:
a) Avon.
b) Amway.
c) Fresh fruit.
d) Salvation.
e) All of the above.
Q. When working on a computer, the error message I fear most is:
a) “Insufficient memory at this time.”
b) “A fatal exception has occurred.”
c) “General failure.”
d) What’s an error message?
Q. My child is stuck up a tree, screaming for help. I would:
a) Call the fire department.
b) Climb up the tree and help him down.
c) Stand below, ready to catch him, while gently coaxing him down.
d) Hide in the house until he figures it out on his own.
Q. When the phone rings, I expect it to be:
a) An important client.
b) A telemarketer.
c) My spouse, wondering whether I’ve accomplished anything today.
d) The state Child Protective Services Department.
Q. Faced with two inches of water on the laundry room floor, I would:
a) Unplug all electrical appliances, clean up the mess and try to find the problem.
b) Call a plumber.
c) Call my spouse and whimper into the phone.
d) Tell the kids we’re having a pool party.
Q. To make my home the perfect place to work, I need:
a) A supportive family.
b) A loyal dog.
c) E-mail.
d) Duct tape.
e) A straitjacket.
Scoring: If you’re anal retentive enough to actually add up your score, you’re probably not suited to working at home. At home, you’re surrounded by toys and scrambled files and dirty socks. Better that you should work in a regular office, where they have janitors.
The rest of us will plunge ahead, searching for our utopia: Those rare moments when it all comes together. The kids are in school, deadlines have been met, the dog is asleep. And our warm, fluffy sweatpants have just come out of the dryer.
Chapter 2
How I Became A Trophy Husband: The Inspirational Story of Finding Redemption in Clean Socks
Working at home isn’t for everyone, and neither is this chapter. See, this is the part of the self-help book where I tell my own inspirational story. Usually, it’s where the author reveals how low he stooped before he got a firm hold on his bootstraps and fell over backward into the wretch you see before you today. Celebrities tell of crimes they committed before they saw the light: that the real money is in confessions. Politicians and TV preachers describe drugged orgies in detail, call them “youthful indiscretions,” then say, “Oh, but we don’t do that anymore. And neither should you impressionable teens out there.”
My own tale is a sordid one. It’s a long and crooked climb to being a model househusband. There have been times when I’ve failed, oh Lord, there have been times when I’ve backslidden and goldbricked and drunk beer at lunch. There has been fast food, God help me, and ice cream and that flirtation with the grocery checker with the overbite. Yes, it’s a rocky road to redemption, but I finally found my salvation. I slipped on the mantle of Househusbandhood (say that three times fast) and learned to wear it well.
In keeping with our self-help format, I will now tell my own story. It’s mostly for the men. You women can skip ahead rather than submit to the whiny-baby ramblings of a man who finally faced what women have known forever: bullets sing on the home front and artillery thunders in the distance and there’s God’s own wrath if you let down your guard.
With vigilance and Post-It notes and occasional snootfuls of Scotch, a man can overcome the obstacles and survive working at home. He can find his redemption in a child’s laugh or the gurgle of an unclogged toilet. He can create his own little Margaritaville and still maintain the pose that he is an asset to the community.
Here’s my story:
I started working at newspapers when I was eighteen years old, which means I remember when newsrooms had manual typewriters and cigar smoke and chattering Teletype machines. Most of the Linotype operators were deaf and this one scary old lesbian had only nine fingers, but she could type faster than a speeding bullet. Copy boys smoked dope on the roof and forgot what they were supposed to be doing. Trash cans occasionally caught fire. This is the world I grew up in, and I inhabited it until I was forty. Computers came along during my career and reporters started wearing Dockers and all smoking moved outside to the loading zone, but the atmosphere of newsrooms -- the daily rumble of butting heads and sarcastic asides -- remains much the same.
When I was about thirty, I started trying to write fiction. My wife and I -- then child-free -- were living it up in San Francisco, where we both worked in the news business. Something about all that fog and Dashiell Hammett’s lurking ghost moved me to attempt to write mystery novels.
Fiction gradually took over my life, though I mostly worked when everyone else at my house was asleep. I lived a strange vampire’s existence, cooped up in the sunless pre-dawn hours, sucking down java and pounding at the keyboard.
By the time I was facing forty, I’d published four novels, but still worked at a newspaper in my adopted hometown of Albuquerque, N.M. I was slipping into the standard midlife crisis over what I really wanted to do with my life when my wife surprised me with this: Leave the newspaper. Write full-time. Work at home. She’d be the steady income and I’d get a chance to pursue my dream.
(Great birthday present, huh? Hard to top that one, though I will say that she got a new job and a weekend in Las Vegas when she reached a similar crisis point a few years later.)
My birthday gift came with conditions, of course. How can you dump one income without a lot of conditions? One was that I would take over all household chores. We bid fond farewells to our cleaning lady and our yard guy, canceled our sons’ after-school care and I became a househusband.
I eased into my new responsibilities as I recovered from the shock of moving from a bustling newsroom to a dusty house. I drifted around in my bathrobe, pausing occasionally to plunk at the computer before surrendering to the temptation to nap.
Pretty soon, the place was an unholy shambles. I’d let cobwebs and dust bunnies and Power Rangers and other vermin take over my home. Probably my lowest moment came one day when I was nearly asphyxiated by a whiff of my boys’ bathroom (their motto: “Whaddaya mean, ‘aim?’”). I could no longer neglect cleaning. I needed to learn how to do it properly and regularly, so we could stand to use the same bathrooms again and again. You can’t just move every time the bathrooms get disgusting, though I seem to recall that worked when I was a bachelor.
I buckled down, got my house in order, managed to keep it that way. And I still got my writing done, despite the many distractions of the household and the untold hours struggling over computer games in which I saved the universe from evil aliens.
Like a lot of stay-at-home dads, I cut myself off from the world. I became a modern-day Robinson Crusoe, shipwrecked in a land of laundry and lawnwork and America Online. Since my men Friday are both under the age of thirteen, I lost touch with working adults. For me, an extended adult conversation became, “Would you like to Super-Size that?” Sometimes, even that question stumps me.
I’ve disappeared from the radar screens of my friends and former coworkers. I stay indoors all day, sitting at my computer, jumping up occasionally to run around frantically and scrub stuff. I drive the kids to and from school, muttering about traffic. If I see neighbors, I duck my head and hurry back into the house. I’m a solitary man, living inside my head rather than out in the real world, having conversations and pretending to be normal.
That’s a third of my life. Another third, if I’m lucky, is spent in bed. The last third of the pie is the slice that’s been dropped on the floor. That’s the time when my two sons are home with me, when I’m a full-time dad. That “quality time” is what sends so many fathers screaming back to the old workplace. Back to, say, newsrooms, where your colleagues were adults, more or less, and where you once spent eight hours a day safely out of your children’s reach.
Becoming the perfect househusband is not easy, friends. Temptation is strong and ESPN is on twenty-four hours a day. A romp in the park with the dog is more seductive than slaving away at the desk. Bars are open during school hours.
For you who want to follow my path, know this: You must teach yourself discipline. You must have determination. You must sacrifice. You have to get down on your knees, friends, to scrub a toilet the right way, especially if there are young boys in the house.
I’d had a good example set for me. Until she started a career when I was fourteen, my own mother was a stay-at-home mom in rural Arkansas, a member of the Busy Bees Homemakers Club who won ribbons for her baked goods at the Grant County Fair. She had two boisterous sons, a house to clean, meals to prepare and a garden to ignore. I seem to remember that she was always tired. Now I know why.
I’m home all day every day, just as my mother was. I have two boisterous sons. I bake from mixes. My house is sometimes presentable, but my dog-cratered lawn resembles the surface of the moon. My neighbors think of me as the strange guy in the bathrobe who always keeps to himself.
My wife comes home from a hard day at the office full of career news and gossip and lamentations, and I find I have little to say. How did my day go? Quickly. What did I do? Lots, though you can’t tell it to look at the place. What did I think about all day? Um, chores.
No wonder my stay-at-home mom retreated to the comfort of soap operas and coffee klatches whenever she got the chance. At least she heard some adult dialogue; she might glean something interesting to recount later. My guilty indulgences are computer Solitaire and crossword puzzles. What can I report, that I scored 720 against that dastardly computer, or that I learned a new word for an Asian goat? Somehow, these do not make topics for extended conversation.
I worry that I’m letting myself go. When it all got to be too much for my mom, she’d repair to the comfort of bare feet and loose housedresses, skipping the makeup and the curlers. I wander around in cutoffs and sandals, unwashed and unshaven, grazing the fridge, smoking cigarettes and scratching myself.
Despite the slide in my appearance, my wife certainly enjoys having a houseboy to call her own. She likes not having to lift a finger around the house, even if it means she comes home to a cave dweller who can’t put together a complete sentence.
My sons love having a parent around all the time, but I suspect it’s because I’m becoming one of them. I pepper conversations with terms like “poopy” and “Pokémon” and “monkey-butt.” I think a snappy retort is a singsong “I know you are, but what am I?”
The kids take me for granted, just as I did when I was boy and my mom slaved to keep us clean and well-fed. Another lesson women learned long ago is that the parent who spends the most time with the children is the one most easily ignored. The kids tune out the frequencies of our voices.
When I’m at my wit’s end, sweating over a broken faucet, and the boys are pillaging the house like little Vikings, the last resort comes bursting out: “You guys are in a lot of trouble! Wait until your mother gets home!”
Most of the time, though, I manage to keep an even keel. I’ve found a rhythm to working at home. My office is a comfortable, alluring place so close at hand that I can sneak in some work while the kids watch TV. I do my writing while still keeping the entire family in clean socks. Occasionally, something occurs that’s unexpected and fun. It’s not all drudgery. In fact, it’s a sort of bliss, once you’ve got that multi-tasking rhythm going.
That “flow” is why some workers thrive at home like hothouse tomatoes. They drive minivans and attend school assemblies and run million-dollar corporations off their kitchen tables. If you think you could be one of those stay-at-home dynamos, then you should turn immediately to the next chapter, in which we show you viewers at home how to set up your Tax-Deductible Home Office and Begin to Take Full Advantage of its Financial Benefits.
Chapter 3
Successful Telecommuting 101, or Is It Safe and Tax-Deductible to Plug a Computer and a Cuisinart into the Same Outlet?
Many two-income couples have an annual discussion about the possibility of one spouse working at home -- at tax time. One of them will throw out the idea that it would be more economical to lose one income and pay less in taxes. Then these couples laugh hysterically and go back to filling out their 1040s.
Every year at tax season, financial experts urge Americans to use the annual bloodletting as a time to take stock of household spending and withholding and income. And every year, across this great country of ours, we taxpayers, relieved at having met the deadline, respond by saying, “Pass the tequila!”
So I’d encourage you to take a few minutes now -- while the Infernal Revenue Service isn’t breathing down your neck -- to consider the advantages and drawbacks of having one spouse work at home.
A lot of misinformation on this topic regularly gets spread through the national media like fertilizer, resulting in sprouting hopes and an ever-growing number of Americans who believe working at home will produce a bountiful harvest of financial rewards. Not the least of which is digging out of the hole caused by taxes.
The Tax Foundation reported recently that a typical two-earner family in 1998 lost nearly 40 percent of its income to federal, state and local taxes, more than the family spent on food, clothing and shelter combined. Take away one of those incomes, and the tax burden diminishes greatly. Artful dodgers can even find ways to lose money on their home businesses every year, which can reduce the amount the salaried spouse pays to the feds.
But, you say, the family has jettisoned an entire income. How can even a substantial reduction in taxes make up for that loss? Heh-heh, I reply nervously, you’ve got me there. Beats the heck out of me. I’m no financial expert. My wife takes care of the money at our house. I can’t even remember my ATM number.
But I think financial experts such as my wife would bear me out when I say other, not-so-visible savings occur when one spouse opts to work at home. Let’s look at some of them:
COMMUTING
If the work-at-home spouse no longer drives across town to a job, then he or she should spend less on gasoline and maintenance. Even reduced wear-and-tear on the vehicle can be factored into the formula, though this requires knowledge of calculus.
At-home workers soon realize, however, that we end up driving just as much, chauffeuring kids to school and to after-school events. Not to mention driving to the supermarket, the hardware store, the dry cleaners, the doctor’s office, the dentist’s office, the mental health clinic, etc...
Okay, maybe those savings aren’t so great. Let’s try something else.
FOOD
Lunches out are costly, and entertaining clients can be even pricier, especially if one of them is a guy named Buck who expects to procure his weekly alcohol consumption with your credit card. Working at home, you can prepare light, nutritious meals for mere pennies a day. Of course, it rarely works out that way. With no formal lunch hour, you graze all day long, resulting in overall higher grocery bills as well as the cost of larger sweatpants. In fact, you can spend as much on your daily allotment of Chee-tos as you did previously on fancy lunches. And eating alone can be drag. Before long, you may find yourself inviting Buck over for a beer.
SUPPLIES AND FURNISHINGS
Everything you buy for your home office -- down to the last paper clip -- is tax-deductible. And that provides opportunities for the creative worker. If you can prove your business required you to invest in many expensive gadgets for your home office or to visit, say, Tahiti, then you stand to reap a financial boon come tax refund season. The problem with this strategy is you must actually spend the money first. You can gallivant around, throwing your money away, but only a small portion will later be saved in taxes. And the folks at Mastercard will still want their money.
CLOTHING
Aha! Now here’s one that certainly should be recorded in the category of “money I don’t have to spend anymore.” Employers expect their workers to meet a certain dress code. If the job you’re leaving is the type where you’re expected to wear a suit every day, you certainly should save money by working at home. T-shirts are cheap.
You may find, however, that you destroy more clothes at home than you ever did at the office. Little tasks you do around the house -- chores you would’ve paid someone to do when you had a full-time job -- have a way of eating clothing. A weed-whacker, for instance, can reduce your favorite jeans to confetti in no time. And medical bills may result as well.
So there you have it. A pragmatic look at the numbers provides proof positive that most couples can benefit financially by having one spouse work at home. At least until the auditors catch up to you.
GETTING STARTED
Okay, let’s say you’ve examined your financial status and your mental preparedness and you still delude yourself that working at home is a great idea. Subtract from the equation any extraneous considerations, such as the proximity of the refrigerator to your desk at home. Still want to try it? Sure I can’t talk you out of it?
Damn.
Well, then, it’s only fair that you be properly prepared. The first step toward a successful home business is setting up an efficient office. Needs vary, depending on the type of business and personal preferences, but some general rules apply. For instance, you will need more space than you think. And you may want doors that lock, particularly if there are children in the house.
Even smallish homes have underused areas that can be converted into office space. Breakfast nooks, closets, attics, garages, even a corner of the bedroom can be reconfigured for business use. Remember, however, that your family may not adjust well to the change. If you section off a piece of a family room for your office, your kids may still think that’s where they belong when they’re watching cartoons.
Adding a wing or a second story can give you plenty of room. But do you really want to invest in such expensive remodeling before you know whether your home business will be a success? I didn’t think so.
Once you’ve determined where to put your office, you’ll need basic furnishings. A solid desk and a comfortable chair are the bare minimum. And you’ll need a computer, naturally. Hardly any business operates without one these days, plus computers offer endless opportunities for distraction and procrastination.
You’ll need file cabinets, though milk crates can do the job if you’re operating on a shoestring. A work table is nice, too. I recommend an old door suspended over the file cabinets. That way, you won’t feel much of a loss when it collapses under the weight of unfinished paperwork.
Lighting should be appropriate for the workspace. Bright enough to see what you’re doing, but dim enough that you don’t notice the dust that has settled over everything.
A sofa makes a pleasant addition to the workspace, especially once you become accustomed to regular siestas.
After properly furnishing your office, you’ll be broke. That should serve as a good impetus for working your ass off and making your home business a success.
One final note: Get separate phone lines for your business phone and computer. You don’t want to keep an important client waiting while your kids are calling the neighbors to ask whether their refrigerators are running.
Mysteries of the East: Arranging Your New Office
Proper arrangement of the home office can be critical to productivity, so many people who work at home turn to the ancient art of feng shui.
Feng shui (pronounced “fung shway,” from the Chinese for “I tripped over my wastebasket”) is based on the notion that proper arrangement of furniture, mirrors, fountains and other geegaws for sale at exorbitant prices can channel the life force, or “chi,” that flows through us and our homes.
According to feng shui principles, improper arrangement can stifle creativity, impede productivity, dampen your chances of success and generally make you feel like a heel by surrounding you with negative energy. Good placement of furnishings can attract success, place your work life in its proper context and give you long, lustrous hair.
So, right away, even the uninitiated can see that feng shui offers unlimited potential for ripping off gullible consumers such as yourself by providing a pseudo-religious solution to your messy office. This principle is known as “hoo-ey.”
Not all feng shui practitioners are full of “hoo-ey.” Many are dedicated to improving the lives of others at a lucrative hourly rate. A feng shui consultant typically will examine your workspace and make suggestions for removing clutter and placing particular objects in ways that will bring the most cosmic benefit. By hiring a consultant and carefully following the recommendations, you can improve your own well-being while also contributing to the growing New Age economy, known as “ka-chiing.”
Of course, not all of us have “moo-lah” lying around to invest in feng shui consultants. For those at-home workers on a budget, we recommend the following do-it-yourself approach:
--Clutter is the enemy of the smooth flow of “chi.” Allowing clutter to proliferate in your office can result in confusion and misplaced invoices and poor self-esteem, a condition known as “moo goo gai pan.” Your first step toward a balanced life should be to throw out all the papers that clutter your filing cabinets and to get rid of any toys, sports equipment, nail clippers, dishes and dirty socks that have found their way to your desk. Once all clutter is removed, you can go on to the second step, which is to dig through the trash in search of those really important papers you threw out. This step is known as “fung me.”
--The next step is to determine your various compass points. For this, we recommend that you use, well, a compass. Different directions carry different forces. For example, northwest is your travel site and west is your creativity site and southeast governs wealth. Then, using an octagonal map called a “bagua chart,” easilly obtainable off the Internet, you can determine how to align elements (wood, water, fire, uranium) and colors to direct the flow of positive energy through your home office. Sure, this might require you to relocate everything in your office, but won’t it be worth it if your “chi” is properly aligned? You’ll feel better almost immediately, though you won’t be able to find anything.
--You may need to add some decorator items to your home office. For instance, feng shui often uses round mirrors to deflect bad energy and direct good energy. Some items, such as bamboo flutes, crystals, seashells, goldfish bowls, indoor fountains (collectively known as “junk”), can be purchased from Internet feng shui sites for only twice what they’d cost at Wal-Mart.
--Desks should never face a wall, as mine does, because it blocks the flow of energy and makes you feel “lo mein.” If space is too tight to set your desk facing out, then place a mirror above your computer so you can spot anyone sneaking in the door behind you. That way, you can see them coming and clear erotic e-mail off the screen faster than they can say “bruce lee.”
--The color red can stimulate you and your fame, while green, properly placed, signals health and growth. This is why many feng shui experts recommend leaving your Christmas tree up year-round.
These are just basics, of course. If you want to really improve your “chi,” then you should seek expert assistance. Look in the Yellow Pages under “bilk me.”
Properly Decorating Your Home Office
I have chattering teeth on my desk.
Not just your standard plastic chattering teeth. These have big, pink feet attached. The whole thing hops around while the teeth chatter. Worth a smile the first thirty times I saw it. After that, I tried to ignore the little gizmo, which sent me telepathic signals all day: “Wind me up. C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
Where did this laugh riot come from? I have no idea. I assume one of my sons set it here, then forgot it.
Desks collect toys and gimcracks and geegaws and freebie calendars, whether they’re squatting with their mates in some big office or all alone at home. Such is their nature. If zoologists traced it back far enough, they’d find an evolutionary branch where four-legged desks split from the same primitive species that spawned the packrat.
In large offices, workers decorate their cubicles to demarcate their personal spaces and to show off their toys or family photographs. You can tell a lot about people by the artwork and cartoons and accessories they keep on their desks. For instance, a person who uses a ballpoint with a large pink plume attached tends to be the fun-loving sort. A man whose desk is covered with photos of dogs, but no people, might seem shy at first, but he’ll be loyal and friendly and will respond well to praise. A bowling trophy indicates a heightened appreciation for healthy activity and beer.
Desk decoration also can be a warning flag. I’ve never gotten a satisfactory answer from a secretary who had Garfield prominently displayed. Never enter into a conversation with a man who keeps on his desk a photo of his boat.
Some items are silent protests against the powers-that-be. Is there any cubicle in North America that doesn’t sport a “Dilbert” cartoon? I once worked with an unhappy woman who kept a plastic lamp on her desk. The lamp was shaped like a mushroom cloud and had a red bulb inside. When her superiors walked past, she’d flick on the light and say under her breath: “Boom. Heh-heh-heh.” We were all secretly glad when she moved away.
In a home office, you can decorate your work space any way you like. It won’t matter anyway. Everyone else in the household will consider your desk a holding area for their own junk. Soon, even that inspiring photo of your smiling spouse will be buried beneath old magazines and underwear.
In a single week, along with the chattering teeth and the usual mail, I found the following on my desk: a round plastic rock, a stuffed Roswell alien (twice), several Transformer beasts in various stages of mutation and undress, six shoes, two yo-yos, four Super Balls, a chocolate heart left over from Valentine’s Day (how did I miss that?), seven Hot Wheels cars, a toy dump truck, two Koosh balls (don’t ask), a dead flower, nine coffee cups, three Beanie Babies and thirty-seven dirty socks.
I didn’t want any of these things on my desk. I prefer a clean, organized work space. But detritus moves through, and the magnetic desk picks it up.
The problem is worse at our house because of our dog. He picks up toys and other items around the house and chews them. He’s trained us to pry the item away, praise him for handing it over, then put the item on a horizontal surface out of his reach, such as my desk. He then fetches up another item and we do it all over again. As the numbers show, he’s particularly keen on dirty socks.
I think the dog sees it as his way of cleaning the house. He finds stuff on the floor, brings it to me and I eventually put it away. He’s just trying to help. And I’ll keep doing my part, cleaning off the desk for the next inevitable accumulation.
But I’m keeping the chattering teeth.
To Work At Home You Need a Lotta Stuff
INTERNAL MEMO
Marketing Dept.
Megalotta Office Stuff Inc.
Comrades:
As you know, we’ve made terrific progress in capturing the market of people who work out of their homes. This growing market of suckers has resulted in booming sales at our 236,405 huge retail warehouses nationwide.
But to remain competitive we must always be on the lookout for new ways to persuade America’s workers to buy doodads for their home offices. We must convince these workers they need our products. This memo will outline some possible strategies. We here in Marketing thought we’d run them up the flagpole and see who bends over. We look forward to your input.
RECEIPTS
Our itemized receipts have been very popular with at-home workers who use them for tax purposes and to seek reimbursement from their employers. But we can do more to help our clientele. From now on, all sales of our popular computer games software, such as “Flight Simulator,” will read out on cash register receipts as “Envelopes.”
PAPER SHREDDERS
Here at headquarters we know most offices don’t need a paper shredder. What’s so secret that these workers need to shred? What are they, the Pentagon? But paper shredders have proven to be hot sales items. The customers buying these shredders are what we here in Marketing call ASUEEs (All Stocked Up on Everything Else). The ASUEEs are a fickle market and soon will move on to something else -- probably DVD drives. Therefore, we must find ways to quickly move these shredders. We propose an advertising campaign highlighting the benefits of confetti. One can never have too much confetti on hand. What if a party breaks out? And there’s always the possibility a tickertape parade might pass by your window. We think this approach will sway those fence-sitters who still haven’t purchased a shredder.
SOFTWARE
Our Technology Department is in the process of developing a new suite of home office programs that will allow the average at-home worker to draft documents, store files, send e-mail, create charts, do illustrations, keep accounting records, send faxes and figure his taxes, all without ever getting out of his chair. We believe the new Deluxe Home Office Suite For Idiots 2002 will be a “must-have” for techno-geeks who work at home. Naturally, the new suite will be incompatible with all existing operating systems. But our Technology Department is working up a new operating system that will retail for only $249.99. Plan for the Christmas rush now!
HEADSET PHONES
These items, which clip right onto one’s head and leave the hands free, are proving very popular with home-office types, particularly those who like to pretend they’re pilots while playing “Flight Simulator.” Display them prominently and move ’em out!
THE BASICS
We’re not forgetting our root market here. We know most people shop Megalotta Office Stuff Inc. for the basics -- paper, pens, clipboards, staplers, file folders. The problem with many of these items is they last too long. A shopper buys, say, a stapler for his home office and he’s set for life! He’ll never need another stapler. And one box of a thousand staples will last him years. This doesn’t produce the high turnover we want. We need our customers to walk through the door every week, so they have an opportunity to ogle the latest product offerings, such as paper shredders. Therefore, we have redesigned most of our basic items and are now manufacturing them out of the finest Indonesian plastic. File shelves, staplers, pencil holders, even office furniture will now be constructed of this particularly brittle blend of polymers. The slightest use results in breakage. We’ll still carry items made of more durable material, such as metal, but their prices will be quadrupled to encourage customers to go with the plastic. You can bet we’ll see those customers again!
That’s it for now from Marketing. Next week: The latest in electronic organizers!
Chapter 4
A Memo From Headquarters to Those Who Work at Home
It has come to our attention that you who don’t go to an office every day do not adhere to an enforceable dress code.
Granted, many of you bailed out of the 9-to-5 world to escape suits and ties. But how can you expect clients and the wider world to take you seriously if you don’t dress for success? Wouldn’t you feel more professional if you followed a basic dress code?
We here at headquarters have drafted a proposed dress code for those who never leave their homes to perform their valuable work functions. We will conduct an open comment period during which we’ll seek your input. Then, without warning, the following requirements will become mandatory:
1. Pajamas are not proper office attire. Ditto for bathrobes.
2. Blue jeans are acceptable, of course, as long as you’re not meeting clients face-to-face. But there are limits, people. Jeans worn more than six days in a row without washing will be considered a violation of the dress code.
3. Jeans with holes, tears, slashes, patches, burn marks, tire tread patterns, coffee stains or large ink spills are verboten. Legs of said jeans should be approximately the same length.
4. Baby spit-up on your shoulder will not be considered an accessory. Dried spit-up on both shoulders cannot be passed off as epaulets.
5. T-shirts are acceptable as long as they are in good condition (see Item 3 above). T-shirts should not bear beer slogans, rock band logos, curse words or depictions of naked people. Remember: Even if you don’t see clients all day, you’ll probably run into your child’s teacher at the supermarket.
6. Sweatshirts. See Item 5.
7. Sweatpants are comfortable work-at-home attire, but wearing them in public should be reconsidered. No one’s backside looks good in sweatpants.
8. Underwear should be laundered regularly. Turning it wrongside out doesn’t count.
9. Flannel shirts are proper attire, if you’re a lumberjack. However, we recognize that many of you work in poorly heated spaces and therefore need to layer on warm shirts, so we are willing to overlook these, even if they are essentially pajamas. Flannel shirts should have at least fifty percent of their original buttons. Any shirt you owned in high school probably should be discarded.
10. Denim shirts. See Item 9.
11. Clothes should be put on hangers after they are laundered. Valuable work time is wasted sorting through that pile on the floor of your closet, trying to select a garment on the basis of crunchiness.
12. We here at headquarters recognize that many of you enjoy the freedom and comfort of bare feet. But hazards lurk in your home. Sharp-cornered plastic Legos. Need we say more?
13. Similarly, working in the nude to circumvent these regulations is not recommended. That coffee is hot. Trust us.
14. Personal hygiene remains important, even for those who work alone. Here, we will refer you to the Rule of Doubles. You can safely double whatever your practices were when you worked at a regular job without risking dismissal or divorce. For example, if you showered daily when you went to the office, you can now shower every other day. Ditto for shaving. However, if you were one of those pigs who only bathed once a week to begin with, you might want to consider taking the math the other direction.
15. Teeth should be brushed regularly and deodorant applied every day. You may be working at home, but there’s still your family to consider. And, believe us, they’ll let you hear about this.
There, that wasn’t so painful, was it? Just a few basic rules for maintaining a professional appearance. You’ll look better and feel better. And you’ll be ready to work every morning, which is all we here at headquarters care about anyway.
Chapter 5
Deadlines and Buzzwords: Managing Your Home-Based Career
People who work at regular jobs often ask us who work at home, “What do you do with yourself all day?”
This is an exceedingly stupid question. Folks in 9-to-5 jobs seem to think we home-office types have lots of time to lollygag in our pajamas and watch soap operas. This simply is not true.
We perform many so-called “invisible” tasks -- such as scraping lime out of toilet bowls -- and those jobs take time. Most days, we barely scratch the surface of all we need to do before, whoops, it’s bedtime again.
So, as a public service, to generate understanding between wage slaves and we pajama-wearing housespouses, I’ve drawn up a typical schedule for working at home. It will be illuminating to those who’ve never tried to operate a business out of their laundry room, and will show that we stay-at-home workers deserve respect and sympathy.
We’ll start with a forty-hour workweek and chip away from there. Telecommuters often work on weekends, too, but including Saturdays and Sundays in our formula makes the math too complicated. You wouldn’t want me to strain over these numbers and perspire on my pajamas, would you?
First of all, it’s not really a forty-hour workweek, is it? Most of us can do our jobs only when the kids are in school. The period between the last bell at school and your standard 5 p.m. quitting time is completely lost to recountings of the school day and the usual threats over homework. So there goes around seven hours a week.
We lose another hour (or more) getting the kids to and from school each week. That takes us down to thirty-two hours.
Running the washer is a task we can do while performing other jobs, but there’s still all that folding and fluffing and hanging things up. For a family of four, laundry adds up to at least five hours a week. Down to twenty-seven hours.
Keeping the house clean takes a lot more time than you clockwatchers might expect. A conservative estimate: eight hours a week. And that’s if we forgo non-essentials such as dusting.
Allow an average of two hours a week for medical emergencies, appointments with the doctor and/or dentist and visits to the vet. This varies from week to week, depending on whether the children insist on climbing trees and the dog insists on eating Tinkertoys. Down to seventeen hours now.
Many housespouses are responsible for keeping the yard mowed, watered, raked and fertilized. Another two hours a week, and another argument in favor of xeriscaping.
Grocery shopping? We’ll go conservative and say we can do it in an hour, if we don’t linger in the liquor department. Fourteen hours left.
We lose one hour a week fielding annoying calls from telemarketers and at least another two hours yakking on the phone with family, friends and repairmen. Down to eleven hours.
Lunch requires an hour a day (this includes wolfing down the food, which usually takes half as long as the preparation time). Six hours left.
Answering e-mail and playing computer games might not seem productive, but it’s vital activity that keeps stay-at-home parents sane and in touch with the outside world. An hour a day -- minimum -- goes to keeping our fingers on the electronic pulse of the Internet and to mastering “Sim City.”
What’s left? One hour. And during that hour, we must perform all the wage-earning work that’s accomplished each week. Is it any wonder we seem so frantic as deadlines near? Is it any surprise we end up pounding away at our computers at 4 a.m. on Saturdays?
Now that you have hard evidence that we are just as harried as the rest of the working world, I hope you people with regular jobs will think twice before asking a stay-at-home parent, “What do you do all day?”
You accommodate us this way, and we won’t tell your boss about the hours you waste secretly playing “Minesweeper.”
Deadlines Can Be Murder
A kindly old editor once explained to me the facts of life in journalism: “Deadlines are simple. Cross the line, and you’re dead.”
Probably not an original thought, and he had a gleam in his eye when he said it, but I took it to heart. Through two decades in the news business, I rarely missed a deadline. In fact, I usually delivered my stories early. It left more time to argue with the editors.
Deadlines are more extreme in the newspaper business, but every industry has them. That’s why you see people using laptop computers at the beach. It’s why the businessman with the car phone melded to his ear nearly mowed you down in traffic this morning. And it’s one reason ulcer medications sell so well (parenting being the other reason).
When you have no boss looming over your desk, deadlines are largely self-imposed. Granted, clients make demands and there are only so many hours in each day. But when you work at home, your schedule is your own. If you need to work all night to meet a deadline, so be it. You can catch up on your sleep when you’re done. The trick is to pace yourself, so you don’t pull too many all-nighters. Keep busy every day, plan ahead, make a schedule. Stay on top of the work before it gets on top of you.
Okay, you can stop laughing now. No, really. Stop it.
Here’s how to formulate your schedule: Divide your work in a given week by the number of days you actually can work on it. Set daily goals. Meet each goal, and -- voila! -- you’ve met the deadline.
Stop that chortling. You think I can’t hear that?
So the secret is in the planning. Remember that Monday is grocery day and Wednesday is laundry and Friday is that dental appointment. Write it all down so you don’t forget. Then chart the available hours that remain.
Enough with the snickering. I’m trying to give you good advice here.
Did you leave room for all this weekly planning? Getting organized takes time. And you’ll need to regularly evaluate your plan to make sure it’s working. If things go wrong, you can reconfigure your schedule. If it means doubling up your work hours for a day or two to still hit that deadline, it’ll be worth it, won’t it? A happy client is a client for keeps. And an unhappy client won’t care that you were called away by an equally unhappy schoolteacher who wanted to discuss little Johnny’s spitball habit.
There you go again. All right, forget it. I don’t have time for this anyway. I’ve got a project to complete. And if it’s not finished on time, I’m dead.
Juggling Many Tasks At Once -- With Your Toes
These days, the darling of the business community is “multi-tasking.” A boss hears the term “multi-tasking” and he clutches his bosom and big, happy tears well up in his eyes. He loves “multi-tasking” because he thinks it means more work is getting done.
Before “multi-tasking” came along, bosses expected you to do every job they dumped on your desk. Now, they expect to you to do all those jobs at the same time.
Every employee now is supposed to be like a street entertainer, a One-Man Band, the guy with the bass drum on his back and the cymbals between his knees. We manage all the projects and production and publicity all at once, playing the music, keeping time to a beat in our heads: “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
Employees -- with their Palm Pilots and their miniature phones and their go-go attitudes -- adopted “multi-tasking” as a way to get ahead. It soon became a competition, everybody rushing headlong into doing everything at once. Phoning and PowerPointing and prognosticating and whanging away at those cymbals with their knees. Before long, you’d become a second-rate employee if you couldn’t dial a phone with your toes.
But is this the best way to get high-quality work? Aren’t employees all scattered and confused? Shouldn’t they concentrate on one thing at a time?
For answers, bosses should look to those who are the ultimate “multi-taskers,” people who work at home offices. Not only do we do our work and manage our careers here at home, we also do the housework and the yardwork and tend to children, all at the same time.
We’re the pioneers in “multi-tasking,” the white lab rats in a great business experiment. And we’re never “off the clock.” A kid throws up in the middle of the night, he doesn’t need a cell phone to contact Daddy.
One recent day, I had a light workday scheduled. My only big job was to print a 350-word manuscript and mail it off. The rest was just housework, hanging out with my two sons, and a few errands in the car.
Before my sons were awake, I started printing the manuscript. My printer needs to be fed more paper about every ten minutes, so I’m forced to hang around, waiting for it to make that groaning noise that means it’s hungry. I could’ve used those hours for some quiet meditation, some navel-gazing about my career, but I chose instead to “multi-task.” Here’s how it went:
Feed the printer. Wander around the house gathering up laundry. Get the washer started. Feed the printer. Get more coffee. Take out the trash. Feed the printer. Check freezer, see whether there’s anything that can be disguised as a nutritious dinner. Start grocery list. Feed the printer. Straighten kitchen and hurriedly wipe off countertops. Feed the printer. Move laundry from washer to dryer and start a new load. Feed the printer. Make two work-related telephone calls. Feed the printer. Wake children. Issue breakfast instructions. Feed the printer. Feed the dog. Feed the printer. Collapse into chair to catch breath. Feed the printer.
By the time the manuscript was done, I’d accomplished much, but I was scattered and confused and required a nap in early afternoon.
So, bosses everywhere, take it from us busy housespouses: “multi-tasking” may not be the best solution. It wears people out, and an exhausted, frazzled worker is an accident waiting to happen. You might be better off treating each employee less like a One-Man Band and more like a member of an orchestra. Let each play the lead sometimes, but let them rest sometimes, too.
Otherwise, you’ll find your employees dialing phones in their sleep. With their toes.
Buzzing Your Way to Success
Business loves buzzwords.
These days, new words buzz their way into the language every day. Even people who have no connection with dot-coms find themselves spewing the geekspeak of computers and corporations. Pretty soon, the buzzwords become so common that people apologize for using them.
For instance, every time lately I’ve heard someone use the term “thinking outside the box,” it’s been followed quickly by “forgive the expression.” People recognize that “thinking outside the box” has become hackneyed. I won’t be surprised if they’re soon looking for a way to crawl back into that box, wherever it is.
It’s what I call the “bunny ears” phenomenon. Remember, a few years back, when everyone would make those little quote marks in the air with their fingers? By using finger quote marks, they were showing they were hip to their own triteness and were being ironic. After a while, I got to where any time I saw air quotes, I wanted to form my own fingers into a “V” and poke someone in the eyes, a la The Three Stooges.
Those of us who work at home are somewhat insulated from the business world (in particular from the wealth it generates). But this distance means that we’re often “out of the loop.” We’ll hear a term such as “unwinding the stack” and have no idea what they’re talking about. This can be damaging to one’s career, particularly if one sometimes comes in contact with 25-year-old business hipsters who toss these terms around willy-nilly.
Using a little imagination, we can assign meanings to the buzzwords, meanings that apply to the work-at-home world of laundry and looming deadlines. To wit:
--OUTSIDE THE BOX: Anywhere toys are found when they haven’t been put away, i.e., everywhere.
--OUT OF THE LOOP: The dog has escaped his leash and is romping around the neighborhood, menacing joggers.
--UNWINDING THE STACK: Separating the whites from the colors on laundry day.
--TAKING IT TO THE NEXT LEVEL: Carrying the laundry upstairs.
--THE NEW E-CONOMY: Someone has too many hyphens. Apparently, you can put “e-” in front of anything to indicate it has to do with the Internet (which, you’ll notice, doesn’t start with “e”). I recently saw a reference to “e-friends,” which I assume means people you’ve never actually laid eyes on, but have only communicated with via e-mail. We lonely at-home workers should take advantage of this easy way to look modern and business-like. You can put “e-” in front of anything. For example, you could say, “I’m taking my e-car to pick up my e-children from their e-school.”
--VIRTUAL: Another computer term, meaning not quite real. Proper usage: “It’s a virtual certainty that I will be late picking up my children.”
--MISSION STATEMENT: A credit-card bill you can’t afford to pay, which gives you reason to work harder.
--RE-PURPOSING: Using any product in a way that violates its design intent. Cutting the bottom off an empty bottle of bleach and using it to bail water from a flooded basement, for instance, is “re-purposing.” Sounds more business-like than “jury-rigging.”
--COMFORT ZONE: Anywhere the children aren’t.
--SYSTEM INTEGRATION: Dresser drawers that shut properly.
--BRAND-BUILDING: Wal-Mart.