Monday, June 20, 2011

No-Office Envy

Office Envy is covetousness caused by seeing someone else's awesome office space, but today we have a case of "No-Office" Envy -- which is (loosely) defined (by us) as "to be jealous of the work-from-home set."

You see, most days we hoof it into the office, sit at a desk and a half (Day Job for all it's inventive real estate ways thinks it wise to give everyone one full desk, plus a nubbin of another); in front of a computer and a half (to match the fractional desk, perhaps, we get a laptop plus an extra monitor).
It's not so bad really - in fact its rather nice. There's the morning routine of filling up at the coffee machine, then again at the filtered water dispenser (remember in the 90s when they were called Water Coolers and you and your colleagues talked about Thursday night "Must See TV" while huddled around it?) There's a phone with hands-free headset for easy multi-tasking (we didn't actually write "zoning out" but you got that we meant that, right?) during conference calls. There's snacks that are available, but not as available as there are when you're working from your kitchen. ...All around it's not a bad deal.

But today we got to work from home. WFH so to speak in the language workplace code where no three word phrase is safe from acronym-ization.
And what a day it was.
Let's talk about today.

First of all, it's a sunny, dry, 80 degree day in a part of world where we don't take days like this for granted because days like this are rare gems when you live a climate that really only has two season: blizzards and bad hair day. The day started out with a leisurely 5 mile run, which when paired with a 5 minute shower (no blow dry necessary) and 5 second commute made our whole outlook a bit cheerier.

But then a question presents itself. When you work from home, where do you actually work? If you have a home office, maybe that's the obvious answer but especially in New York City if you're living large enough to have a home office why would you bother working from it when you could be hanging out on your private jet?

Anyway, for us, WFH day started as WFK(itchen), which turned into WFD(ining room) which reminded us we were hungry so we took a Whole Foods lunch break. When we returned it was a few more hours of WFD until we were scandalized to realize that the glorious weather was wasted while we worked, so we picked up the old Lenovo and made it a WFP(orch) day, which is where you find us now, literally watching a pair of butterflies chasing each other and the sun starting to set and the perfect breeze rustling the trees (we're WFHing home New Jersey, not NYC today), and what is either a particularly aggressive squirrel or a particularly creepy tree trimmer doing something loud on the roof.

It truly is the kind of day that makes even the proudest Desk-Setter wonder what life is like on the other side. Could working from home ever work for us? Can you be as productive if you have the option of just hopping back in your bed because it's right there and there's no one to stop you?

If you WFH, let us know how it works for you: OfficeEnvy@gmail.com

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