Working in the Dog House
by Brook Dougherty
The decision to work at home is right up there with deciding to have another child. There’s never the right time, there’s never the right money, and like many decisions—there’s a fine line between smart and stupid.
Here are some cool things about working at home: You get to be there if your kid is sick and you get to spend lots of quality time with your dog. Here’s the weird thing about working at home: No one thinks you work. Mom in cloud pajamas does not engender the respect that a similar woman in a nine-piece suit would get, but who needs that? Here’s the deal. No matter how much money you make, if you work at home, people think you’re not actually working.
You can be working on a doctoral thesis or practicing law, but if you do it en casa, your friends and family still won’t get it. And why should they? If you’re standing in the driveway in sweats sharing your Grandma’s recipe for cobbler with your neighbor and suddenly end the conversation with “I have to go back to work,” they will act surprised and say, “Oh I didn’t know you worked.”
Picture this: A major contact finally calls me back. He, unlike me, has no doubt had time to shower today. He doesn’t know I’m wedged in my corner of the family room, and I figure he pictures me, say mid-Wilshire with a great view. We’re chatting amiably when Santiago, the gardener, decides to trim the roses. For reasons I can only guess at, Santiago takes this opportunity to bond with Blackie, my lab-mix, and makes a scary monkey face at her through the window. Something snaps in Blackie, a coming of age really, and she discovers her inner Rottweiler.
Since Blackie spends most of her morning lounging under my armpit, her insane barking is very close to my phone. She barks as if the Santiago is about to break into a mad killing spree, and I yell “Shut up Blackie!” I realize immediately that the guy has now figured out that “Blackie” is probably not my secretary. Hoping I can turn the mess into lemonade, I say to him, “Guess where I work?”
It turns out that he works at home too (where many good venture capitalists hideout, by the way). We had a nice talk about why lab-mixes have such stranger anxiety and bonded better than we could have had I my old expense account and taken him to lunch. Incidentally, he had not showered either.
The important thing to remember about working at home is never, ever lie about where you work. Much better to take a “I wouldn’t be caught dead working in an office,” attitude. Of course there are days when you can’t get one single thing done and your only colleague interaction is with the UPS guy, but the dog appreciates the company, and somehow the work gets done.
As for taking meetings at home, forget about it. That’s why God invented Starbucks. The one time I tried it, Blackie had a sudden and loud gastro-intestinal attack and decided to help out by sitting on the lap of my business guest.
How she overcame her stranger anxiety is a complete mystery. Nonetheless, there’s something to be said for working at home, near the window that really opens, the refrigerator, the leftovers and the love of a big dog.
Circa 2000
