Working At Home Isn’t A Day At The Beach

Dane posted this yesterday just when “it” happened.

My wife was busting her fingers against the keyboard typing her brains out on a project when she got “the call”.

It was her mom wanting her to make a quick dash for some prune juice because another family member wasn’t making any quick dashes at all.

I kid you not.

I ended up with the prune juice job in order to save a wee bit of my wife’s sanity.

Hopefully the problem is solved but you can bet I’m not going to ask.

Anyway as the prune juice caper transpired, the Wall Street Journal (no less) noted this problem of people thinking the self-employed (work at home or not) don’t do “real” work and just sit around munching bon bons.

(By the way, my wife has 3 sisters with “real” jobs so they didn’t get “the call”.)

From the Wall Street Journal via Dane

Many people seem to think that jobs that can be done at home aren’t real jobs. Never mind that home-office dwellers are their own cafeteria staff, shipping-and-receiving clerks and janitors. They never get credit for cutting an employer’s costs, or saving commuting time to do more work. Instead, managers believe that if they aren’t there to witness someone working, it can’t be happening. They envision homebound workers getting away with something, like lounging in their bathrobes and watching “General Hospital.�

It’s as if they believe that the people working under their noses don’t waste a tremendous amount of time talking about last night’s college basketball game, making bids on eBay, or reading only like-minded blogs while on company time. The misconceptions are yet another indication that vacuous symbols of productivity, rather than productivity itself, are all that really count.