Читать книгу Be Awesome: Modern Life for Modern Ladies - Hadley Freeman, Hadley Freeman - Страница 9

As anyone who works from home can tell you, unless your dreams are sitting at home, watching Loose Women and masturbating all day, the office is not keeping you from anything (and if you are ever tempted to do both of those activities at the same time, then it probably would be best if you stayed at home and out of society’s way).

No doubt images of working to your own inner timetable instead of doing the 9–5 are dancing in your head: days that are peppered with spontaneous trips to museum exhibitions and mid-afternoon yoga classes in which you actually have space to do a warrior position, unlike in the overcrowded 6.30 p.m. classes in which all moves are accompanied by two slaps in the face and a kick in the butt from the people packed in next to you. Maybe you could even get on with writing that novel you’ve been thinking about for eight years but were prevented from starting by the office, yes, even on weekends, vacations and other days when you were not, literally speaking, in the office. It is still the office’s fault that the world has not been gifted with your creative talents.

But such potential bonuses are the buttercream icing on your carrot cake, the occasional brilliant guest appearance on Saturday Night Live: insufficient compensation for a dreary base. Working from home requires relying on one’s own self-discipline to work from somewhere that probably has many more distractions than an average office does as well as that cruel bitch of a siren, that battery-powered heroin: the TV remote.

If you should ever feel like maybe your home is getting a bit dull, then stay home to work one day and you will marvel at how you have been living in a veritable Disney World all these years without even noticing. Look at all these old copies of magazines you could spend the morning reading! And music playlists that need making! And old photos that require organising! (But don’t stay home two days in a row because at that point your home will start to feel more like a prison and you’ll probably have to move.)

Although the internet has now made shopping from the office possible, the threat of your boss walking up behind you generally acts as a dissuasion from clicking on net-a-porter and topshop.com more than twice an hour. The office is a similarly excellent preventative against obesity and food poisoning, if only because it is physically separating you from your fridge which, unlike the office canteen, is open for business allllll dayyyyyy lonnnnng. And, Jesus Christ, free! Free food – all day! How have you not noticed this before about your home? You would not believe how delicious that three-days-out-of-date pot of hummus will look when you have a deadline.

The downside to the free food, though, is that working from home will turn you feral. Never mind that old saw about not getting dressed until 2 p.m. if you work from home – try having to test your toothbrush for residues of wetness before opening the door for a delivery at 5 p.m. because you can’t remember if you brushed your teeth today yet or not. That’s when you know you have gone fully homeworker feral and you will probably never be fit to be socialised ever again.

In short, the office is daycare for adults. And do you know how much daycare for kids costs these days? And you’re getting this daycare, not just for free, but for minus free in that they’re paying you to be there! How totally baller is that?⁷