joanmob's blog http://www.blogher.com/blog/47097/atom/feed 2008-12-04T16:18:19-06:00 On Pretending You Work in an Office http://www.blogher.com/pretending-you-work-office 2008-12-04T16:14:19-06:00 2008-12-04T16:18:19-06:00 joanmob For seven years now, I've been a freelance journalist, working out of my home. Just before I began this life, I talked to another friend who was getting ready to do the same thing. "How can I leave messages for people and tell them they can only call me back Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays?" she fretted.

]]> For seven years now, I've been a freelance journalist, working out of my home. Just before I began this life, I talked to another friend who was getting ready to do the same thing. "How can I leave messages for people and tell them they can only call me back Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays?" she fretted.

I worried about that too, and also worried about background noise from my kids, who are often playing in the house, under the care of our nanny, while I'm trying to conduct interviews. They like to run, scream, climb, whine and yell out things like, "I had a poo in the potty!!!" while sitting in the hall bath, which is about 10 feet from my office.

At first, I was horribly embarrassed by the fact that I worked from home. I did my utmost to hide it from the people I interviewed, and was horrified on the rare occasions when my son barged in.

But over the years, I figured out that many of my sources sometimes work from home, or have spouses who do. They confessed that when they held their phone meetings, the maid would barge in, asking about the Comet; or that they would pop a movie in the VHS and let their children watch while daddy talked on the phone. Far from looking down on me for working from home, they sympathized with me.

So I'm not as embarrassed as I used to be. I still don't advertise the fact that I'm working from home - and I don't go out of my way to tell my sources certain times are bad because I have no babysitting. Instead I tell them "Oh, Tuesdays are bad for me," or "I'm booked Thursday, but how about Friday after 10?" 

When the kids do barge in, once a month or so, I put my caller on hold, remind my nanny to keep them out away from my room while I'm working, lock my door and proceed, amazingly enough, with very little embarrassment. When I pick up the phone, I quickly apologize, then read back the last comment from my notes and move forward from there.

Works for me. How do you guys handle working from home?

 

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