Which part of “Working” aren’t you getting?

I work from home. There are many advantages to this, for instance I haven’t felt the pinch of rising gas prices. My commute is something like 5 minutes, or roughly the time it takes me to get dressed (or not) after my shower. My wife doesn’t complain about not seeing me, it’s the same with the boys. I even “open” an hour earlier that I used to, which is convenient for my East Coast customers.

But there’s a drawback, we’ll label it my best friend. For some reason the fact that I’m home and working just isn’t quite sinking in. Now he knows my workday, if only because I’ve told him several times, “No I can’t do that; we don’t close till four”. Or the way more frequent: “Working”, when he calls at 10 am to ask what I’m doing.

Now this shouldn’t be that hard of a concept. His SO is an attorney who telecommutes at least once a week. But I swear, nearly everyday he turns up at some point to “hang out”. If that isn’t annoying enough, you’d think he’d at least remember the “call before you stop by” part. Oh and I don’t mean from around the corner either, give me some warning. I just may be sitting in my underwear. (Hey it’s not like my customers can see me.)

I swear I love this guy, he’s the best friend in the world, but I can’t wait till he gets a job.

I know this is the pit. But aren’t you being a little too harsh. :smiley:

I feel your pain. Or more accurately, I hope I don’t feel your pain. I’m just now starting full-time work from home. It’s great because I get to see my fiance during the day, she works in the evenings, but there’s always the possibility that she’ll spend all day trying to chit chat instead of leaving me to my work.

I don’t mind the occasional break, you get plenty of breaks at a regular office, but I prefer to choose the times of my breaks, rather than having them forced upon me by having my sweetie hanging around all the time.

Damn straight! Wishing a job on him! This calls for a banning! Now that’s over the line, even for the pit!!!

I just can’t do the creavtive swearing pitizens are capable of.
Stuffy
The only Black guy in America who can’t say Motherfucker and sound cool.

Seems to me the obvious solution is to start billing him. Even doing it jokingly (at first) may get the point across.

I am there with you. When I am not travelling, I am in my home office, usually catching up on the two hundred emails and fifteen voicemails I have missed while on the road.

I’ve been doing this for four years, but does anyone realize it? No fuckin’ way. Despite the fact that to my left is a fax/copier/scanner, and to my right is a phone, usually with headsets attached to my ears, and in front of me is outlook on my computer with lots and lots of bolded (read: unread) messages, it does not stop kids, exes, neighbors, friends, etc. from walking into my office and yammering away, often while I am on the phone.

I dearly want to walk into their conference room while they are negotiating with clients and start asking them where the snacks are, or if they have paid their insurance bill, or if they want to “cut out early” and go golfing. Or can I borrow your lawnmower.

I worked at home for several years, and all was fine until Papa Tiger went onto an odd work schedule of seven 12-hour shifts on, followed by six or seven days off. He could never grasp the concept that when I’m working, I’m WORKING. I’m not home goofing off, I’m WORKING. (He was always quick enough to ask about the money I was making!)

I never thought going back to work in an office would be such a relief, but it really is. Especially right now that he’s been laid off so is home all the time. If I was home trying to work and we were totally dependent on my income, we’d starve in record time.

You just have to get nasty sometimes. It got to the point where he’d start talking to me and even if I heard him I’d wait till he was halfway through what he was saying and then loudly say, “WHAT? Oh, sorry, I wasn’t listening to you because I was WORKING.” It never changed his interruption habits, but it did make feel a little better. On rare occasions. Sigh.

Hey, believe it or not, the other guys (black, white, brown, or polka-dotted) don’t sound cool when THEY say motherfucker either. They just THINK they do.

No, Samuel L Jackson does sound cool. Let’s just admit that up front.

And the home-work thing can be a pain in the ass on the other side, too. I have long been in the habir of occasionally taking a day off for no particular reason. Just to screw around the house, watch old science fiction on video, eat junk food, you know the drill.

But since we moved to Ohio and Lady Chance started telecommuting back east I’m screwed. If I do that then she’s always around working and it’s just plain creepy. No longer do I have my comfortable home to walk around in my underwear because she’s there!

Dammit.

The sole exception being Samuel L. Jackson. :cool:
I hear you, Stuffy. My circumstances are a bit different - I work with a couple of friends, one of whom started the business from his home. People dropping by at random was always a problem. Many of these folks were semi-retired or retired (long story) and had nothing better to do with their time, I guess, but they could never pick up on the fact that OTHER people were actually working. Correction: they knew damn well that someone was working, but they simply expected my friend to be a good host and cater to them for a couple of hours, because hey - you’re working at home, you can always pick up the slack later! Imagine a day when 2 or 3 visitors show up in a row :smack: (and it did happen, more than once).

Things improved somewhat after we moved into a separate office in town, but that was mostly because we didn’t tell anyone at first where it was. Now that some have discovered it, we’re running into the same problems again. :rolleyes:

Heh, Jonathan Chance, I swear I didn’t see your post in preview… but SLJ is just too cool. :smiley:

I must be one of the lucky home-office people, because I don’t get this sort of stuff (although I heartily empathize). Maybe it’s because many of my friends are self-employed and completely understand when they call and I say, “I can only talk for a few minutes – I have a big deadline today.” Even my MOTHER will ask if I have some time to talk before launching into the spiel of the day. I have also had no backlash when I say, “Can I call you back tonight? I need every minute if I’m going to make the UPS box on time.” And we’re waaaay out in the sticks, so I don’t get drop-ins.

As for my fellow occupants of the house, well, that’s just Mr. S, and he is 100% supportive (good idea, since I’m the one paying the bills these days). There are quite a few weeks where I announce that he’s the grocery shopper and cook this week because I have a work crunch. My office has (glass) doors, and when they’re closed I Am On The Clock.

I think in cases like Stuffy’s the only solution is to be polite but curt. When he calls, tell him you can’t talk right now and you’ll call him later, bye! and hang up. If he shows up at the door, don’t answer (you’re not “at home,” after all – you’re “at work”!). Some people need a clue-by-four.

Or, when he shows up, maybe you could give him a little work to do? Typing, filing, etc.? That should cure him of dropping in pretty quick ;).

Well sunfish, things aren’t really so different. My partner and I started this business two years ago and decided to move our offices to our respective homes to cut overhead cost, mainly rent and power. We started breaking even afterwards, and in fact now are very profitable.

Lamar Mundane, Jonathan ad Scarlett my family gets it, in fact my wife is on the payroll handling Shipping and Quality. I even occasionally put my 12 y/o to work when I need to do a fax campaign of some kind. But my boys won’t bother me, and in fact ask me if I’m still working when I’m in the main part of the house. It’s just my Chowder-headed buddies who seem to need the Clue by Four.

I’m with you guys on Samual L. Jackson, but the opportunity to say “Kill the motherfucker” just doesn’t some up often enough for me to practice :smiley:

I totally understand where you’re coming from! I just began freelance writing this year, and I’ve been pretty successful so far (meaning, I’ve actually gotten four contracts despite having no contacts in the industry). However, my family, my mom in particular, equates being at home with not working, even though I generally work about 10 hours a day. She’ll call and say “Whatcha doin?” in this obnoxious voice and will get upset if I tell her I can’t talk. She actually cried once when I tried to explain to her (nicely) that I can’t engage in hour-long conversations during the day because I have work to do.

My friends also don’t understand that I’m working. Even if I don’t have a contract, I’m working to market myself. This one friend in particular recently asked me if I could go out to lunch. I said I couldn’t - I was busy because I had to work. His response? “Well, it’s not like you’re really working, now, is it? I mean, you don’t have a client now, do you?” :smack: Well, no, but I am establishing a sole proprietorship business, which means that I’m the marketing department, accounting department, administrative department and I produce the product the company is known for. So even if I don’t have a client, I’m doing the books, sending sales letters and writing articles to get my name out there. If that’s not working, I don’t know what is.

Best of luck to you, Stuffy with your business. I hope your friend eventually gets the message and leaves you alone. It can be pretty hurtful when friends don’t take your work seriously just because you happen to be doing it at home. And if you happen to find out how working at home seems to equate with lounging on the couch eating bon-bons, please fill me in.

:: raises hand ::

Well, sometimes it does for me, anyway. Once in a while I get lucky and have mundane, routine work I can do on the couch with the TV on and bonbons handy. Once I read a romance novel in a bubble bath, completely and legitimately on the clock.

But those parts of projects are few and far between, unfortunately. They’re only tiny breaks from the long hours at Ye Olde Desk.

Scarlett, back to marking type while reclining on the couch and watching Office Space

If you every want to pass off any of that work, please feel free. :slight_smile:

Since I’m just breaking in, I’m still busting my ass trying to get people to call me. But it’s working - slowly but surely.

I suspected as much - my husband was working at home while I was unemployed, and I like to think that I was as considerate of his working as possible. Of course, when he takes two hours off at lunch to watch Star Trek, all bets are off. :smiley:

(Stuffy, I think your problem is that it’s pronounced “mothafucka”. Maybe that will help you.)

Being self-employed seems to give friends & family the idea that they can drop in on you whether your office is at home or not. My office is in the same building as the warehouse, which is in an industrial plaza, pretty hard to confuse with a house. I have friends and family who still drop by to chat or hang out or whatever. One friend called to ask if I could watch her kids while she shopped at a carpet outlet around the corner. I thought she was joking, but she wasn’t. She thought they could watch a video or draw or play on the computer in the conference room. I politely declined which seemed to offend her somewhat. Oh well.

Another friend used to routinely drop by to visit around 4:00 pm as it was on the way to picking her husband up after work. She’d sit in my office for half an hour, trying to chat while I was trying to close out my day and get ready for the next.

Yet another friend enrolled her girls in summertime dance classes at a studio in one of the other units. She’d drop them off and come over. At least she brought coffee.

Or they’ll drop by around lunchtime, just to see if I’m available to buy them lunch. Or ask to use some office equipment or the internet, which is fine, but that turns into being there for an hour, catching up or joking around with staff or what have you. Of course, staff aren’t going to complain about it but I doubt they really enjoy having to entertain my buddies when they’re trying to work.

I dunno, I guess people just figure that when you’re self-employed, you’re not on someone else’s clock, so why would you have a clock of your own. Or they just don’t get that if you’re going to make any money, you really have to make it happen yourself, especially in the early days before you can afford staff. Especially then, even if you’re not selling something right at that moment, you still might be trying to administer the endless tasks involved with running a business.

Maybe because they’re used to going to work in an environment where all these things are always taken care of without their knowledge or involvement, they think the Keebler Elves are the ones who make the phones & computers work, pay bills, order office supplies, do banking, accounting, troubleshoot, purchase inventory, etc, etc, etc. :stuck_out_tongue: