Over at her new blog, Planting Money Seeds, problogger and full-time freelancer Miranda Marquit has kindly published a guest post from Funny, Work Is a Place.
All you who think you’d like to work from home—or who already are doing so—should take a look at it.
😀
Therein lies a tale, one I figured was way too long for the guest post’s purposes. As I’ve suggested at Miranda’s place, when you work from a home office, sometimes it’s not easy to persuade people that you are working.
When my son was little, I had a very active freelance business. To give you a feel for this, one day a friend and I went into a Shakespeare and Company bookstore, and I realized that two of my books and a half-dozen of my various articles were sitting on the bookshelves. They got there because I hustled a lot of business and I made it a point to operate professionally. That last bit included never missing a deadline.
One late October day I was pounding out a story. It needed to move off my desk within a day; meanwhile, another couple of assignments were hanging fire. So I had three assignments that had to be done that week.
Phone rings.
It’s some volunteer mother at the school. She tells me—does not ask, but tells—that I’m to drive a vanful of five-year-olds to a pumpkin patch south of the city for a Hallowe’en outing. And I’m to do this tomorrow.
Understand: I have not volunteered to do anything. This is not a co-op school: we’re paying more than the tuition at the University of Arizona’s medical school send our kid there. I do not volunteer because I’m not the join-y type and because I truly do not fit in with society wives. I make them uncomfortable (that’s probably not the word for it; the actual word begins with b- and ends with -y) and they make me uncomfortable to the nth power. And even if I were the sosh type, I was working more than full-time as a paid writer.
Sorry, said I, but I can’t do that: I’m working on a deadline and can’t drop an assignment for a client.
She would not take “no” for an answer. She continued to insist that nothing would do but what I had to drop what I was doing (which clearly, in her mind, wasn’t much), pick up a half-dozen kids, and spend the day schlepping them back and forth across the Valley.
I explained what is meant by the term “deadline.” Then I explained that I was working and I could not quit working on short notice, because I had assignments due to my editors.
Now get this: She says, “You can’t be working. I called your home phone number!”
No joke. Then she launches into a diatribe, the gist of which was I was to get off my tail and drive the kiddies to a pumpkin patch. She went absolutely ballistic.
I ended up telling her, not in a friendly tone, “NO.”
LOL! Those were the good old days!
These days, with many people telecommuting or running small businesses out of their homes, attitudes toward entrepreneurs who work at home may be changing.
I doubt it, though. For most people, work is a place, and that place is not in your back bedroom.
I think this is another good reason to have a separate phone line for your home business. I know people suggest it because you can write it off as a business cost, but seems like avoiding these sorts of personal calls would be another benefit. Though I’m not personally sure I could risk picking up a ringing phone. Now with caller ID probably less of a big deal. Sort of akin to picking up your cell phone while at work, I know plenty of people who do.
Meant *could risk NOT picking up a ringing phone.
@ Alex: Absolutely. At the very least, answer your phone professionally during business hours, so that it sounds like the caller is reaching you at an office. And create a professional-sounding voice-mail message!
Having a separate line for your home-based business allows you to give that phone number as your “office number” to the school, doctor’s offices, soccer coaches, and the like. Unless someone asks you directly, there’s no reason to tell them your office is located in your home.