The Perks of Working From Home

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie helps a reader frustrated that his co-worker gets to work from home.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, David Eddie helps a reader frustrated that his co-worker gets to work from home.

Now … don’t get me wrong. I’ve spent a great chunk of my adult life “working from home.” And certainly I believe great work can emanate from one’s domicile.

Nobel-Prize-for-literature shoo-in Philip Roth works from home. Vincent van Gogh painted some of his greatest pictures working from “the yellow house” (and environs) in Arles, France (along with Paul Gauguin, who also cranked out some pretty snappy canvases whilst residing in that abode).

Throughout his life, Winston Churchill earned most of his money through writing, which he did from his beautiful, high-ceilinged study in Chartwell House, retiring at 11 with a gaggle of secretaries and stenographers and dictating into the wee hours.

All the above-mentioned gentlemen obviously reached the very apotheosis of human achievement while “working from home.”

But with some people, you just don’t buy it. I had a friend whose boss would claim to be “working from home” a lot, but never really clued in to the mechanics of the “call display” function on phones. Her boss would call: “Listen, I’m working from home today, I just feel like I can get more done from here, without all the distractions of the office.”

Meanwhile, the call display would read “Flora’s Hair and Nail Salon.”

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