Working from home and why it's a terrible idea

The laptop on the kitchen table is a mummy trap that will disadvantage women in the long term

Just seen behind screen: my co-worker Daisy

Agreeing with Amazon on, well, anything, is a bad look. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day and I have some sympathy with their plans to bring staff back into the office in January.

Like living on takeaways and Celebrations, working from home sounds great. The reality, not so much. It serves very few individuals and, as Amazon has found out, not many companies. The unintended consequences are so damaging that it’s becoming as out of date as a 2020 covid test.

Finally Amazon - as well as JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Tesla and others - have figured out that working alone in the spare room does not bring out the best in people. Leaving staff unsupervised to collaborate with the dog and the tumble dryer is not good for the workforce or for the company’s bottom line.

The bottom lines of internet retailers, international banks and Elon Musk are not my primary concern. This is not a me issue - my own days of full-time working in an office are long gone. Instead it’s a younger generation issue and, massively, a feminist issue.

Working from home strips work down to its most transactional, the job as outlined by HR and handed down by a line manager. And as anyone who has experienced the alternative knows, there’s much more to it than that.

A non-definitive list of things working from home precludes are: 

+ Really getting to know colleagues who may become friends, flat mates, romantic partners, mentors, life-long collaborators and useful contacts. Some of them will go on to great things and may become future bosses and employers. Or just someone you see on telly and remember that they used to reheat fish in the microwave. 

+ Being able to watch how older, more experienced colleagues operate and learning from them. This could be soft skills such as dressing appropriately and sucking up to the boss, or key work skills such as speaking on the phone. All are invaluable.

+ How to be a good boss and manage people. Also, how a terrible boss operates and what not to do in a similar position. The latter is almost as useful as the former, it’s so helpful to see how different people approach similar jobs.

+ Observing colleagues who do other jobs which may be a better fit and picking their brains about this.

Sucking up to the boss. It’s hard to bring him or her a virtual apple.

+ Socialising during and after work, where so many connections are made. It’s so much easier to make an impression in person than on a video call.

Bake brownies. Distribute to colleagues. Everyone things you are a good person. Photo by ABHISHEK HAJARE on Unsplash

+ Chocolate brownie diplomacy, which is my catch-all for cultivating colleagues who do boring but essential jobs. Getting them on side makes life so much easier. Secretaries, folk in accounts and the mailroom, the security guards and receptionists are all invaluable – and impossible to get to know if you’re not in the same building. How do you take round home baking, or give mad Korean sweeties to the PA who booked your travel, over Zoom?

I have had all these advantages, and more, during my career. Colleagues have become pals, supporters, husbands (learn from my mistakes here), offered me jobs elsewhere, answered my stupid questions, picked up my mistakes and taught me pretty much everything I know.

In my 20s and 30s, watching how other people worked was a revelation. Pennies dropped every day. That’s how you do that. Or, just as importantly, that’s how you don’t do that.

Sitting at a desk, answering the phone to writers who were on the road with REM, or at a cryogenics lab in LA, had me questioning my life choices. I knew these people (because I worked with them in the office). They were not smarter or more talented than me. By following their examples, I worked out how to start doing something similar. This couldn’t have happened if I’d been working in isolation. Or even coming into the office for meetings. It required immersion and slow realisation and that takes years.

Later, when I had a toddler and was was commuting from Edinburgh to Glasgow, I negotiated working one day a week from home. What a difference that day made. She still went to her childminder but I could work without brushing my hair, wearing clean clothes or crossing the country.

So I understand the appeal of the sweatshirt shift. But too much working from home is a mummy trap. For couples with children, where both partners work full time, there are huge organisational advantages to having someone at home. But if it’s always women who take up that option and men who continue to go to the office, women will continue to be under-promoted and underpaid. They will have less rewarding careers, earn less over their working lifetimes and have smaller pensions so they could do the school run and put on a load of washing.

One of the reasons people like working from home is that they hate commuting. I agree with them. Commuting is shit. It is a thief of life. When I was doing Edinburgh-Glasgow I resented every minute spent on the train and every pound it cost me. 

But this is largely a structural problem with our appalling public transport, one which has just got worse with the reintroduction of Scotrail’s larcenous peak fares. If companies are located away from public transport then employees are forced to drive, another source of multiple pain. The same goes for anyone working anti-social hours who does not have the option of the bus or train to work.

The housing market doesn’t help, with high prices forcing people away from city centres. The cost of childcare is punitive, another consideration that pushes women into the spare room rather than the office.

These are the factors that make working from home look like a great option. The costs are harder to identify and only reveal themselves over time. Without wanting to sound like George Osborne in 2010, working in an office, especially at the start of a career, is short term pain for long term gain. 

On a structural level, the solution is not encouraging more people to work from home, it’s making cities more liveable, public transport cheaper and more efficient and subsidising childcare. These are society problems that have been pushed onto individuals under the guise of making lifestyle choices and it’s massively women who are losing out.

Young colleagues are often hostile to the idea of the office. Their pals who work in hospitality or retail have to cycle to work before the buses start, or hang about after their bar shift to catch the first train home. To them, a laptop at the kitchen table is golden.

They have not had all the opportunities that older generations took for granted. They haven’t seen them, they can’t imagine them and so of course they don’t miss them. How could they? 

Flexible working is not a terrible thing. But it has to be used judiciously. Any company that takes it seriously needs to quantify all the benefits to staff that used to happen organically when everyone worked under one roof then work out a way to make sure they are still happening. 

In the long term, that will give them a more productive, coherent workforce. And chocolate brownies.

Elsewhere … I was much taken by Visible Fiction’s reworking of Treasure Island. Despite the presence of 80s bangers, Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me was not so much fun.