Right out of college, (and fresh off the farm*), I found myself smack dab in the middle of a telemarketing call center, trying to convince strangers to sign up for $60,000 educations at an online “university” they couldn’t afford, to get a degree that was borderline illegitimate. I spent my lunch hours crying in the downtown high-rise stairwell, (floor 17, thank you very much), and my breaks genuinely contemplating barfing in my hands and rubbing it on my shirt, because who can make a puke-covered girl keep working?!
*Note: We’re talking a metaphorical farm here. Please don’t ask me to milk anything.
And today, while I start my morning in la-la-land, crunching on horseradish pickles at 5:45 a.m. and rocking the ugliest pajama pants known to man, (hint: they’re fleece, three sizes too big, and feature an atrocious zebra pattern), it feels increasingly important to lay down the law. And by “law” I mean:
The Top 10 Best Things About Working From Home
See also: Why working from home is the bomb-diggety. Or maybe the bomb-diggety-dog. (No dogs harmed in the making of this list.)
1) You get to determine what your productivity looks like.
8 hours a day in a desk chair with a half hour lunch is not the only way to be productive, and recent studies have actually shown that it’s a train straight to getting less done in more time. Moreover, the 8 hour work day, 5 days a week was actually passed as law and encouraged by labor unions in the 1870’s to guarantee stable wages for employees–not to increase the productivity and revenue of companies like most people today believe. (Just think about that for a second next time your boss scratches the hairy part right above his belly button that’s done lapped over the top of his belt while he tells you to put in your time.)
2) You don’t have to scrape off your car when it’s balls cold outside and snowing like a sumbitch.
Look. I live in Colorado. And my idea of a happy morning does not consist of freezing my girly nads off and hacking at the inch-thick ice on my windshield with the edge of a credit card that’s likely been maxed out for roughly seven gajillion years.
3) No one raps their knuckles in passing and annoyingly says, “Smile!”
The only time knuckles need be rapped upon my desk is when I’m rapping to late 1990’s music, likely created by the wonderfully talented Mr. Will Smith. (Welcome to Miami, indeed.)
4) No more smooshed sandwiches for lunch where the watery yellow mustard has soaked through the white bread and created a tiny pocket of dry heave-inducing liquid in the bottom corner of the plastic Ziploc baggy.
Real talk? Most days for lunch I spend 15 minutes putting together a toasted English muffin with apple spinach chicken sausage, a fried egg, and some parsley butter. Thinking about lukewarm leftovers makes me want to cry actual real tears of despair.
5) You don’t have to worry about compliant corporate verbiage.
Or even the word verbiage. We all know how this goes. You are not a cashier. You’re a customer service associate. You’re not going to shove your foot up their ass. You’re going to intentionally place your lower appendage in their anal orifice.
GAG ME WITH A SPOON. Or rather, please trigger my delicate upchuck reflex with a fine silver dining utensil.
6) Your breaks can consist of guiltlessly checking out the fine piece of ass at the coffee shop down the road instead of trying to ignore Agnes from accounting as she asks you in her nasally voice–for the eighth time since eight this morning–how your weekend was. (She organized her romantic comedy movie collection by color.)
Because what a mighty fine ass it is.
7) There’s no uniform and / or regulations about bathing.
“Do you, dry shampoo, hereby take J-Man to be your lawful and wedded wife, as long as you both shall live?”
I DO! I DO, I DO, I DO!
NOW LET’S KISS.
8) You typically don’t have meetings that drag on so long you start contemplating the benefits of jamming bamboo shoots under your toenails, old school torture style.
Because sitting in a room for three hours with a bunch of people who are trying not to doze off is not the best way to run a business, and yet–AND YET–if I had a nickel for every minute I’ve spent around a huge table that’s been laminated to look like wood, painfully watching the clock and silently praying for death, I could afford to hire a hit man and send him back in time to whack the guy who first created meetings.
9) Sometimes, you get paid to write posts where you allude to puking at least 3 times.
#workingforTMFproject
10) You can stand on your porch, the late summer rain making patterns on the leaves and dripping on your bare feet, and unapologetically shout, “SUCK IT, CORPORATE AMERICA!”
Or rather I should say, kindly put a phallus in your mouth and apply forcible inward pressure.