Fandango Provocatively asks:
Have you ever worked from home as an alternative to going into a worksite to do your job? Would you prefer working from home or working from an office? If you have been able to work from home since the pandemic hit and are now being told that you have to return to showing up at the office everyday, how would you feel about that?
It’s funny you should ask about working from home, as it has always been a source of conflict in our marriage.
Mrs Bump is a nurse. While she’s at work, she needs to think pretty hard, but work stops the moment she gets to the car park. When she comes home, she’s in leisure mode.
I, on the other hand, have at times worked from home. In any case, problems thrown up by jobs meant I never really turned off. So it’s quite possible I can be in the house, and doing my job.
Train strikes are a good example of when it might have happened.
There was conflict early on in our marriage. Mrs Bump would see me at home, and would assume I was in leisure mode, too. So she would say things like “Can you pick up our daughter from nursery?” And when I said, “No, I’m working”, it would be guaranteed to start a row.
I don’t apologise for that. I earned 10x more than her, so we made a conscious decision that I would prioritise earning the money, and she would prioritise childcare. She never complained when the mortgage got paid every month. I still think that’s a valid split now. One partner concentrates on the family, the other on security. Especially when there’s a big gap in earnings.
It was never really resolved. Still isn’t. Parameters have changed but the problem still exists.
It reached the point where I would sooner work from an office (even if that meant a commute), because then at least my wife understood that I was working. It also made it easier with a few shortsighted clients, who would assume that if people weren’t physically in their office, then they were skiving.
It just made it easier to enforce that work/home split, make it unambiguous, and say “work = office, leisure = home”.
Mister Bump 
I get your point, and that of your wife too. It’s an automatic assumption that if a person is at home, they aren’t working.
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It will happen more and more nowadays. Even if people are attached to an office, a lot of their work will be from home. I did at one stage consider renting local office space just to have two discrete locations.
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A designated home office can be the answer. My daughter and son in law have one. Even they are there, we know they are working.
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yes, that depends on having the space to convert. I used to use the spare bedroom as my office but over time it got used for other things, too.
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Yes, space is always an issue
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Glad you were able to resolve things to some extent. Home will always be associated with leisure no matter how much “work from home” there is.
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I think so, unless there is just one person in the house. Even if Mrs B knows I am working, I might still hear music or singing. But I cannot complain because it is home!
In practise, now, it often means I take days off when she does, lunch when she does, etc.
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Sounds like you always strive to maintain normalcy at home. Good to know.
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Believe me, we have come full circle. Plenty of rows on the way.
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Often I’m at work and not working. I get really easily distracted and I’m bored, so I disengage
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I can be the opposite. I get really focussed on things. Depends. If they’re consuming enough.
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I’ve never worked from home, and don’t think it would work for me, as I’m far too easily distracted. For example, it can sometimes take me hours to write a simple music review, because it’s so hard for me to focus on a single project while at home due to the availability of so many distractions.
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I must admit, I can focus, but I need to get into the groove. Once I’m in the groove, nobody has a chance.
Last weekend, for example, was a holiday here. I write three Songshine posts per week, only short but they all require fact-checking, so I used the long weekend to write everything until 2023. So the only time I need to do Songshine is a tiny proof read, and engaging with reader’s comments (which is a pleasure anyhow). But at least doing it all in that weekend, stacking everything up, means I can concentrate just on by far the main Mr Bumpo blog.
I don’t know about you but there are definite times when I can’t be bothered blogging (or at least writing) so it helps to have a stash.
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Sadly, I’m nowhere near that disciplined or motivated. Writing is often a chore for me.
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