Homing From Work

A lot of employers these days are saving money by encouraging (or ‘supporting’ as it is known in business parlance) employees to work from home. Some IT bod leaves his subterranean life denial system (otherwise known as the IT Services Office), goes round to the employee’s gaff and installs some software onto their home PC or laptop which enables them to dial into their work PC almost as if they were actually at work doing it in person. I guess a simple telephone monitoring system then enables the employer to sift official work calls from spurious demands to sex line numbers in order that they pay for bona fide work calls only.

Hey presto, your earnest young employee is now being paid to work from home but without consuming the employer’s electricity, gas, water, lighting, air, toilet facilities, canteen services or any of the other perks that an employer is wont to provide. The work gets done; the employee gets paid as usual but the employer saves a pretty bundle in consumables and fuel bills.

‘Working from home’. It’s a great lark and a wonder of the modern age.

But I feel the envelope has not been pushed out far enough.

I want to work for an employer who not only allows me to ‘work from home’ but also – more importantly – allows me to ‘home from work’.

I want to be able to sit at my workstation dressed in jimjams and even possibly wrapped up in an old blanket with a steaming mug of hot chocolate in my hand. I want to be able to spend 3 hours on internet prevarication before I actually commit myself to the task that I originally sat down in front of the computer to perform. Once this task has been completed (i.e. answering a few emails) I want to waste another few hours on Facebook and Twitter giving the entire world a blow by blow account of all the amazing things I am not actually doing.

Sat at my desk drinking cocoa. Where does the time go? Lol.

I demand daytime telly, lunchtime telly, afternoon telly and then one of those mid afternoon drama serials – Mid Somer Murders or some shit like that – something I can snooze off too. I’ll also need a steady supply of bread to make toast, accompany tinned soup and comprise the odd sandwich that I will need to nurture my delicate constitution towards the safe haven of the evening meal when I can at last relax and bask in the glory of another hard day at the office completed. Then, of course, I will want to snookem’s up in bed with a nice hot water botty placed lovingly upon my tendermost regions.

Bliss.

You may be wondering what benefit this set up will have for society? Well, the more of us that home from work the less social housing we will need. This will free up housing for those people who are unable to home from work because they don’t have a job and therefore have nowhere to live. I must point out that people who take busman’s holidays don’t really feature in my Utopia. The more of us who home from work in communal offices will use less fossil fuels en masse than we would if we were all living in separate domiciles – thus the ecology of the planet receives a much needed boost. We could also share TVs, fridges, ovens, PlayStations – again, reducing consumption of fossil fuels and the creation of CFCs. There would also be no need to drive to and from work – so further reductions in oil consumption and pollution are produced.

For the planet this entire set-up would be nothing but an out-and-out winner.

The only downside would be having no downtime at all from your employer.

*Sigh*

Bugger.

Back to the drawing board...