Deviant Advice

In today’s “modern” business climate, lots of companies are wanting to save valuable money by allowing select employees to work from home, thus starting to cut down on traditional office expenses. However, as the costs of business continue to climb (and we’ve all seen gas prices lately), more companies are starting to put more employees into the coveted “telecommuter” category. So when you’re finally called up to the big leagues and offered a chance to work from home, you’ve got to make the most of this situation and we here at DeviantAdvice have you covered. To wit, we present to you a guide on how to “work” from home.

So you obviously are going to want to do as minimal an amount of work possible, yet still get paid for a traditional 8 hour day. This is actually quite attainable, but you have to understand that there’s some ground rules that absolutely MUST be followed. As long as you go by these rules, however, you should be absolutely golden.

First off, your wardrobe selection is critical. Nearly everyone who works from home has made at least one reference to “working in my sleep clothes.” For the ladies, this typically means pajamas. For most gents, this is loosely translated as “nude” and, as such, will utterly terrify anyone within earshot of this announcement. Your goal here is NOT to be one of these people. As tempting as it is to make the joke, don’t. Unless you roll with a large crew who all work from home, you’ll likely be the target of scorn and envy amongst your peers when you make the announcement that you can work from home. Adding to it via the “work in my pj’s” routine is just going to set you up for a karmic ass-kicking, so just back off. Instead, DO focus on an actual wardrobe and stick to it. Yes, that means changing out of whatever you happen to wear (or don’t wear, you sick freak) and in to a decent ensemble. Note: guys… this means your shit has to match ok? The ratty shorts and “drink till she’s cute” shirt isn’t going to cut it here. At least look somewhat presentable. Why? Well, there’s a damn good reason for it…

And that’s the ever-popular “Site Visit.” For those who may not be familiar with this term (and somehow unable to comprehend at least 6th grade English), this means someone coming to your house to check up on you, often at random intervals. Now, handling this can be easy, or difficult and it largely depends on whoever it is that does your site visit(s). Those folks come in two flavors and we’ll break them out separately:

• The Office Snitch: this person is typically in the lower-ranks of middle management. Basically they’re above you, but still well below the upper-management level. They may have the ability to fire you, but it’s highly unlikely. At most, they can probably write you up and report you to someone higher who likely doesn’t care anyways. Still, you have to meet their offense with a good defense, which means you have to think like them. Chances are, they’re probably damned annoyed at having to do the site visits, or else jumped on the opportunity because they (foolishly) thought this would get them a promotion. As a result, they’re going to do their dead-level best to bust you in the middle of your attempts to not work at all. Usually they’ll do this by trying to be “random” in their visits, but a pattern will be all-too-apparent. Typical times to “just drop by” are within half an hour of your lunch time, roughly an hour before your day is done, and within 20 minutes of any “meetings” being held in the virtual sense. Favorite days to drop by will likely be Mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
• True Middle Management: this person is probably very comfortable in their job and probably got that job by bullshitting as much as humanly possible while keeping a straight face. This is the person you want conducting your site visit since they’ll likely call you in advance and give you a head’s up. Why? Well, because they’ve been handed an absolute plum of an assignment. Someone has basically told them to wander the city and check up on employees, all on the company dime. The Office Snitch sees this as a way to help keep a “healthy bottom line.” True Middle Management see this as “5 hour lunch at -insert name of favorite bar-.” True Middle Management also knows that their job is secure and, as such, could give a rat’s ass less about YOUR productivity, so long as it makes them look good. Don’t abuse their faith.

The Site Visit can be a make-or-break time depending on which class of visitor you get assigned. Thankfully, dealing with either of them remains simple. A large part of it comes down to your home work place. In your home you should have a room dedicated to your job. Comfortable surroundings, but not too comfortable. Privacy from the rest of your home. Well-organized and supplied. This room is a fortress against declining productivity and you will never be in it, unless you’ve got a Site Visit. You’re working from home after all and you want to exploit that. Keeping a good Home Office is critical to your survival as a telecommuter and that’s why you should avoid that room at all costs. Anything that breaks the overall organizational flow of that room will come back to haunt you. Also, you want to ensure that this room is as far from the front door of the house as is reasonably feasible. After all, when a Site Visit kicks off, you want to hide the fact that you just scrambled around like a madman and having a Home Office in a remote part of your home helps hide this fact perfectly. You can always use the “sorry, was working so hard I didn’t hear the doorbell/knocking/pounding/calling my phone for 20 minutes” excuse with absolute impunity. Bonus points if this room can be upstairs, or else in a basement, for the obvious reasons of either.

As far as working from home goes, it’s commonly assumed that employees will find all sorts of ways to distract themselves throughout the day and you’re no exception to this (after all, you’re reading this article aren’t you?). However, choosing a distraction is a critical process and one that’s not to be taken lightly. The most common pitfall is the decision to do actual work outside of work. These people baffle me actually. Why would you want to work from home and then spend valuable “work” time by multitasking via cleaning your home, fixing some broken item, or anything else in that arena? Your goal here is to decrease your workload, not find a way to get the company to foot the bill for your Home Improvement projects. No my friend, you’ve got to understand that you’re trying to slack off here, so choose a diversion wisely.

• Good Choices: catching up on TiVO; online classes to get a better job; porn (we’ll discuss this later); home-brewing; pre-planning your next weekend; simple internet games (yes, genius, that means no World of Warcraft, Everquest, etc… what are you? 12?); more porn and/or drinking (again, more on these topics later).
• Bad Choices: home improvement; wedding planning; online dating (seriously… don’t); too much porn/drinking.
• Choices That Indicate You’re Retarded: World of Warcraft; Everquest; MySpace/Facebook/Friendster; a blog; anything else that indicates you’re 14 or younger.

As stated, the “porn” and “drinking” options will likely be the most popular and for damned obvious reasons. So you’re probably wondering “can I really surf porn/get hammered while ‘on the job’?” Of course you can, just be smart about it. Porn is best limited to simple pursuits. While the office is likely paying for a nice high-end connection, they are probably monitoring it as well, so will notice when you decide to download all 400 meg of “Butt Blasters 5,” so resist that temptation. Instead, rely on your current home setup to do this job for you. If you have your own laptop and wireless connection, then you’re probably set. Just keep your company laptop on one side and your laptop on the other and revel in the bliss. After all, nothing really helps productivity by watching gorgeous young ladies give up their dreams for $250 a film. Honestly, being “part of the problem” is pretty damn fun. Plus, if your job entails talking to customers/clients/anyone who’s likely to be upset for trivial reasons, watching porn while they rant is absolutely priceless. Just remember to keep the volume down/off. Don’t trust the “mute” function on your headseat.

Drinking is probably the most common diversion however. Not many joke openly about watching midget porn while working, but most everyone will haul out the “I’m gettin sloshed on the job!” comment at the drop of a hat. These people are usually 1) lying, or else 2) raging alchoholics and, thus, probably not allowed to work from home. You, however, are neither of these because you’re reading this article. Getting plowed on company time is a time-honored tradition. Long have stories been told of wild “conventions” that are thinly-veiled binge events. There’s also the popular “off-site meeting,” followed closely by classic “three martini lunch.” All of them are wonderful in their own right, but can’t beat the pleasure of you being in your own home, working for a living, and getting absolutely shitfaced in the process. Currently, I make $15.30 an hour and I’m usually half off my ass by noon. The key here is moderation. While it’s probably tempting to start your day off with a drink (or 2, 3, 12, you get the gist), you should wait until around 11 – 11:30. The reason here is mostly because you want to ensure that The Office Snitch has already done their rounds, or else that True Middle Management might be on their way over and may even be willing to “expense” a couple rounds at the local watering hole. The other reason is, of course, that you don’t want to turn into a raging alcoholic. So, again, moderation. Start around 11 to 11:30, ease into it. Beer and wine are great libations of choice since most folks can easily nurse a glass of either for long enough to maintain a moderate buzz without getting completely off your ass. Exceptions to this are any type of Engineer as they tend to pretty much stay hammered through the duration of their career anyways. So take it in moderation and try to keep things low-key until about 4 pm. After that, you’ve only got an hour left anyways, so make that shit count.

Of course, doing any of this while “working hard” is flat-out impossible. Working “smart” is the key here. You’ve got to become proficient in the art of stretching things out. After all, why be hyper-effective when, with a modicum of effort, you can be “acceptably productive” and make your work-at-home life that much easier and rewarding:

• “Research” is a great tool. Tell the customer that you’re “researching” their issue and then waste an appropriate amount of time. For added customer-satisfaction, you can also “verify” what your “research” has uncovered. Don’t be greedy though.
• Call-backs are equally as effective. Instead of leaving your customer on hold, just offer to call them back.
• That way you don’t have any sort of incessant reminder of their presence on your line. Plus you can occasionally “forget” the customer to your benefit. Again, do not get greedy here.
• Training/Self-study. Most training anymore is web-based and completely automated, no humans involved. If you are offered ANY sort of training opportunity, you better use it. And make sure that you demonstate a THOROUGH understanding of your training by taking as long as feasible. Fortunately, most training is designed for the slowest of the herd in mind, so timeframes are often wildly inflated. Since you work from home, it’s assumed you are not the slowest of the herd. So if your training is supposed to take 4 hours and it really only takes you 30 minutes… well my friend, you just earned an extra long lunch didn’t you?

With the proper application of these three techniques, it’s likely that an average 8 hour day can actually be filled with only about 2 to 3 hours of actual work. Be prepared, not every day is going to be a holiday. You are going to have those days where you have to put in an actual 8 hours. However, careful planning on your part pretty much means that these will be infrequent.

And there you have it. A simple guide to absolutely capitalizing on your work-from-home experience. By following this guide you will likely earn maximum rewards for only a modicum of effort. Just remember to always keep your goal in mind, which is the continuance of your company handing you this golden assignment. Do it well and it’s yours forever. Do it expertly and you may even get a raise for your “dedication.” Just try not to show up for the “performance review” drunk… see if you can get an offsite evaluation for that one.

Cheers!