London Letter: Into the new age – toiling from home

I have now joined the fastest-growing section of the Brit workforce; employees who toil from home.

I can now officially lie in bed until it’s time to clock in.

I can eat breakfast barefoot at my desk and take a coffee break in my under-rods if I choose. I can knock off after my shift, and a minute later I’m in the car ready to go fishing at the lake down the road if I so wish.

It’s great, and it’s something I didn’t even ask for. I was told to do it.

Why? Firstly, because working from home is a completely logical spin-off of the digital age, and secondly, the newspaper industry in England is going off the cliff.

We’re cutting costs everywhere, so why spend a fortune on huge offices when you can give a guy a computer and say work in your pyjamas?

I like it, but strangely enough, I am in the minority.

Most of the youngsters coming into journalism hate not being in an office. They feel left out of the creative flow. They feel alone in dealing with difficult interviews and they miss out on spontaneous lunches when the entire newsroom decides to go on a fruit juice-fuelled spree. (Journalists have changed since my beer-quaffing days).

It’s not completely home-alone, however, as our company still have what it calls ‘hot desks’ where anyone can come into the office if they so wish.

Also, at least one reporter has to come in each day to answer the phones. They also have weekly meetings which are mainly news conferences, but increasingly becoming bonding time as they don’t see each other otherwise.

But nowadays for me, an office appearance is a rare one.

Bird watching

As I say, I like it as in between ‘momentous’ thoughts on the state of the planet, I can watch the birds in my tiny garden and the fish in my pond that is now getting frosty as winter looms. My respect for my hardy goldfish is total, and whenever I feel a bit down at my desk, I think about those guys lurking in sub-zero conditions.

However, the irony is that I now actually work harder, despite bird and fish watching, than I did in the office.

I start at 7am on the dot as I am not caught in traffic jams. I never leave early because the motorways are closed. I never take a lunch hour as there are no colleagues calling for a spontaneous break where we all rush out and overdose on cappuccinos. (In the good old days of real lunches, we sometimes didn’t make it back to the office).

Not only that, I feel guilty if I’m not banging away on the computer at home. When you’re in the office, just the fact that you’re there subliminally means you feel you’re earning your dollar a day. Or you would be if they paid you that much. But at home, if you’re doing nothing, you are skiving.

Weirdly enough, I also have more contact with my bosses than I did before. My email is constantly pinging. At first I thought it was because everyone was checking up on me, but then I realised that as some of my bosses were also at home, they’re probably just letting me know that they too are working their butts off – in case I think they’re skiving.

But the bottom line in this computer age is that it doesn’t matter if you pretend or not as your work is easily measurable.

Every story I post online, every sentence I edit, has my ‘footprint’ on it. It’s clearly marked in the history of each article, as well as the exact time edits were made. So not only can’t I run; I also can’t hide.

Finally, the fact that I edit a news website makes my job as transparent as a window. The site is either updated, or it’s not. If it’s not, the person responsible (aka me) is skiving.

But the biggest plus is this: I’m saving more than a hundred quid a month on fuel – not to mention missing all those cappuccino-fuelled lunches.