A Swiss Picnic

This is an interview I gave to a Swiss newspaper when Das Gute Leben (the German-language version of The Good Life for Wage Slaves) came out in 2020. They wanted to talk about what the Swiss call “home office” (i.e. working from home) in the then-pressing context of the pandemic. I don’t know how much of this made it into the newspaper, but I recently chanced upon the full transcript.

Many studies and surveys (before Corona) come to the conclusion, that working from home is not as great as people think. Why do you think that is?

The most cited disadvantage to home office is that there are too many distractions at home and not enough motivation to work. But when you stop to think about it, there are far more distractions at the office. At home, you need some self-control to switch the TV off and you need to resist the temptation to play PlayStation, but the fact remains that you can turn those things off. At the office, you can’t turn off other people’s noisy gadgets or the antics of an office joker or an overbearing manager.

It’s just a question of learning to deploy self-control for your own benefit instead of someone else’s. If you’ve got the self-control to set an alarm clock for 6am and to trudge to the train station and reach the office on time, you clearly have enough power within yourself to to work independently. And even if you occasionally do give in to the temptation to watch Netflix when you should be working, at least you’re slacking off in a fun way! Research shows that people spend vast swathes of time in the office pretending to work anyway. It’s called “presenteeism” and it’s a far darker and more depressing situation than trying to resist a 2pm nap, which actually might improve your life and your productivity anyway. 

I understand it’s tricky for people with children to work at home under lockdown, but under normal circumstances, the children will be at school or in day care. The lockdown home office situation is a bit more tense than regular home office.

In your first book, you wrote that 80 percent of us hate their job. Do you really think the possibility of working from home could change that? If yes: Why?

Most people aren’t doing jobs they love or are in tune with their values. Nobody says, “I wish I were a file clerk for a pharmaceutical corporation!” Most people just get what they can, because we all have rent to pay. But even when people are lucky and find a job that actually improves the world or represents their values, any fun and productivity is sucked out of the job by the actual workplace. It’s the ringing telephones, the unsuitable chairs, noisy colleagues, workplace bullies, pointless meetings, sexual harassment, fire drills, over-supervision by managers who are younger and stupider than you are. Yuck! Forget it. If we could work from home, all of that would go away. Even if it still sucks to be the social media guru for a dog food company, there would be a better chance to enjoy the day when you no longer have to face the noise and the horror of the office and the twice-daily commute.

When you work from home, you also keep more of your wages, which helps your sense of dignity as well as your financial survival. At the moment, we all spend a good chunk of our pay cheque on office-appropriate clothes and shoes and make-up, subway tickets, taxi cabs, overpriced lunchtime salads, post-work consolatory drinks. All of these costs would go away over night. Working from home is no guarantee that the 80% would suddenly love their work, but surely it would help.

What do you think: How many people would hate their job if they had the chance to work from home instead of having the obligation to go to the office?

It’s possible that the 80 percent would still hate their job, but at least you’d be able to do it in a dignified environment without a snotty manager looking over your shoulder to make sure you’re not taking a sly peek at Facebook. And when you’re at home you’re more likely to condense any hated or boring activity into a couple of hours instead of sitting on an uncomfortable chair for the full seven hours just because you’re bound by contract and leaving early would look bad. It’s hard to deny that conditions would improve, so I think the 80% figure would reduce.

What is, in your opinion, the most important benefit of working from home (in terms of living a good life)?

I like the moments afforded to the home worker: being able to cook a low-cost healthy lunch in your own kitchen with your own music or favourite radio station playing in the background, being able to run a local errand in the middle of the day instead of leaving it to the precious weekend. At 7pm, you can feel happy instead of exploited and shell-shocked. Perhaps the key thing is something like “bandwidth.” You’re less likely to feel hurried, harassed or clogged-up when you’re working at home. You’re more in control. To use a corona-related term, there’s a smaller “viral load” of demands on your consciousness.

Current studies show that in general people are rather happy with the actual working situation (working from home). But: Many also feel isolated, lonely, they miss their colleagues, have problems separating work and leisure. Also, many fear that it is bad concerning career opportunities. What would you advise them to do?

It can be hard for some people but they ought to know that they’re in a minority. Most people do not particularly enjoy going to work. In its own right, going out to work is a cause of depression and loneliness and isolation for many, many people. When you work full-time in an office, commute twice daily, and waste your weekends recovering from it all, you’re hopelessly cut off from the people you love, a happy home, your dream projects, fun.

I remember sitting in a weekly staff meeting once; it was sweltering in that room and the end of a long boring week; we’d just about managed to finish on time when one person suggested we all go out for drinks at 5pm. Everyone at the table wanted to kill him! He had no sensitivity to the fact that the rest of us just wanted to go home. But to say “no way dude” would have made us look like bad team players in front of the boss, so we all suddenly had to delay our weekends by three hours instead of going home to our loved ones and a home-cooked meal.

People need to understand while your colleagues might respect you and get along with you, they are not necessarily your friends. They might be! But please don’t assume it. Assuming your colleague is your friend is like hitting on the waiter at a restaurant: you’re taking advantage of someone who is being paid to smile at you. Your friends are a different group of people. If you don’t have friends outside of work, I’d suggest turning to the “just friends” mode of apps like Tinder or Bumble; or joining a hobby group or sports team or an improv troupe. If you’re connected by football or crafts or Star Trek, and you’re all in the room voluntarily, you’ve got yourself a friend. Those are the people you’re allowed to text at midnight, not your office co-workers.

As for career opportunities, you’re more likely to find good ones through the sort of precision networking achieved through online research and a carefully-worded “reach out” email than blindly hoping to impress the right person in a meeting room: the right person to help your career might not be anywhere near the office block you’re forced to travel to each day. Besides, there will still be special events like conferences and conventions that require physical attendance and ‘bump into’ moments: “showing face” and sitting in “battery hen” work cubicles are not the answer to career advancement.

Many workers are about to return to their offices (because they have to). Psychologists fear that could lead to motivation problems. What is your advice for these people?

Yes, it will be hard for people to feel motivated when they’ve tasted the freedom of home office, of understanding that a hellish commute has not been necessary since about 1998 when the Internet became reliable. We have to wait for the tide to turn, don’t we? We need everyone to be honest and open about how working from home is perfectly adequate for most white-collar scenarios, and that office buildings are bad for the soul and health and the environment. There’s probably an economic case too: imagine how much money a company could save without humongous downtown premises. Companies: save yourself a fortune and let your workers go free!

For now though: just hang in there. Maybe consider looking for part-time work opportunities or negotiating home working days with your boss. There are lots of suggestions along these lines in my book and explanations of how to do them. If all else fails, use your slack time when you’re bored at work to search for a job where you’re allowed to work from home. Escape is possible.

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The Good Life for Wage Slaves is now available (in English) from our online shop. There’s also 50% off until September 10th.