I used to work in the brick and mortar world, or what us WAHers like to call B&M. I got up every day, took a shower, got dressed, and fought my way through traffic to get to work on time. Once there I was at the mercy of my boss, my co-workers, even my customers for such simple things as grabbing a bite to eat or visiting the rest room.
So why did I do it? Because I really didn’t know there was another option. If I had known then that I could earn a legitimate living from home I wouldn’t have spent all that time traveling. And when I found myself unemployed I certainly wouldn’t have spent all that time and energy panicking because all of the jobs in my town were gone.
So what changed? I heard that there were people who worked from home and I knew they made good money. I did some research and learned that not all of them held multiple degrees and were working on their Nobel acceptance speeches. I discovered that a lot of them were just like me- high school educated with great people skills and no jobs in their own home towns.
In January 2009 I started digging around trying to find a job which I could do from home. I looked at several different sites, and dipped my toe into several different schemes before I found a method which worked for me. I began checking every lead I found with the Better Business Bureau and Google. I added the words “scam”, “fraud”, and “lawsuit” to my search queries to make sure I wasn’t missing any important information. In the end I feel that this saved my family a lot of money because some of the false leads I found looked very
promising on the surface.
Eventually I landed my first true blue work at home job. I lucked out and was hired as an employee at Sutherland Global Services as a customer care representative. Finally I could put my excellent people skills to use and start earning a living wage. At the time the starting pay was $8.00 an hour, which was considerably higher than anything I could have earned in a B&M facility where I lived. And by the time I removed the costs of clothing, travel, and food I was making almost twice what I could have made in town!
But there were drawbacks to my new position that I hadn’t considered before. Most pressing was the matter of equipment. Were I working down the road my employer would have provided my computer, headset, and internet connection. But I was now responsible for all of these things on my own. The computer and internet were no problem, but I still needed some other items to round out my new home office.
I set to work obtaining help getting the things I would need to run a successful, professional home office. I then ran into drawback number two: different states have different labor laws. I live in TN but Sutherland is in NY. In TN the law states that if a certain item or items are needed to perform a job the employer may require their employees to provide it. So all I needed was a piece of paper on company letterhead stating that I needed it. However in NY the law states that if something has to be obtained in order to perform a job the employer has to provide it. So no paper.
I understood; it’s a large company, and if they had to provide certain items for all of their remote employees it would greatly raise their costs, which would result in lower wages. Luckily my case worker understood this, too, and was able to get me the help I needed to get the headset and printer I needed.
The next obstacle I had to overcome was space. I needed to designate a specific spot in the apartment which would not only house my desk, but would also be free from outside distraction. That’s not an easy task when you have 3 children who are used to Mommy being available any time they need her. I put my desk in the bedroom and began training the kids to realize that when Mommy was at her desk she couldn’t be disturbed. That was a lot easier than we thought it would be.
Lastly, I had to train my friends and family. A lot of people think that if someone works from home they can come and go as they please. While that may be true for some WAH professions, it is not true for customer service. I needed to be able to fully devote myself to working when I was on the clock so I had to get everyone used to the idea that the phone wouldn’t always be answered and that sometimes no one would answer the door. We even began disabling the doorbell during my training shifts to enforce the point.
Over the course of the two weeks I was training everyone around us got used to the idea that even though I was at home I wasn’t always “there”. My schedule was given to everyone who might need it and friends were ushered out in a hurry if it was getting close to time for my next shift. It seemed as though we had taken care of everything.
And then we discovered the last hurdle we needed to overcome. The lack of commute also meant I lacked down time between the office and home. I no longer had traffic to sit in while I stewed over an angry caller or a fussy system. My commute was literally a hallway from my office in the bedroom to the living room where the rest of the family was at. I began to get cranky because I wasn’t shifting gears fast enough to suit myself and it was affecting everyone in the house.
We began turning off the TV during my breaks because the noise was overwhelming to me after having a headset on for hours. We also decided that I could go from my desk to the bed for a bit to help myself ease from rep to mom. I would relax for a few minutes and just breathe in the silence of my room. That seemed to take care of my mood for the most part; although, I still had moments from time to time when the day took longer to shake off than usual. But that would be true if I were working in a B&M facility so we felt it was par for the course.
I still work from home and have no plans to go back into the B&M world any time soon. There are a few trade offs to working from home that I miss from my old days of working across town. I know all of my co-workers virtually so I don’t get to go out with them on the weekends, for instance. But at the same time I feel closer to my fellow remote workers than I did with my other co-workers. Maybe it’s because virtual interaction has become the new social norm. Or maybe it’s because we’ve all been on the same journey to get to where we are now. Or maybe it’s because I really do work with some amazing people with whom I have a lot in common. Either way, I wouldn’t trade this for anything.
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