business

One of the problems that I’ve been struggling with since I started my freelance business has been holding my cell phone to my ear with my shoulder while I talk to clients and type notes on my laptop at the same time. To free up my hands, my parents got me a blue tooth for my phone on my birthday - you know, those things that short men with leather suit jackets always have stuck in their ears at the grocery store?

Well, I know it’s a little uncool to wear when you aren’t using it, but this thing has changed my life. Although its number one use is to allow me to take detailed notes during meetings with clients, I’ve also discovered an even better application for the blue tooth: it allows me to do whatever I want during the two-hour multi-office conference calls that I often have to sit through. During these calls I often don’t have to say more than “hello” and “nice talking with you.” The majority of these calls are about web design and roughly 5% is about written content - it’s kind of like listening to a baseball game on the radio but only having to pay attention to one inning.

For the last two months, I’ve sat through these meetings as if I were physically present at a meeting - kind of paying attention, very bored. But now my blue tooth - which not only frees my hands but also blocks out background noise — has unshackled me from my conference call prison.

Before the blue tooth I would do regular meeting things: drink a lot of tea, try to pay attention and fail, stare at the clock, think about other things I could be doing that are also not pleasant but that I would still rather be doing, like folding the laundry. Now, though, today - I actually did get to fold my laundry. And since I get paid to sit in on these meetings, it’s like I’m getting paid to fold my laundry! I also got paid to write some thank you notes, iChat, brush the cat, and pay my phone bill - all for the same hourly rate. At the end of the meeting, I even started writing the web content that the meeting was about, both saving myself some time and saving my clients some money. What a beautiful world.

It also makes me wonder what the other three people on the line are doing, since we all work from home. Is the coordinator flossing her teeth? Is the tech guy putting the final touches on that free verse poem he’s been working on? I never thought I’d say this before I started working from home, but it might be true: there’s such a thing as a productive meeting.

I’m home alone until Saturday night - Ben is in Las Vegas all week covering a fight. I thought it would be especially hard this time around since I would usually be at work every day interacting with friends and getting out of the house. I thought that this week I would basically be in solitary confinement for me, while at the same time, I would be getting picture messages from Ben of his overflowing buffet plates and of him posing with Hooters girls.

Instead, though, I seemed to have found a sure-fire cure for loneliness: extreme stress.

In my deep fear of not having enough freelance work to keep me busy and pay the bills, I got myself into a mountain of work. And if you don’t think it’s confusing to spend an hour writing about dry cleaning methods and the next writing about 18-wheeler spinal cord injury settlements and the next hour writing about auriculotherapy (look it up - I know I had to), then you would be wrong.

I thought I might spend the week wistfully sighing and conjuring images of our post-wedding winter cabin, complete with crackling logs and wine and snow falling silently outside. And no deadlines. Instead, though, I’m spending every single second worrying about how the hell one writes a joint venture business plan.

It’s a weird feeling - I constantly feel like I’m back in high school and about to take a test I haven’t studied for. The feeling of all of your brain cells lining up and preparing to bullshit to the fullest extent of their ability. Have I ever written about the herbal treatment protocol for smoking cessation? Of course I have! I’m a living, breathing copywriter, aren’t I? I can’t even watch TV or call my friends - I’m just constantly thinking on how I can possibly pull these things off and save my ass.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m enjoying the crap out of my new job. Sure, I might be a bit stressed and more than a little over my head, but on the other hand I’m doing stuff I love, I’m actually getting to make my own decisions and think and voice my opinions, and I wore a wifebeater without a bra all day.

I’ll tell you one thing, though: if stress is cure for loneliness, could a takeout chicken parmesan sandwich and a beer be a cure for stress?

There’s only one way to find out.

In the Top Ten Things I Won’t Miss at My Job, I present #7: Authority.

I’ve always had problems with authority - I’m one of those people that, if I were ever thrown into women’s prison for a month or two for some minor offense, would keep getting myself into trouble to the point where I was in solitary confinement with a life sentence without parole. I wouldn’t necessary shiv people because I wanted to, but because someone with a uniform on told me not to.

Now, I understand that this is my problem and than respecting people who are older and wiser and smarter than me is generally a good and wise thing. However, I can’t help but notice that the structures of authority in places like offices are often… not accurate.

Or, to be more exact, I hate when people wield their authority in the wrong ways or use it too often as an excuse to treat people badly. My good boss (one of the few things I’ll miss about my job) treats everyone in the office the same, from the mail guy to the president. She asks peoples opinions, thinks about how projects or assignments affect each person, and thanks people when they do things for her, even if doing those things are part of their job. In short, she earns people’s respect. I’m more than happy to do a good job for her and go out of my way for her.

On the other hand, other people in the office seem to think that their title or corner office entitles them to treat me like I’m some other species - because I’m assistant I have to be dumber than him, to have fewer aspirations, to not deserve the things that they have. There seems to be these ideas that assistants have to be babysat, that they can’t be trusted with anything, that their math has to be checked, that their opinions don’t mean anything. They never seem to stop and think that maybe I’m simply in different circumstance they are.

These things drive me crazy on a daily basis - taking comfort in the fact that over the last year I’ve secretly been building up my own business has been the only way to suppress my outbursts. It’s such a small difference: between being told to do something and being asked. Between being part of a hierarchy and being part of a team.

In freelancing, even though you’re still working for someone, there’s an immediate built-in respect on both sides: I am providing them with a service that they can’t do themselves, and they are providing me with work. Going into the first meeting with a client means an equal exchange of information: they tell me about their company, and I tell them about the best ways to express their ideas and products with words. And the best part is, if they don’t like my stuff they won’t ask me to do another project and if I don’t like working with them, I won’t accept another project.

In the end, though, I can’t tell you how awesome it was to have this conversation with my least favorite authority figure yesterday:

“So I heard you’re leaving us. What company are you going to?”

“I’ve actually started my own business.”

“You’re what?”

“It’s going to be way more awesome than this company.”

Number Eight in the list of Top Ten Things I Won’t Be Crying Over When I Leave Work For Good Next Week: my cubicle.

Here’s my beef with cubicles: they don’t DO anything. They are a representation of something that does not function in any way that the thing that it represents functions. It’s like being on a movie set - let’s say of NASA mission control - and trying to coordinate a launch of a real, actual spaceship from said movie set. Sure, it looks like it could work, but it certainly wouldn’t. Astronauts would die.

In the case of the cubicle, a cubicle wall looks a lot like a regular wall, but accomplishes very few things that real, actual walls accomplish.  In other words, cubicles are not only almost completely useless, but they also remind you of how great walls that work are.

So - what are the great things that walls do every day for us? First off, they keep out sound to a large extent. Secondly, they prevent people on the other side of the wall from seeing what you’re up to. Thirdly, they often go all the way up to the ceiling. Why are walls good things to have in offices? Because they create quiet, pleasant work environments with minimal distractions and maximum privacy. Not only are you able to work without being bothered, but can also work without worrying that you are bothering someone else.

Where do cubicles fit into this wall-based workspace strategy? Nowhere, as far as I can tell. They block no sounds from the cubicles around you - you can hear phone calls, eating noises, even when someone is scratching their skin with their nails (worst sound ever). They also don’t block anyone from seeing what you’re doing - anyone who walks by gets a gander at whatever you’re doing (in this case, updating my personal blog during office hours). If anything, they make you think you have privacy when in fact you do not - a three-sided cubicle does not make it okay to pick your nose three-fourths of the time.

Sure, cubicle walls accomplish one or two things that real walls do. You can tack up kitty pictures onto both, for example. But kitty pictures mean surprisingly little when you are listening to your evil cube mate planning her tacky wedding while chewing gum and scratching the skin on her arm.

In the end, my beige cubicle walls do little more than mock me and my lack of real walls, all day long. At least in open workspaces, you don’t feel like everyone is pretending like they’re not working a lame box - a box that doesn’t even come near to the ceiling.

My new home office is, on the other hand, going to be totally sweet. Not only does it have real walls (and even doors!) but it also has a couch and TV and stereo. And I can write off the square footage of my new office on my taxes.

I’ve tried to stay away from office gossip since I started working from home. I’ve tried to keep my opinion to myself. I don’t want to be paranoid - one of those coworkers who is full of conspiracy theories when really they’re just trying to justify why they can’t seem to climb the ladder.

But here’s the thing: I’m starting to question Ripley’s recent promotion to CEO.

As you might have noticed, a few things on my blog aren’t quite running smoothly yet. Here are the things that aren’t up and working yet:

Comments. I mean, you can post a comment, but it will just do some weird stuff and, I think, possibly post your comment on every single thing I’ve written in the last five months. At first, I was like, “Why can’t Robin fix this in like five minutes?” And then I remembered that on a good day I can barely attach documents to my emails. I’ll let you know when commenting is up again. Because I know you want to comment on this picture.

Feedburner. My little orange feed icon to the left still burns a feed to my old blog instead of this one. The little orange feed icon next to my web address up above does work, if you want to use that one. I’m supposed to fix this problem, which means you shouldn’t hold your breath.

Technorati. That button also sends you to my old page. Again, I’ll fix this after my successful brain transplant. Or maybe I’ll mess with it this weekend. Whichever comes first.

If you find problems other than these, do drop me an email (that’s how I found out about all these other things).

As for the rest of my life, things are glitch-free. I’m two days in to my paid-vacation/jumpstart-in-self-employment week. I’ve already completed a big project and am working on another one, although it’s tough to not know where your next job is coming from pretty much every day.

So far, everything is going well, though. It’s nice to work really hard at one job instead of two and it’s even nicer to be on a business call while in your jammies. Sure, it’s tough not to cut through the business-talk to yell, “I’m in my jammies!” or “Dr. Phil is on mute!” but it’s worth it. Even though I’ve already had to hit two close deadlines, the stress is such a different kind of stress from the stress of, say, having to get a monthly report spreadsheet done by a certain date.

My boss, Ripley, however, has been acting very inappropriately. Even in the first two days of our professional relationship, she has:

• Drank out of the toilet.
• Sat on my lap during a meeting.
• Demanded that I stroke her body from head to foot.
• Demanded Fancy Feast.
• Attacked my feet.
• Blatantly, blatantly refused to wear a tie to work.

It’s as if she’s flaunting her power and treating me like a worthless pawn.

After getting a few hours of writing done after work, Ben and I walked up the street and returned to our apartment with a few deli wraps and a bottle of wine.

We then spent the night watching mixed martial arts fights on TV, toasting to various things, and envisioning how the next few months of our lives are going to unfold. Now that we will both work from the home, how are things going to change?It was quickly decided (after two glasses of wine) that as far as our growing home office was concerned, Ripley would be named Chief Executive Officer. It was also quickly decided that Rips would look really, really cute in a tie.

I thought it would be a good idea to install a water cooler in the living room so that we could take breaks and talk about the latest episode of Dancing with the Stars. We both agreed that any emails we sent to each other would now be referred to as “office-wide memos.”  

Ben also suggested that we instate a company policy prohibiting interoffice relationships in order to promote professionalism, but Ripley and I quickly struck it down. After three glasses of wine, we decided that instead of “dress-down Fridays” we’d have “drunk Fridays” - you know, just to keep everyone comfortable and to keep company morale up.

The list of things that our office wouldn’t have was highly encouraging, though. No more commutes, no more bagged lunches. No more dress code, no more dour 15-minute birthday celebrations. More importantly, no more spreadsheets (or, at least, very few), no more working on projects I don’t choose, no more phone addict cube mate.

I know that the challenges ahead of me are hard, but at least they’ll be my challenges. And even though my new boss demands to be fed twice a day and makes me clean up her poop, at least she doesn’t have the ability to talk. Or use emoticons.