Home Rules : An Executive Suite Is Tempting, but the Workplace Is Where the Heart Is

I LOVE WORKING at home,” says my friend Sabina. Maybe I’m missing something, I think nervously. I’ve been working at home for 14 years, and the best thing I can say is that it has its moments.

Not these moments. “I sit in my office stark-naked and call high-powered executives who are making $3 million a year,” says Sabina, who publishes newsletters in her den. “And I have an overwhelming sense of power because they don’t know what I’m wearing.”

For her sake, I hope that video phones don’t become popular--though it wouldn’t faze me a bit. I can’t write a word unless I’m perfectly turned out, made-up and accessorized. Of course, one of the disadvantages of working at home is that there’s nobody around to appreciate my efforts.

On the other hand, there’s nobody to criticize them, either. “You don’t spend hours in boring meetings or dealing with office politics,” Sabina reminds me. “When you work at home, you can be much more productive.”

But while fax machines, computers, modems and copiers have made the home office more feasible, they’ve also made it as isolated as Walden Pond. “Sometimes, I’m afraid that I’ll lose my ability to speak and become a hermit,” says Matt Weurker, a cartoonist who does most of his communicating from his basement office by fax.

“It’s kind of nice to take the pencil sketch down to the paper and chat with the writers and editors,” he admits. “But the fax has eliminated that,” he complains. “Now my only audience is my dog.”

You can’t beat a dog for company. Sabina has a German shepherd. “Shane’s an ideal co-worker,” she says. “He doesn’t spread nasty rumors, he doesn’t back-stab. He always barks at the Fed Ex guy. He never falls down on the job.”

Even so, there are some things a dog can’t do. For years, I’ve wished that my pugs, Bess and Stella, could speak. They don’t have to screen my phone calls; I just want them to say “Good job, Margo” whenever I meet a deadline or get a plum assignment. But even if they could speak, they wouldn’t be able to allay the outside world’s underlying suspicions that I’m not really working. People who work outside the home always imagine that I’m lying on the sofa watching “Oprah.” They believe that since I don’t have a “real” office, my job doesn’t count.

“What a day,” my husband, Duke, moans as he trudges through the front door and collapses on the sofa. I brace for disaster. “The receptionist had a fight with her boyfriend, the messenger had a fender bender, and the copier broke,” he says gravely.

In contrast, my day seems dull and insignificant. Yet, in fact, I wrote this column, researched another and did my billing. I also took my assistants, Bess and Stella, to the vet, picked up the cleaning and did the laundry. (When you work at home, you wind up doing all the household chores.)

Is anyone impressed? “I’m exhausted,” says Duke. He may be exhausted from putting out other people’s fires, but at least when he comes home his business day is done. When you work at home, the business day is never done. You work in the morning, you work late at night, you work on weekends, even on holidays. Every time you walk past the spare bedroom, the cursor on your computer blinks reproachfully.

Recently, I decided that it was time to seek regular employment. I imagined myself in expensive clothes, sitting in a corner office with a panoramic view of the city and an arrogant male secretary who tells everyone that I’m in a meeting. I didn’t know what I could do to earn such a spot in corporate heaven, but I was willing to do anything to get out of the house.

So I drove downtown in bumper-to-bumper traffic to have lunch with my friend Monica. She works on the 16th floor of one of those ultramodern, ultra-impersonal skyscrapers that sway during earthquakes. The air in the lobby was thick with paranoia. “No tie?” asked one executive in the elevator of a daring co-worker. “Living on the edge?”

I resisted a powerful urge to flee and walked into Monica’s office. I felt like I was at the zoo. My friend was sitting in a claustrophobic glass cubicle, with no door and a disquieting view of her similarly encaged colleagues. “How can you work here?” I stammered.

“There’s not much privacy,” Monica admitted as she hunched under her desk to adjust her panty hose. “But management wants to make sure that we’re productive. This way, any superior can see exactly what we’re doing.” I clicked the heels of my suede pumps three times. “There’s no place like home,” I said. “There’s no place like home.”