The View From My Office

The Challenges of Working from Home

Working from home presents a completely new set of challenges. Sure, you no longer have to worry about combing your hair and no one really cares if your shoes are out of style but that is part of the problem. You tend to lose touch with the real world. Working from home can be exceptionally isolating. How you cope plays a lot in how successful you become.

My 'work from home infomercial phone order taker' job afforded me the flexibility I was looking for. If I needed to show a property, I could take a few hours off to work real estate. If the dogs needed to go to the vet, I could work it into my schedule. This also proved to be a curse. It is easy to get distracted working from home. Dirty laundry and dusty shelves are never 'out of sight, out of mind'. Pressing family matters cannot be left at home once you go to the office. Your office is at home. Baking cinnamon rolls and playing catch with the dog tends to seem a lot more attractive when the alternative is work. OK, baking cinnamon rolls and playing with the dog is always more attractive.

The ability to handle the isolation is a challenge. At first, you might not notice you are eating lunch by yourself every day. You might actually enjoy not having to listen to a cube-mate share the intimate details of potty training their child with you. When the holidays roll around and you are the only person invited to your 'work at home office party' things might not look so great. No more office birthday parties, no more discussing last night's TV show while hanging out in the lunchroom. Want doughnuts? You will have to get them yourself.

Performance feedback might be hard to come by. More than anything your paycheck is the final judge of your performance.

Working from home was not the "perfect solution". Adjustments would need to be made but I felt confident I would make it.

I Hate my Work at Home Job

By the third week of operating as a 'work from home infomercial phone order taker', I had concluded that I hated what I was doing. Hated it. Of course, I hated the thought of not being able to pay my bills more. I was going to suck it up until I could figure out a better way to survive.

Hating what you do and needing to pay the bills are both powerful motivators. Really, I was back to square one but at least I had some money coming in which alleviated some of the stress that had been weighing me down for months.

I continued to work at real estate. Somewhat an exercise in futility. Blogging had become a chore and most of my posts had skewed in an exceptionally negative light. Bringing myself to write a post on how the real estate market was not as bad as the media was reporting was nearly impossible. I was also not capable of blogging on how tough the market had become. The last thing the market needed was another know-it-all real estate agent screaming 'I told you so' from the rooftops. Although I did do a few 'hey, I tried to warn you' posts. There is nothing worse than trying to tell someone facing foreclosure that 'it is not as bad as it seems'. I still love real estate, I still work it, and I wait for the day when the market becomes stable again.

Back to the reality at hand. While I knew I could spend the rest of my life taking infomercial phone calls from the comfort of my home, I also knew I would become unhappy in short order.

There is something important to note. My 'work at home infomercial phone order taker' job was not a bad job. The pay was good especially once you figure in the savings for transportation, clothing, and lunch. I could work whenever I wanted. I had no 'pesky, irritating co-workers' and no office politics. It was easily a near-perfect job. The job itself 'work at home infomercial phone order taker' was not difficult. The most difficult part was sticking to the required script and sounding enthusiastic at all times. The fundamental problem with the job was it was boring. I was bored. There is very little independent thinking required when you are handed the exact step to follow and cautioned that should you deviate you will be terminated.

I was going to continue to take those calls but I was going to have to find some way to support myself that was challenging and rewarding and paid well.

Fear of Phone Rejection

Fear is an amazing and powerful thing. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking like a complete moron in front of a large group of people. No matter how you feel about fear, it is hard to deny it exists. Most people I know fear public speaking. They would rather have a Novocain-free root canal than stand up in front of a room full of people. Not me. I have spoken to crowds of over 1,000 and while I might have had some butterflies in my stomach, I was not gripped by fear. I have also had a root canal and I will take public speaking any day of the week. I’m weird like that.

When the time arrived for me to take that first call, I was gripped with fear. Gut-wrenching, butt-clenching fear. Which really made very little rational sense. I have talked to hundreds of strangers on the phone in the past. I am an accomplished speaker. Why was I terrified to take the first call?

Well I guess I could have spent a few more days psychoanalyzing my dilemma or I could get a grip and do it. My husband was out of town. My dogs were secured. My house was quiet. It was time to take the plunge.

I did it and I bombed. Splat. The customer asked me a question and I stuttered and stammered and froze up. When I finally got off the phone it quickly rang again. This time I still stammered but just a bit less. This went on for the next 4 hours. By the end of that first day, I was OK. Not great but I had survived.

Looking back on that first day now, I have to laugh. What it all boiled down to was I was speaking with a person who wanted to order something from me, they had no idea who I was, and I would most likely never hear from them again. For this, I was nauseous.

Fear can be crippling and life changing. Life though does not stop and wait for us to get over our fears, it keeps moving and the longer we wait the more we have to catch up.

This Was Not Part of the Plan

The voice test was simple. Call a phone number, enter a code, read a script, hang up. Completing the paperwork was also no problem. A small fee needed to accompany the paperwork to pay for a background check. Even though I had decided not to pay money for a work at home job, paying the fee for a background check made sense to me.

Now all that was left to do was wait. It would take a few days for the paperwork to arrive and be processed. If I passed the background check, I would receive an email detailing my next steps. While waiting I thoroughly researched the company and was comforted not only by the stellar reputation of the CEO but also by recent television news reports detailing the company and the opportunity.

All of this did little to make me feel better about my current situation. I was a successful real estate agent, I ran one of the top real estate websites in the country, and now I am going to start telemarketing? It was a bitter pill to swallow. This was not part of my life plan. How was I going to cope with my failure? How was I going to tell my husband and my friends? Was I about to make yet another life-changing mistake?

None of the answers came easily. What I did know was sometimes you just have to suck it up and move even if it does not feel like you are moving forward. Staying still and burying my head in the sand was not solving any problems.

Within a few days, the email arrived. I had made it through the background check and it was time to start my new career.