The Definitive Guide to Working from Your Bed

The Citizens Against Full-Time, Normal-Ass, Employment-How-It-Used-To-Be Association’s top five reasons why nothing beats the life of a home-lancer

Greetings! Your friends at the Citizens Against Full-Time, Normal-Ass, Employment-How-It-Used-To-Be Association (CAFTNAEHIUTBA for short) understand that you might at times look back fondly on your days as a full-time employee for some big corporate master machine. But also remember how the bottom of the full-time-job-plus-pension paradigm fell out from under you, and now, here you are. At home. With bills to pay and no nanny in site. CAFTNAEHIUTBA exists to remind you to embrace your enviable home-lancing lifestyle. Honestly, what choice do you have anyway? So, pull on some pajamas, or not, fall back into bed, and get to work!

5) Wearing pants against your religion today? Even yoga pants? No problem. Welcome to your new office, aka your bed, aka the luncheonette, aka where you talk to your therapist, who is, aka, your cat.

4) Can’t focus? Nooo problem. Your inbox has graciously just delivered 1,503 Vox articles to skim through. Brew a fresh pot of coffee, sneak a few mid-morning cookies, and get cracking. You’re already behind.

3) Ah s%$t. Client has requested a video conference. That could be a problem. But you’re a pro, you work-from-home-heavy-lifter, you. Simple drill: explain you are experiencing technical difficulties. Better yet, convince your client that he is experiencing technical difficulties. Then, you know what comes next: a square of masking tape over your camera’s lens — well, at least Mark Zuckerberg would approve. Pants-less you may proceed without ever lifting a hairbrush or worrying if a shirt accentuates your midlife muffin roll. (It does, btw)

2) Kids yelling from the bottom of the stairs while you’re engaged in a critical texting bitch-a-thon with a colleague from Des Moines? Too easy! Dig into your emergency bedside barrel of Yellow #5-assorted snacks and toss down a few Twinkies and/or Ritz Bits, and silence should be restored. The bourbon’s for you to toss down. You know what they say — it’s 12:00 noon somewhere.

1) Time to start dinner. Browse, click, click! Horacio is eagerly (Uber Eats’ word, not ours) preparing your beef & broccoli from Ms. Li’s Five Wonders takeout, and Sharif will shuttle it over shortly. Dinner is served. Is there anything you can’t do from your upstairs, domestic office oasis?

What a long and productive day! Time for bed. What’s that? You enjoy slipping into a Ben & Jerry’s/Housewives-induced coma and actually passing out on the COUCH? Yeah, us too.