Work From Home Couple

When you and your spouse both work from home, there’s no such thing as a true holiday. It’s one of the drawbacks of working from your house.

We will be celebrating Thanksgiving today, of course. The plan is to drive down to my parents. We’ll be returning with an extra kid, though only temporarily. My niece will be spending a few days with us over the holiday weekend. We’ll be making homemade lollipops, watching our town’s holiday parade, playing games and basically just hanging out.

But in between all this, we will be working. My deadlines don’t change just because Thanksgiving gets in the way. A Nov. 28 deadline is still a Nov. 28 deadline, turkey feast or not. And the play that my wife is costuming opens the day after Thanksgiving. She still has last-minute alterations to do. Not to mention that she has to find three carolers hats that look like they actually came from the days when Ebenezeer Scrooge was running around shouting “Humbug!”

So we’ll enjoy our holiday. But it won’t be a true vacation from work. The funny thing is, employers worry so much about their employees who work from home. Will they goof off more than those in the office? But the opposite is true. When you work from home, it’s so tempting to plop down in front of that computer to spit out one more paragraph or one more report. When you’re an office worker and you’re out of the office, you’re much more likely to take a true break from work.

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