The New Office – It’s Wherever You Happen to Be
Written by Katrina Daniel Sunday, May 02 2010
You Cope. You Conquer. You Create.
I’m looking around my huge local Barnes & Noble café and I can’t find a seat. Every chair and table is taken by people using laptops, with business training manuals open before them, or people in earnest conversations – read: business meetings.
It struck me then, THIS is the new office: the coffee shop, the internet cafe, the minivan in the parking lot, the food court at the mall, the train, bus, or subway, the bleachers at a kid’s soccer game – all are now places where intrepid members of the work force are, well, working.
As a result of downsizing, job furloughs, and the emergence of home-based businesses, the old-fashioned office has become just that, old-fashioned.
But what happens when you have to change your office life from a formal environment with certain required professional attire, rules, regulations, and regimen, to a freer “office,” where you’re on your own – no rules, no regimen. Also, no friends or coworkers. Worse yet – no gossip! It’s just you, the family dog, and your computer.
Turns out, several things happen.
Deanine Halliman, PhD, puts it in a succinctly, “I get lonely. It’s like that movie, Up in the Air – where I travel three to four days a week. I don’t want to work by myself in my lonely hotel room. I want to see and be with other people.”
Halliman is a microbiologist who specializes in medical science to facilitate clinical trials for emerging drugs. She gave up her old office because she travels from Atlanta, her home base, throughout the Southeast and didn’t really need an office. But she has found her new office away from home. “I love Panera Bread. I don’t work at home when I am in Atlanta. I go to Panera Bread every day when I’m in town,” she says. “I use that as my office. I know the staff, they know me. My office friends? Now, the staffs here are my coffee shop friends. And, they have free WiFi. All coffee shops should have that.
“I also have a satellite card, so I can really work anywhere, and as I travel, I go to different coffee shops in different cities,” she says. “It’s easier for me to work in a coffee shop than at home because there are so many distractions at home.”
Marketing maven Jamie Prince once worked in the pressure cooker that is New York City, at the even higher pressured Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, A company founded on creative idea generation, MSLO is home to an environment that is abuzz all day, every day, and on tight, strict, deadlines, driven both by the magazines and TV shows’ production schedules, as well as quarterly earnings reports due to Wall Street analysts, she says. “I found myself working well beyond 40 hours per week, and during certain weeks, around the clock. I had next to no friends outside work because my coworkers were my closest friends and almost felt like family at times.”
Prince left New York and Martha Stewart to return to Anderson, S.C., where she founded her own business, Flourish, a marketing company. She finds that working at home for her consulting/marketing /public relations business is calming.
“My work days are now described as a tranquil pool. The French doors stay open, and I listen to all the sounds of nature in my backyard. I work largely alone, with my two dogs being my only company,” Prince says. “I probably speak to as many people per day as I did in New York, but it’s virtual instead of face to face. Calmer? Yes. Better? Yes, at this point in my life. Ideal? No, not for a people person like me.”
Prince left New York for love. “My husband couldn’t leave his family business here.” The couple now has a 2 ½-year-old daughter, Reese, and Prince says that has forced her to become an even more mobile working mom. “My laptop and BlackBerry go with me everywhere. It’s routine for me to work wherever I am. I have worked on the road, in the parking lot at my daughter’s pre-school, coffee shops, my clients’ offices, at airports, on airplanes, while cooking dinner or breakfast.”
Prince says when she first left her job for her home office, she felt like it was the best vacation she’d ever taken. Now, about a year into her solo venture: “I admit I miss the camaraderie and constant collaboration of the team-based culture found in a corporate office setting. I’m lucky because I’m incredibly busy, and I want that level of activity.” 
To get out of the house and the too-quiet atmosphere, Prince says she “calendars” at least one lunch or coffee a week with someone – a friend, a potential client, business development contact for a new client, or an important person in the community with whom she wants to build a relationship. “I don’t think that there have ever been more than two days in a row that I’ve been holed up in the house. I’m just too active for that.”
Elizabeth Teel isn’t staying holed up in her house either. The former director of an assisted living care facility was downsized from her job about a year ago when a bigger corporation bought the facility she managed in Greenville, S.C.
“I was the executive director of the facility, and I had 10 managers and 60 employees to manage,” Teel says. “We, of course, had all the high-tech office equipment, copiers, FAX machines, everything a mid-sized office has. Now, I’m home alone at a computer with a dog in my lap.”
Teel says that her new job is finding a job and she does it from everywhere by computer and phone. “Every week I try to set up appointments. I send out résumés and letters to potential employers. But the competition is tough. One job I talked to had 800 applicants.”
The single mom of a 15-year-old son, Teel says, “I have been trying to transition to my home office, but it requires a real effort. Working at home, you really have to try to stay focused. I am tempted to read personal emails, do chores, and there are so many distractions.”
Teel says she gets around the feeling of loneliness and isolation by focusing on networking in the community,
Since her job loss, Teel has become involved with several groups and activities that are close to her heart. “I’m very involved with my church. I oversee a 93-group mission effort. I am involved in the Greater Greenville Chamber of Commerce, and I am involved in my political party, serving as fund-raiser for candidates I feel are worthy.”
Probably the most important aspect of transitioning from a busy office to solo is to keep former colleagues and friends in your life active. Say connected, says Cheryl Alterman, psychotherapist and president of IntraView Inc., West Palm Beach, Fla. Further, Alterman suggests appreciating the opportunity to create your own schedule and enjoying life without office rumors and backstabbing.
Freebie Tips for New Office Success
Jamie Prince advises:
“Leverage your expertise by volunteering, joining a nonprofit board, or becoming a member of a professional society. These types of activities get you out and about, and allow you to meet a ton of people and perform rewarding work in the process.
“Join online chat groups. For example, I participate weekly in a Twitter chat for marketing and public relations practitioners.
“Make networking a priority. A coffee here and a lunch there add up over time, to expanding your sphere of influence and the number of relationships at work in your life and career.”
Deanine Halliman advises:
“If you’re in a coffee shop and have to be on a teleconference call or other business call, take it outside. Don’t be rude to all the others sitting in the coffee shop. You don’t want everyone hearing your business anyway.
“Be respectful of the coffee shop staff. Buy something. Leave a tip. That way you’re always welcome there.
“Don’t go to coffee shops where they play loud music. When your boss calls, he’ll wonder where you are and if you’re having too good time or really working.”
Advice from me:
Tech Up! Get your greater tech geek on. Learn all those things you’ve been trying to avoid so long.
For the record, I am sitting home working alone with four dogs, a cat, and a beautiful blooming yard in Tryon, N.C. And I write in between picking up dog poop in the yard, doing laundry, listening to Jimmy Buffet on iTunes and singing “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes.”
Katrina Daniel is an award-winning journalist and broadcast reporter/anchor. She has worked in Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and as a national correspondent for several networks. She commutes between Miami and the Carolinas, writing for magazines and news organizations. She lives with one horse, four dogs, and a cat.
