Excuses to Work From Home

The strongest argument for working from home is almost always arithmetic. Ninety minutes each way, a hot desk on a floor that has been double-booked with the offsite group, and a calendar in which every single meeting is a video call with people in three other countries. The office is not adding anything today. It is a commute with a chair at the end of it. The version that works is the one that names what the office was for. 'Working from home, my only in-person thing cancelled' is a complete argument. 'WFH today' with no further text is a status, and statuses invite follow-up questions. If you're at home for a delivery or an engineer, say so plainly; the four-hour window is a universally understood unit of suffering and nobody will interrogate it. The honest one, which you can use roughly twice a year, is that you'll be more available online than you are in the office, because in the office you are interrupted by anyone who walks past. Below are ten excuses to work from home that hold up on a Tuesday, plus twenty in the generator.