IS THE LUXURY OF HOME WORKING A MYTH?
Read the text. For questions 1–4, choose the appropriate paragraph and write the corresponding letter (A–E) in the table. One paragraph does not match any of the questions.
IS THE LUXURY OF HOME WORKING A MYTH?
A. Dreaming of escaping the shackles of your office and working from home? Beware. Many people who turn this fantasy into reality find themselves having to endure cramped conditions. Running away from the office and hiding behind a home computer is all the rage as more and more companies adopt flexible working practices. Around eight million people in the UK have already decided to avoid the dubious delights of delayed trains, contraflows and office politics by setting up an office in the privacy of their own homes.
B. Keen home workers wax lyrical about the benefits of taking a break whenever they feel like it. However, unless you are wealthy enough to build an office extension, working from home can be a fast track to job dissatisfaction. According to a survey by Lexmark, fewer than 50% of employees are pleased with their home office space, with a quarter of them forced to work in the kitchen, 37% in the spare room and 10% ‘hotdesking’ it wherever they can find a place. The distant memory of your former air-conditioned workplace or chatting with workmates around the water cooler may seem all the sweeter when you’re sitting alone in the cellar or in a tiny room at the back of the house.
C. Over three quarters of home workers have found themselves in cluttered surroundings, and over 50% of those surveyed acknowledged they suffered from lack of space and consequently were unable to work effectively. Over a third were confined to a room with no natural light. Despite this sobering reality, most people still believe that the upsides of home working outweigh the downsides. Freedom and flexibility to choose your working hours, with no one watching over you, are enough to persuade people to put up with the more inconvenient aspects.
D. Still, working from home is a bit of an oxymoron. Homes are destined for families and relaxation. Establishing an office there can spoil the ambience. Filing cabinets and printers look incongruous next to a sofa. The high-tech age that has freed up employees has resulted in their floors being scattered with cables linking to PCs, scanners, fax machines, copiers, and a huge mountain of chargers. “I set up a mini office in the corner of my lounge. The key to working from home is to make sure your makeshift office doesn’t take away from the rest of the house,” says a London-based translator.
E. The ideal solution is to soup up your garden shed if you have one. There are companies sprouting up that can even design one for you. The managing director of one of them remarks that their sales have doubled as plenty of firms are basing their workforces at home to save money on renting office space. “Our customer base is changing towards the people kicked out from their corporate base.” After all, regardless of the potential downsides, tripping up on a daisy on the way to your desk could be the closest you ever come to experiencing a stressful journey to work.
adapted from http://discovermagazine.com
