Tuesday, Mar 19, 2013
A report in a geeky column caught my eye the other day, as it was about virtual jobs which you can do anywhere, even from the comfort of your home.
“Hello Hawaii!” said the director of a firm that offers jobs to professionals with telecommuting flexibility, in the introduction to the report.
A picture showed a man relaxing on a beach lounge chair, wearing glares and with a laptop on his lap. The picture was obviously to make us 9-to-5 people jealous and fuming with rage at life’s injustice.
However, I smirked because there were two things that were wrong with the seemingly relaxing set-up. The first thing was that the man was wearing beach shorts and I know for a fact that even after a few minutes of surfing the Net and typing, a laptop gets warm and squirmingly uncomfortable on your lap. The second thing wrong with the picture was the premise that work gets enjoyable when you work on your holiday.
Just to make things clear, you take a break to get away from work and recharge your batteries and come back to your office looking ridiculously relaxed and mellow and then have colleagues sarcastically commenting that you should wait for just a while to get back to your normal, stressed-out self.
The director of the firm had picked out five jobs that offer flexibility and which do not tie you to your desk. She said opportunities are rapidly increasing for those who have the desire to get out of an office setting and still work in their professional field and earn a regular income.
The example of a couple of jobs she included on her list were — the health care field (nurses who assess medical needs over the phone, to clinical researchers); customer service (that requires only a high-speed internet connection, a phone and a pleasing personality).
There were other jobs such as virtual receptionists, executive assistants and sales managers. “In a recovering economy, talented individuals who bring in business that has an impact on the bottom line have the freedom to roam while doing so,” said the director of the company offering jobs with alternative schedules. Journalism and reporting were not on the list of jobs which offered freedom, but ranged from online teaching and language tutors to computer and web development.
Telecommuting jobs are obviously increasing despite the diktat of Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer who has banned staff from working from home.
I agree with the Yahoo! chief despite critics who say that virtual jobs save costs and offer a better morale to the employees, thereby reducing the rate of turnover of workers. I see virtual jobs as a drag — you are not really free and you are tied down to the workplace 24/7 by invisible wires.
Years ago, before my paper gave us Netbooks and 3G USB sticks that offered connectivity on the go, I was the bureau chief of an English-language newspaper in Saudi Arabia.
My one-man bureau was a table in the corner of the living room in our tiny flat, which my wife was always cleaning and re-arranging and making me lose my precious notes from the interviews that I had jotted down on scraps of paper.
Usually, when we had guests for the weekend, I would get a call from the head office to write a 300-word piece immediately. “Excuse me”, I would say to our not-too-happy guests, roll my chair to the next table and start clicking on a very annoying computer keyboard.
Every morning I was the master of my home and my office and there would be nobody to disturb me except the silly housekeeper who would come just when my working hours would begin and start noisily vacuuming. After a couple of months of this, I was ready to forego my freedom and make the daily mind-numbing commute to any office downtown.
By Mahmood Saberi Senior Reporter
Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.
