Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo, has decided that her employees will no longer be allowed to work at home. At first, this seems paradoxical. Yahoo is a company that epitomizes computers, the internet, and twenty-first century technology. Consequently, it seemed fitting that Yahoo would allow its employees to telecommute. After all, there was nothing they could do at the office that they could not do at home. According to an article in The Washington Post, there have been studies that show that employees who work at home are more productive than their office-working counterparts. In fact, the article goes on to list the many advantages of letting employees telecommute, and the many disadvantages that may accrue to Yahoo’s decision to terminate this practice. As a result, the article referred to this decision as “perplexing.”
What the article failed to take into consideration, however, is the boss’s peace of mind. He knows that he must be ever vigilant, lest his employees drift away from their assigned tasks, finding more amusing ways to occupy their time until they can punch out and go home. When employees are completely out of his sight, as they are when they work at home, his apprehension in this regard can become acute. A cottage industry works fine when workers are paid by the piece. The widget-maker can work hard or at a leisurely pace, can work long hours or only part of the day. But as long as the boss only has to pay for the number of widgets, he need not concern himself with the nature of the labor that produced them. When I say that this system works “fine,” I mean from the standpoint of the boss, not from that of the laborer, who often finds that the piece-rate is so low that he must work long, hard hours to make a living. But what is important is that from the boss’s point of view, the widgets can be counted and paid accordingly without worrying about anything but the quality of the work, and that will be readily apparent.
Most jobs, however, do not lend themselves to the putting-out system. Employers are always trying to figure out ways to count or measure what their employees are doing, but more often than not, there are those intangibles, imponderables, and invisibles that the boss knows are there and must somehow be taken into account. It is this uncertainty that is the cause for much stress. If the employees are at the office, as is usually the case, the watchful eye of the boss can make sure that all opportunities for slacking are foreclosed. Unsupervised, workers may be found congregating at the water fountain, engaged in all sorts of unproductive activity: gossiping, telling jokes, playing grab-ass. With the sudden arrival of the boss, with his stern and disapproving countenance, all such pleasant diversions come to an immediate end. The employees are forced to return to their desks, where they will likely go back to work, if only to avoid being bored. If the tendency to shirk is ever present in the workplace, how much more will this be so when the employees are at home, where not even the possibility of being surprised by the boss can deter such goings-on?
Domestic work, by its very nature being done in the home, presents a similar problem. Women often bristle when asked whether they work or are housewives. For housewives, it is considered preferable nowadays to say that they work in the home. And indeed they do. As a bachelor, I am well aware of the fact that housework is work, which is why I do as little of it as possible. But since I avoid it as much as I can, it is hard for me to say just how much effort would be needed to keep the place clean on a regular basis. More importantly, it is hard for husbands to know this too. They are envious of their wives, who get to stay at home, and often suspect that much time is devoted to watching soap operas and chatting with the neighbors. But since housework is not piecework, it cannot be counted or measured, and therein lies the irritating uncertainty. I once had an affair with a woman who was a housewife. One day, late in the afternoon, she said she needed to get back home before her husband did. Since it was only ten minutes past four, I asked her what the rush was. “I know Sam won’t get home until about 5:30,” she acknowledged, “but I at least need to do the dishes. I’ll probably stick the vacuum cleaner in the middle of the living room floor, and pour some Pine-O-Pine in the toilet as well.” You see, the thought that she might be taking it easy while he was working all day bothered him, and she was as anxious not to let him know about all the free time she had as she was about her affair with me. A wife’s consideration for her husband’s feelings in such matters is often the difference between a happy marriage and an unhappy one.
The fact that employees still manage to get a decent amount of work done, notwithstanding these occasional lapses into mirth and sloth during the day, is not the point. The boss finds such things disturbing regardless. In other words, much of the anxiety on the part of the boss is irrational. I once knew a jeweler who had a diamond cutter in his employ. The man was quite good at what he did, and could command a wage of $30 per hour. There was one problem. He would arrive at work at 8:00 A.M., as he was required to do. But at 8:15, he would pick up his newspaper and head to the restroom, where he would presumably have a bowel movement and catch up on current events at the same time. At 8:30, he would return to his desk, sit down and go to work. I happened to be in the store one morning, and I was amused to see the routine unfold exactly in the manner it had been described to me. But one day, I noticed the man was gone. I asked the jeweler what happened to him. He shook his head in disgust. “I finally had to let him go,” he said. “He was good at what he did, and he made me money. But Goddammit, you multiply 15 minutes a day, five days a week, at $30 an hour, and you see how much money I was paying him to take a dump.”
In fact, one of the hallmarks of a good employee is a respect for the boss’s feelings in this matter. In a retail establishment, for example, there will be times when there are no customers in the store, and thus there is absolutely nothing for the sales clerk to do. Leaning on the counter and staring off into space is perfectly reasonable at such times, viewed sub specie aeternitatus, but viewed sub specie the boss, and that is another thing altogether. For those occasions when the store manager is watching, one must master the art of looking busy—wiping off the counter, rummaging through the customer files, inspecting inventory—not because it is productive, but because it affords the store manager the serene vision of an industrious workplace.
This then is the principal reason behind Ms. Mayer’s decision to make all her employees come to the office every day. It is not about production, or employee retention, or attracting the best talent. It is about getting a good night’s sleep, facilitated by the sight of many souls at their station, heads down and hard at work.