BANISHMENT 14: Wearing Pants to Meetings

I recently started a new thing called working from home. This is the new fad. The capris of professional fashion. It cuts down on costs, improves employee morale, and saves you from ever having to talk to a "co-worker" at a "water-cooler" before going to sit at your "cubicle" ever again. It's a better deal than those knives that cut through steel you see on the Shopping Channel at three in the morning.

But working from home, like Hot Yoga, isn't really for everyone. It should only be reserved for people who are extremely self-disciplined and 100 percent OK with feeling more lonely than the Unabomber. There are a lot of hours where the only person to talk to is yourself. Or perhaps those bizarre carved statues everyone seems to put on their mantle. You immediately become the kind of person who stands by the coffee pot, tapping your fingers on the counter, and saying out loud, "So what are we going to do today?" as though you're going to make a plan of attack with the kitchen utensils.

Once you start working from home you will, most assuredly,  start making obscene amounts of lists on post-it notes and leave them scattered around the house. A breadcrumb trail of your day's work progression. You will invest in office supplies and learn all sorts of things you never cared to know about printer cartridges and FedEx shipping practices. You will become attached to your stapler. You will buy a ludicrously expensive business chair for your desk that has leather and levers and a compression air chamber and you will show it off to your friends (if you have any anymore) as though it were your child's first soccer trophy. The days of the week will start to blend together and the only way to distinguish between the seasons will be when you take the time to peek through the blinds and check out the day's weather.

You will also, and perhaps most importantly, forget where the dry-cleaner is located. All of a sudden, you will have no interest in freshly ironed pants. Or, for that matter, hot morning showers. You will buy pajamas in bulk and get the nice silky kind that feels good on your bum. You will hold meetings with important people while wearing dried toothpaste smears on your t-shirt. You will sign contracts in slippers, read files on a porch swing, and conduct conference calls pantless.

I certainly hope that if you're the kind of person who begins working from home that you've already acquired the important things in life like a wife or a husband. If not, your chances of becoming the Cat Person have severely increased and your only true chance of matrimonial bliss will come if the mailman fancies how you look sans shower. I wish you and your silky PJs good luck.