Simulated office experience when working from home...

Get up every day at 6am, iron a shirt, put on your suit. Walk half a mile to the bus stop, stand in cold for 20 minutes. Get a bus to somewhere miles away. Get off, stand in cold for 20 minutes again and get bus back. Walk half mile back to house. It should now be about 9am.

Decorate your 'office' with a stained carpet (preferably one made of carpet tiles,) a strip light that flickers and a vending machine which serves not-even-close-to-being-coffee.

Place a proxy between yourself and the web, pointlessly block any sites that may have useful information relevant to your job. Only allow yourself to unblock them after a week-long argument with yourself via email.

If you smoke, don't do it in the building. Stand outside (in the cold) and move at least 100 yards up the street, to avoid tarnishing your company's corporate image.

Have daily meetings, where the main topic should always be how to cut down on meetings so that actual work can be done.

At lunchtime, take another cold 20 minute walk to the local newsagent, who will be happy to supply you with a disturbingly cold sandwich from their fridge. The only one left will be egg.

Walk back to work, eating your sandwich and smoking at the same time, for efficiency and to hide the taste of the sandwich.

Every 10 minutes, pick up the phone and say 'Oh, you should have gone through to reception. Let me put you through... Oh, they're not answering. Can I take a message?' After this, scrawl something on a post-it note and wander around the 'office' for 10 minutes to simulate finding the message recipient's desk.

At the end of the day, leave the office and perform the bus trips again.

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