And the Survey Says . . . 23% of Work at Home People Have Taken a Business Call While Using the Bathroom

Are you an at home worker? If so, chances are that you have, ahem, used the restroom while conducting a business call.

Impossible you say?

Now that you've regained your composure I'll tell you about a recent survey conducted by LSP Consulting and Plantronics. In July 2007 LSP found that nearly 91% of at home workers had at one point or another conducted some type of non-business related activity while also 'on the job.' Some of these non-business related tasks include doing laundry (40% of survey respondents), preparing meals (32%), and, perhaps the most shocking of the surveys findings, using the restroom (23%) while also taking a business call.

Now, technically speaking, I'm not sure how this works. For one thing, I'd have to move my computer into my bathroom. For another, I just don't think I'm this coordinated: to hold a phone, hold a conversation, use the bathroom and type up notes all at the same time. 

No, I take that back. I could probably do it. As a mother, I'm also a multi-tasker (though as you know from Monday's post, my new goal is to stop multitasking!) So I could probably use the bathroom and take a business call at the same time, but I certainly wouldn't want to.

Yet how easy is it, those of you who work at home, to take care of work related tasks when you are supposed to be spending time with the family, or to take care of family things when you are supposed to be working.

My typing this blog is a perfect example. This is Saturday. I don' t technically work on Saturdays, as we have designated this day of the week as family day. Generally the only thing I do that does not involve my children or husband is go for my early morning run, but I do this before they have even woken up so that doesn't count.

So here I am, working when I should be spending time with my family (but I will say my daughters are in bed and my husband is taking a ten minute football break before we begin our home improvement marathon of shows that we watch each Saturday night).

I've talked to a client while stirring dinner on the stove.

I've worked on an article while also trying to keep my daughter entertained.

I try not to do these things often. Instead, I schedule carefully when it comes to work, so that I take calls when the girls are napping and I write when they are asleep for the night.

Yet sometimes it does happen.

I'd love to hear how the rest of you that work at home split up the time between work and home so that you don't have to talk to a client while, well, making a bathroom break.

Happy Friday!