The pool of people who are at home today—because they're unemployed, retired, have telecommuting jobs, or are stay-at-home caregivers—keeps getting larger. About 35 million people work predominantly from home, compared with about 20 million in 2000, according to The Telework Coalition, a nonprofit advocacy group. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate hovers above 9%, and more than seven million Americans have been out of work at least six months.
To those who leave their neighborhoods to work, stay-at-homers look like easy marks for all kinds of requests: car pooling, errand-running, church-volunteering, school-committee-leading, and being the go-to neighbor for every UPS delivery. This being August, it's high season for high-powered office workers to go on vacation, leaving the at-homers to take in mail, walk dogs and water plants.
But many of those at home are now saying they've had enough, and the Internet is allowing them to mount "just say no" campaigns or to visit online chat rooms to pour out their resentments. They've been venting or sharing advice on parenting sites such as momlogic.com and babycenter.com and on sites that help those who work at home, such as StuffUnemployedPeopleLike.com. A few people are even embracing these helping tasks—and charging for them.
A lot of at-homers who commiserate online are torn between their willingness to help and their resentment. They get calls from their local school to pick up sick kids because other parents have listed them as emergency contacts without asking. They comply with breathlessly urgent requests from working friends—only to be hit with more so-called crisis requests.
Source: The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2010
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