I’ve read lots of stories about folks working at home. Most of them bend over backwards to promote an office atmosphere.

I try to maintain a “Who cares?” attitude about noises and other diversions around the office. If the dog wants to bark, that’s her business. She isn’t getting paid.

The old custom of making your office sound like a business has gone by the wayside. Nobody cares about that, anymore.
A newspaper story quotes a man who used to lock his kids out of the office and caution his wife against practicing her bassoon during business hours. Now, he leaves the office door open and his wife does whatever she pleases. This fellow has decided business callers don’t worry about background noise, as long as it doesn’t interrupt their calls.

That may be fine for him, but it wouldn’t work for me. My callers would be shocked if I told them, “I’ll have to call you back after my wife gets off her bassoon.”

Anyone lucky enough to have an office in the house should be thankful for it, regardless of the noise. I used to work out of my barn and that wasn’t any picnic, either. My office was upstairs, above the sheep and the chickens.

I don’t know what callers thought, but the critters could get pretty rowdy sometimes. Spring was the worst time to call me in those days. That’s when we weaned the lambs and the noise was overwhelming for a couple of days.

My kids had their 4-H lambs below the office most of the summer, and these animals had a habit of injecting noise into a conversation at the worst of times – a client would suggest an amount they would be willing to pay for my column, and the sheep would say, “Baa!”

We kept some chickens on the lower level, too. Many times I would pause during a telephone conversation to explain what was going on down there. The hens would get to cackling, and I would say, “Sounds like the girls are having a time downstairs. Must be another birthday.”

The big critters weren’t the worst of it, either. My barn office was a haven for tree frogs and several kinds of insects.

The worst thing about a barn office or a home office is the tendency to use it for things other than business – things like cutting up venison or weighing fish on the postal scales. The UPS people must have been surprised to walk into my office each fall and find me cutting away on the front half of a deer.

They took it all in stride, though. UPS gives them special training on keeping a straight face.

I moved my office into the house years ago. Now I work in the basement, next to the bathroom. The only background noise I worry about is my wife taking a shower:

“And please don’t flush the toilet!”

Readers with questions or comments for Roger Pond may write to him in care of this publication.