As a person that used to track finances and company expenses in their previous life, I know that toilet paper is a huge expense. Everybody does it. Everybody needs it.
While people can differ over:
- Letty loves cookies
- Betty loves coffee
- Sammy loves the custom tea
- Billy loves clean water
- Kenny loves cola
- Bart loves apples
But all use toilet paper in the end. Isn't this is an excellent way to illustrate things?
So, instead of buying it and split costs between everyone (hopefully using AVG), your salary can be increased, when you work remotely.
You can tell me:
"Arthur, I don't need a salary increase with toilet paper costs. I'm fine right now - I'm an expert."
Let me continue.
Your employee will also spend money on rent and the Internet.
They will spend money on a guy that might not drive revenue up, but he fixes everything when it's broken.
Receptionist and personnel that clean the office.
Water delivery company in charge of your fancy and important coffee.
Looks better? Is it clear? Tell me.
I'll continue.
Let alone electricity bills. Now you are aware of what amount of cash can get in your pocket.
During my startup hustle, I’ve found out a lot of ways to save money.
Like food. While working in the office, as a single man, you eat healthy food - like hotdogs or pizza.
At home, I can eat freshly made soup that my granny cooks for me with love :)
Or the coffee thing. It's actually not cheap to drink those lattes.
Right now, I have a glass bottle. When I go outside, I fill it with Cola, tea, juice - and I'm ready! It's cheap.
Friday nights without the office are pretty hard to organize. Yeah, while living at the place where I don't have any friends, I haven't consumed a lot of beer. It was a real problem - to get drunk. When you are sober, you're saving money.
Public transportation, taxi, underground. Do you use it willingly? Really? Someone always tries to squeeze small Arthur there. I don't love it :(
Cool. I'm glad you’ve learned it. (Ohh, I forgot to tell you about fights for parking lots).
So, what can you do with that free time and money? You can invest in it. Rest or read a book. Work out. Meditate. Eat better food.
Improve your equipment. Get a better chair/table/keyboard.
And even if you get fired, you’ll keep it.
Instead of being a part of a hyping startup with a fancy office. You know those stories and what I mean. When they try to seduce developers with "never-ending perks". When developers have tables with "Apple-like perfectionism". Like a table with brain surgery quality/costs. Google tables that cost $400 each.
With comfy chairs that will stay there after you.
You will make a profit to a company, then, they will hire a better performer, and "your chair" will become "his chair".
Call it a disposable process.
Another point for remote work. I can maintain my level of personal hygiene as I want. Looks relevant right now? Yeah!
We had a WC room on our office floor, shared with other offices.
And it hurt me to see that old engineer who clearly didn't listen to his granny at all. He didn't wash his hands...
Yes, he touched that door handle...
We even bought good hygiene kits for those rooms. For both ladies and gentlemen. There were 0 changes. We failed. We left. I'm happy :)
Actually, it’s not a new problem. Globally we have crazy stats:
“69 Percent of Men Don’t Wash Their Hands After Using the Bathroom” Source: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4504379/
Girls are less disgusting with washing hands - 35% - but it’s a still huge number.
At the place that we were renting, we had corruption. An internet service provider monopoly. Only one company can put a cable on that building, because of some local laws. So when the Internet was down, or an alarm fired, company was losing money because of full-time employees. They weren't bad people, but they logged their hours at work anyway. Because it's a business problem, not a team issue.
Here is more. Imagine that the whole night you’ve been watching Netflix or partying with boys.
Working remotely, you'll not upset your boss. And you don't need to be up at 9 am ASAP at the same place even if you can't be there because you are still wasted.
Not a big problem for a remote worker; you can just log less time today if you are not feeling well. And work more when you can.
Sounds like heaven? Welcome aboard!
Plus, it's more comfortable for me to control my water intake per day, so I'm wasting less plastic. And it makes me feel better personally. Pure happiness. Have I mentioned that it's also cheaper? Yeah, I think I have.
I can watch JRE podcasts if I want during work - and nobody can go behind my back and ask how I'm working today.
I can reply to emails while I'm still in bed or just want to be a couch potato and don't want to work.
Image Credits
- Sana-Store.com
- WeWork
- Fabiia.com
- Eva Rinaldi