Would you make the coffee shop your office?

Do you ever have days where you just want rid of office life? Fed up of being chained to the same desk, with the same people, in the same surroundings? Does the monotony suppress you, and leave you devoid of ideas and spark? And before you even get there, there’s the commute. Enduring packed out trains or battling rush hour traffic, battered by the wind and rain, and then the same thing again when you head home.

Imagine working from home. You’d have none of that stress, and it would give you an hour or two back every day. You’d get to leave behind a world of office politics. Never again would you have to endure your colleagues’ smelly food and annoying habits. There’d be no distractions, and with no distractions you’d get more work done… right?

Until recently, Yahoo! gave its staff the opportunity to work out of the office, but no longer. One of the first things their new chief executive Marissa Mayer put into place, was to ban the practice. A memo to staff said that being one team starts with “being physically together”, emphasising that communication and collaboration are all important. The memo also pointed out that some of the “best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.” This decision put a lot of employee’s noses out of joint, especially those who had been wooed by Yahoo!’s hitherto legendarily flexible working conditions – many of whom must have had to reconsider their positions fairly quickly.

Most of us will have little sympathy with their predicament, having always been required to turn up at the office – regardless of the circumstances. However, many people are so determined to embrace the concept of working outside of the office that they’ve gone to new lengths to make it happen.

Chris Ward is a former PR company owner, setting up his business in 1992, and selling it ten years later. After the deal was done, he dispensed with the office culture altogether. He realised he was getting more done in coffee shops than he would have done in the office, and decided this was the way of life for him.

In an interview, he describes the internet as having “freed” people from the office, no longer having to be “tied to our desks… We can work when and where we like.” By this, he doesn’t mean at home, instead favouring the hubbub of a coffee shop, and where his potential customers are also hanging out. He’s not confined by a nine to five, working instead when he’s “in the flow”, and he reckons what matters is productivity rather than presence.

Doesn’t that just sound like the perfect ethos, an ideal way of working?

Well, don’t badger your boss for permission to work out of the office just yet. Before you go chasing the dream of this new working utopia, consider the cons, which go some way to outweighing the pros, if you ask me.

Out of sight means out of mind, and you can expect to be regularly overlooked by your manager and your team if you’re never in the building. You might miss out on something spontaneous, fun, or plain important. You may be forgotten when it comes to promotions, and you’d better make sure you’re getting the job done, otherwise there’s a ready-made stick for your employer to beat you with.

Of course, this way of working is probably not open to you if you’re in teaching, healthcare, retail or another vocational profession. But if the opportunity is there, and you’re seriously considering working out of the office, be honest with yourself. Will you be easily distracted? Will you allow yourself to watch the cricket for “just one hour”, then just one more? Will you be seduced into taking a long lunch in the sunshine? Will you truthfully get as much work done? And then, think about what you’ll miss; the camaraderie, gossip and daily human interaction. And if you’re doing your out-of-office work at your place rather than in coffee shops, will you go stir-crazy being cooped up, home alone?

One thing’s for sure, if you decide to go down the coffee shop route, with all the hours you’ll be spending there, you’d best choose decaf.