Ah, to work at home, free of pressure . . . but the thought of what he’s missing drives him to the office

Apublic relations man I know has sent me a notice that Record a Call, which he evidently represents, is sponsoring a Home-Based Entrepreneur of the Year Award of $1,000, with telephone answering machines going to two runners-up.

My friend also notes that a recent poll conducted by Yankelovich Skelly & White, which may also be a client of his, shows that “earning a living at home is the secret dream of fully a third of American workers.”

He says, “It is estimated that some 10 million people in the United States now have a full- or part-time business at home, and that this number could double within the next decade. It is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the American economy.”

As a person who has the privilege of working at home, I certainly know its comforts and advantages. You can spend the entire day, if you feel like it, in your pajamas, robe and slippers. The refrigerator is never more than a few steps away, and if you happen to want a bottle of beer at 10 o’clock in the morning, who’s going to be the wiser?

Your car remains safe in your garage, unexposed to dangerous freeway traffic and costly accidents, burning neither rubber nor gasoline, and you do not have to pay $10 a day to park it.

If you like music while you work you can play anything you want on stereo--from Beethoven to Springsteen, and if you don’t like music you are not assaulted continually by the homogenized ambiance of Muzak.

If you have an urge to dig in the garden or take a walk you can leave your work for a while, knowing that your machine will answer any phone calls. You simply record a message saying you’re too busy to answer at the moment, and no one knows you’re out digging in the garden or taking a walk.

You are never bothered by fellow workers who want to gossip or get you to help them with their work or try to get a date to go bowling or borrow money or a cigarette.

You never have to worry about the office practical joker. You don’t even have to worry about sexual pressure.

You are free, independent, isolated, alone--but intimately connected by telephone and computer to the company.

Your work will reach its destination sooner than if you had to pull it from a typewriter and take it to the next desk.

In the afternoon, after you’ve had a leisurely lunch of cheese cannelloni heated in the microwave, a tomato and lettuce salad and half a bottle of Chablis, you can nap for half an hour.

In late morning the postman comes, connecting you by mail with the outside world. He may be the only person you see in a week. You begin to look forward to his visits.

You also begin to look forward to the calls of the buxom young woman who delivers for the United Parcel Service. She is pretty and fresh and cheerful, and you are tempted to invite her in for lunch, but you know, of course, that such tarrying would be against her rules. Besides, the neighbors might talk.

Sooner or later you begin to feel just a little bit lonely. You decide maybe you’ll go down to the Mexican place for lunch and a bottle of Carta Blanca. See some people. Play some mariachi on the juke box.

You begin to think how much fun it used to be working in the office.

In a big corporate office you spend about two-thirds of your time actually working and one-third socializing and gossiping. There are always some office romances going on, and if you aren’t actually involved in one, you can at least surreptitiously watch its development. A romance that ripens in an office cannot be hidden. There is that telltale meeting of eyes, the bumping of hips in the cafeteria line, the lingering conversations, the tete-a-tetes at lunch.

If Alice is having an affair with Timothy there’s no way you can know it if you work at home. People can meet, fall in love, go through an office courtship and get married, and you won’t have any idea that it’s happening until the morning the postman brings you a wedding announcement.

You miss out on all the office pools. You don’t have anyone to discuss the Raiders’ quarterback problem with. You want to tell somebody they should stick with Jim Plunkett. But the postman isn’t a football fan. The United Parcel delivery person is always in too much of a hurry to discuss football.

The postman always comes up with some wisecrack about the government. He isn’t crazy about the system. But he’s always in a hurry to get on and you can’t really discuss anything with him in depth.

Sometimes you get so frustrated you decide to have a couple of beers in the afternoon, and naturally the quality of your work goes down.

You begin to wonder if anybody at the company knows you still work for them. You decide you’d better get dressed and go in. This happens to me at least three times a week. I pick up my mail, flirt with all the women, make a few bets on sports events, and drop into the boss’s office to make sure he remembers me. Usually I have a fraternal lunch with some of my colleagues.

Working at home alone isn’t exactly the dream life it might seem to be.