My only WFH rule is to avoid full frontal nudity

You may have recently heard about the WSJ lecturing the WFH, and thought WTF. I certainly did.

I mean, it’s not like I read the Wall Street Journal, but its recent pronouncements on what those who Work From Home should wear — $4,000 earrings paired with $3,000 handbags, because “vanished are the days when working from home meant being invisible” — left me and countless other WFH types (or “slobby creatives”, as the WSJ calls us) scratching our unicorn onesies. Sweatpants, says the WSJ — by which they mean trackie bottoms — are not appropriate for working from home. I agree.

Why would you want to get that dressed up, when you can wear whatever you slept in, perhaps adding a blanket so your knees don’t get cold? In fact, if you have a laptop, why get out of bed at all? Why such formal verticality?

And why would you need to wear, as the WSJ suggests, $645 shoes to walk — if you must — from your bed/sofa to the kettle and back? Do you really need a $3,000 Caroline Herrera coat to put the bins out? Of course not.

The only wardrobe requirement for working from home is the avoidance of full frontal nudity when you open the door to sign for a package. Again, a blanket will do.

But Skype. This is the core of the WSJ’s argument about dressing up while working from home alone. We are all telecommuters now, apparently.

We all need to “pair a cosy sweater with on trend pants”, for those crucial digital meetings where our image vibrates on the screens of far way people we have never met, allowing them to judge us for wearing old band t-shirts with swear words on them, teamed with the only pants which are ever on trend in my house — the Marks & Spencers multipack.

I’m going to share with you a simple life hack that will enable you to continue working from home wrapped in a motheaten dressing gown, while avoiding spending ten grand on accessories.

It’s genius. When someone asks if they can Skype you, just say no. Go on, have a practice. No. No, sorry I can’t. No, that’s not possible I’m afraid. No. Not today. No.

Because the greatest joy of WFH is not just doing it horizontally in a coffee-stained rag you picked off the floor, it is never, ever, having to face doing face to face with anyone except the meter reader. WFH means your telephone voice is exactly that — a voice; being simultaneously required to look as well as you sound professional undermines the entire ethos of everything you, slobby creative, have horizontally striven for.

We must conclude, therefore, that the WSJ is insecure.

That without dressing formally, transforming the comfort of your own home into starched discomfort, you are somehow unfit for purpose.

What utter bollocks.

Although right now I could be dressed as a walrus and you’d never know. Ever, ever, ever.