When the local news starts predicting a winter storm in the most dire way possible – calling it “historical” and with “heavy destruction” sure to occur – and basically gives the public only one piece of advice, which is to GET READY, MOTHERFUCKERS, obviously you should work from home on that day.

(Well, unless you’re Graham, who still had to show up at his 2pm to 2am shift at a restaurant.  You know, because a ton of people will show up and therefore validate the complete disregard for employee safety.)

But corporate people like me can work from home, which is pretty cool at first.  When you work from home, you can sit in your fat pants and drink unlimited free coffee without any dirty looks about getting up from your desk.  Working from home makes you feel like less of a performing cube monkey who must be leashed to your work station lest you hurl feces at onlookers, and more like an actual human being who can be trusted to maintain an Internet connection.

And because I have wireless only – if you think I should plug directly into my router, I’ll be happy to e-mail you photos of my basement, which is where the router lives – I don’t have to answer phone calls all day.  I can sit in my dining room and send e-mails, albeit on an employer-provided laptop computer that would be declared unfit for a 6th grade public school student in Detroit circa 1998.  I can also fume about the usual suspects, namely the one guy who never shows up (and couldn’t be bothered to log into his laptop until well after noon today) and Shit Sandwich, who, despite several requests to do his goddamn job for a change, probably sat around and jerked off to “classic” episodes of SportsCenter all day.*

But I do hope to work from home tomorrow, too, even though the snow line has moved north.  I think more sleet is on the way, so even though this maximizes the chance of the power going out (during the last major ice storm, my power was out for 4 days and I nearly killed the guy I was dating because he played death metal at 6am to “get psyched” for work), it also maximizes the legitimacy of me calling to say that I’m not excited about the prospect of being icily entombed in my ‘97 Lumina and will therefore work from home for the second day in a row.

To bolster my case, here are some other high points about working from home:

1. Like I said, unlimited coffee, but also coffee that hasn’t been diluted or polluted out of recognition by co-workers who probably just don’t like coffee to begin with.

2. Not brushing teeth until sometime after 10am.

3. Not having to wash hair/shave legs/wear impractical shoes.

4. Having bacon for lunch.

5. Seeing Mexican neighbor stand on his front porch with his shirt off during a blizzard.

6. Listening to music, the mellower the better.  Leonard Cohen = good.  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds = bad to the point of terrifying, at least when you’re trying to complete about 50 e-mails at once.

7. Seeing Grandma Airplane type something batshit crazy to the boss on IM.

8. Cackling to self re: evidence of batshit crazy.

9. Getting off “work” at 4:30pm and being home immediately. This would have been better around 9am when I was hoping to just fall asleep on the couch with my mouth open, but I’ll take what I can get if it doesn’t involve driving home in this bullshit.

*Both of these people have been promoted recently. While I once would have advised someone to work harder and smarter for a promotion, now I know that all I have to do is grow a dick and lose the aptitude.