A fruit seller thought my laptop life was just one long vacation

Last week, I was coding at a beachside cafe in Mexico. A fruit seller walked by and asked if I was just surfing the web for fun. I told him I was actually doing my job, designing websites. He laughed and said it looked like a permanent holiday to him. It got me wondering how often we have to defend our work style. Do you guys run into this kind of thing a lot? How do you handle it without sounding rude?

4 comments

4 Comments

jason_hall3mo ago

Oh man, a buddy of mine had his whole family visit while he was working from a condo in Florida. They saw him by the pool with his laptop and just assumed he was on vacation, even though he was neck-deep in quarterly spreadsheets. He had to calmly explain he was on the clock for three straight days.

rodriguez.jana3mo ago

Yeah, that bit about having to defend it for three days straight... it gets in your head after a while. You start to feel like you need to prove you're really working, even to yourself, which sort of ruins the point of being somewhere nice.

leo_black763mo ago

Maybe @jason_hall's friend getting upset is the part that's a bit much.

foster.jordan3mo ago

Maybe it's just me but @jason_hall's friend getting upset over that seems a bit much. People see a laptop somewhere nice and assume vacation, it's not a big deal to explain.