How To Ruin Remote Work

A while back, I wrote a charming piece on How To Work From Home. It is an absolute delight, and I highly encourage you to read it and share with everyone you know. Now, these many months later, a vaccine has been produced for Covid-19 and the expectation is that the majority of intelligent people will be getting vaccinated as soon as they can. As a result, it is a strong possibility that there will be a return to offices. Some people will have the choice to remain remote while others will not be able to choose, being mandated to return to an office. If you are hoping to ensure a return to the suburban or urban office park, I would like to offer you some advice to ensure that remote work comes to a swift and mandatory end.

Obnoxious Ambient Noises

What really helps to frustrate your coworkers is the inclusion of various unnecessary and relentless background noises to conference calls. Try these examples for maximum effect: run a vacuum cleaner, make a smoothie with a very loud blender, do your dishes during a call, ensure that a television or radio is always playing in the background, set the dog on permabark, and make sure other housemates talk to you at all times. Also, make sure you are entirely ignorant of how to properly mute yourself; ensure that you are muted when you should not be and vice versa. This constant barrage of various irritating sounds will ensure that we will make a rapid return to the office where the only sound you will enjoy is the steady hiss of the white noise generators and Brad speaking loudly about his new lawnmower (again).

"My Internet Isn't Working Right!"

This tactic can be one of the most effective in your toolkit. In order to prove that we cannot be trusted to work remotely, be sure that your internet drops frequently and for great lengths of time. Be sure to buy the cheapest, slowest and least reliable Internet connection you can and use as much streaming audio and video as possible through the workday to consume as much bandwidth as possible. Be sure that everyone in your home does the same to ensure an unstable connection. This will make certain that when you have to host an audio or video call, your voice and picture will drop frequently and force everyone to ask you to repeat yourself. Also, when it carries on, you can leave and rejoin the meeting (which will not actually fix anything), enabling you to waste a tremendous amount of time with your constant technical difficulties. Furthermore, be sure to work as far as humanly possible from your (ideally very old) wireless access point to additionally ensure a poor experience. Whatever you do, do NOT use a hard wired Ethernet cable as these will not fail in the manner we are seeking. Finally, when your Internet connection is working as poorly as it possibly can, under no circumstances should you set up a WiFi hotspot on your phone and connect your work machine to it. If someone recommends you try this, just play dumb.

Camera Worst Practices

With the frequent use of your computer's camera during meetings, you have unique ability to ensure that your professional behavior extends to an all-time low. When you use your camera, always make sure your background is as distracting as possible. I would recommend that you sit in the center of your home, perhaps in the kitchen, and make sure you point the camera so that the refrigerator is in the background for maximum distraction. As an added bonus, be sure to position evidence of your hobbies or accomplishments in the background as these will serve as a not-humblebrag that will distract and annoy your coworkers. An expensive bicycle, old awards from your previous career that aren't at all relevant to your current job, your fanciest books, or best of all, evidence of your political alignments are ALL great ways to show everyone who you really are. If anyone asks why these odd things are in such clear view of your camera and/or are in your office, offer no explanation--they won't ask anyway, so don't worry.

If you can set a distracting or comical virtual background, by all means do just that. That moonscape that you've been holding on to can now be put to fantastic use and will reinforce the idea that working remote is silly and unprofessional. Also now is your time to break out all of your old baseballs caps that have been gathering dust. Sure, you'd never wear one to the office, but when you're on a video call, nobody can stop you! This works double for your sports/music/media t-shirts. The camera affords you the ability to take casual Friday to the next level every day of the week, so get creative!

Let's Ruin This!

Remember, the more we can make remote work appear as if we're all at home in our pajamas not doing anything useful and making the office appear as the best option, the sooner we can all get back in there for some good old fashioned micromanaging! We can take back our long traffic-filled commutes, packed subways, and rushed mornings. We need to get back to the dimly lit conference rooms, the long, privacy-free tables where we sit, see and smell all of our colleagues. We need to make the triumphal return to the office bathrooms, the office coffee machines, and the building cafeterias. Let's make sure we are available so that Larry and Janice can stop by our communal work area for variety of "quick questions" that could have been an instant message, but now they're a 30 minute conversation.

Seriously, while not everyone enjoys working from home, let's all remember to be professional so it can at least remain an option, even if you prefer not to exercise it. Also, though most of these situations presented seem like fabricated bits of humor, I have personally witnessed nearly every single one of these at one point or another. Yes, specifically moon man with the grubby baseball hat (MARSHALL).