The Joys of Working from Home

If like me you were told to go home and temporarily work from home way back in March you have probably gone through all the stages I have been through in the last six months and I just thought I would share the more light-hearted side of my experience of working from home with you. At the beginning I was absolutely delighted that I would be able to lay in bed a little longer and not have to fight my way to work via a packed bus, two packed Metro rides and a brisk 15-minute walk before I even got to work and was able to have my first cup of coffee. Unfortunately, as we all know it did not work out that way due to anxiety, weird dreams, and odd thoughts like me you probably ended up having sleepless nights and waking up earlier than usual. Besides this, any hope of a lie-in was shattered by my daughter’s dog. While she was away in quarantine in another city I was left in charge of the dog. The dog, who for whatever reason,  decided to sleep under my bed and having spent most of his day blissfully dozing would wake up every morning  super energetically like he had just had a double espresso and a can of Red Bull  at around 5 am and growl, bark , jump on me and lick my face until I got up to take him for his morning walk. After which he would go back to his daily routing of sleeping usually under my desk, and only interrupting his blissful snoozes to  growl at the neighbours, bark at the Amazon delivery person, or to fart surreptitiously during important work calls and then have the balls to pretend it was me and scurry off growling covering his snout like it was me!

At the beginning I shaved and showered every morning and even wore work clothes (shirt, no tie, shoes and chinos) and then I noticed when I connected on Zoom calls that everyone else was wearing a t-shirt. By the way, when  I say Zoom I mean any of the 50 different ways to connect on a video conference and I have tried all of them.  Many times I have connected only to find I am the only one on Zoom while everyone else was on Google meets or Skype waiting for me. Eventually, I guess probably due to the fact that if you work from home alone it sometimes feels like being in solitary confinement, Zoom becomes fun and to avoid talking to yourself it becomes necessary to see and talk to people even if a one sentence email or a WhatsApp message is all you need to communicate.  It is still very strange to connect for a 3pm meeting and see clients still in their pyjamas with bed hair and making coffee while trying to Zoom, but you know what the best part of Zoom is?  You get to see exactly what everyone else’s home looks like, and what your colleagues look like after 6 months working from home. It brings a whole new meaning to the expression having a bad hair day and my home office is not that bad after all.

As time passed working from home, I slowly succumbed and found myself wearing shorts (after all no one can see your lower half on the webcam) and the shirts gave way to polo shirts which gave way to t-shirts, shoes which had been obligatory were replaced with flip-flops or no footwear at all and shaving became optional. The next thing I noticed was the snacking, at work you may have a coffee break at 11, a lunch break and maybe an afternoon coffee around 5 to perk you up for the last hour of the day before the daily fight home on the metro and the bus. Working from home the kitchen is fully stocked and open 24 hours a day and is a veritable smorgasbord of snacks, hot and cold beverages, and every kind of food you can imagine. Whatever you want, whenever you want. There were late breakfasts, brunches, lunches, afternoon tea, between meal snacks, early supper, early dinner (the earliest was at 5pm), late lunch (the latest was 5pm). Then came the guilt-induced fasting, followed by the stress-induced snacking, followed by a mixture of snacking and fasting at the same time and the dilemma of is it alright to have a beer while I am working from home or should I at least wait until lunchtime.

In the meantime one Zoom meeting per day had become two or three and then four or five, until every day was a Zoom day with back to back Zoom meetings and what had been an email or a quick call became another dreaded Zoom call scheduled an hour. Is it really necessary to book a whole hour? With the Zoom calls came a whole host of annoying Zoom participants.  The always late to connect Zoomer who usually sends a message five minutes after the start time asking for the link or pretending their computer decided to do a crucial update just as they were about to connect. The compulsive Zoom walker who seems unable to sit at their desk instead they have to walk around the whole time making everyone else on the call feel giddy, and they are usually the same as the Zoom hogger who does not let any one else get a word in edgeways. Then there’s the Zoom drinker who is always in the kitchen making a drink or drinking a drink the whole time they are connected. The Zoom driver who always seems to be driving somewhere with the kids during the Zoom meeting (doubly annoying as everyone is supposed to be on lock down, so where the hell are they going and what are the kids doing in the car). And then there’s the poor quality sound and video Zoomer. You know the person I mean  they connect and appear to be using a tin can and a piece of string instead of a microphone, and they have forgotten to remove that little piece of plastic film that protects new webcams, and they appear to be speaking from behind a lace curtain while mumbling in to their tin can. And finally, the most annoying of all, the “let’s Zoom while I work” person. This is usually  the person that actually scheduled the Zoom call as it was very important to connect, and then they spend the whole call continually checking their phone, or  typing or looking at another screen while you are Zooming, and then they email you after the call asking if you could schedule another Zoom call as they urgently need to discuss exactly the same thing you just spent an hour discussing.

So finally, after many months working from home a routine has established itself. Shaving has returned to a daily ritual, wearing trousers and shoes and a relatively normal work routine, including a scheduled lunch break and a set finish time are now a reality. It finally feels like proper work again and I can officially call my self a professional home worker in this new reality or whatever everyone is calling it nowadays. Only problem is now I am totally used to home working and I have my routine set in stone and finally got my home office exactly how I want it and everything is just perfect, even the dog seems to have settled in to a routine and it looks like we will be going back to the office next week.

Stay safe and wear those masks.