Colin Campbell: Glad to have been spared a life sentence in WFH (work from home) solitary
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For 44 years, up to 2019, I worked for companies in a variety of different offices. It was a long stretch with its inevitable ups and downs, and I endured all that. But I’m glad I didn’t have to endure 44 years working from home.
The woman in the flat upstairs, who has since moved on, was smoking a cigarette one day when I was outside. She was wearing a dressing gown, and I got chatting to her for the first time. I’d heard movement up above during the day, and had assumed she didn’t have a job. But she assured me she did indeed have a job, and was working from home. I thought but didn’t say, how do you do a day’s graft in a dressing gown?
I retired before Covid swept in and changed virtually everything, and in hindsight I’m glad of that. So I never carried out a day’s work in a dressing gown.
But if you’re working from home it doesn’t matter what you wear, a Batman outfit or nothing but a pair of underpants if you so choose. I suppose you might have to stick on a shirt or blouse for a Zoom chat or an online conference or whatever, but otherwise the choice is yours.
How productive is working from home, or WFH to use the increasingly familiar acronym?
As far as that’s concerned, I have two quite close younger relatives who WFH.
Both have the same approach. They shut themselves in rooms from their normal starting time and, apart from a brief lunch break, do not re-emerge until their day is done, which can often be later than their scheduled finishing time. So they put in a full and very thorough shift.
During their time in business solitary, these rooms are off limits to other household members or visitors who drop in.
They work for private companies. Is the level of disciplined devotion to duty followed so rigidly in the public sector?
WFH has been welcomed and embraced by many in the cities because it eliminates early morning starts and lengthy commuting times. They’ve embraced it, and it now seems likely they’ll never let go. Commuting times are much less of an issue here, but WFH is still widely prevalent and people aren’t letting go either.
Some of the issues surrounding this seem, to me at least, very strange indeed. Numerous media stories have appeared about bosses in various sectors struggling “to persuade” people to return to offices.
What’s the struggle? Where has that deferential attitude come from? Any boss I’ve ever worked for, as in ever, would have lifted the phone and issued a command: “Get back in here now or you’re fired.”
Times obviously have moved on, for better or worse. And I believe when push comes to shove it’s for the worse.
There are benefits for workers not being clustered together in an office. One of them, which springs all the more readily to mind after Covid, is that it can make you sick.
One day a few years ago when I was working in an office the volume of hacking coughs led one exasperated colleague to declare loudly: “This is just great. I didn’t know I’d changed jobs to work in a bronchial ward.”
A few days later she was off sick as well. Everyone fell sick. The WFO (working from office) system was decimated.
But whatever upsides there are to working from home, there are significantly more downsides, or so it would seem to people like me who never experienced this phenomenon.
No office here is run like a sweatshop. There is time, maybe limited but time nevertheless, for chat with colleagues and a bit of laughter and humour. I am still in touch with newspaper colleagues I met years ago. And we still talk with nostalgia and humour about the old days at work, the experiences we had and the times we shared, and the characters we knew. Colourful days, unforgettable memories.
I could remember 300 people I’ve worked with over the years. I didn’t like them all, although the vast majority I did. But it was an experience of the time to know these people, for better or for worse. Remove them from my memory and it leaves a very glaring gap.
WFH may have its advantages. But in life’s rich tapestry WTH (what the heck) do you really gain?
