For me, one of the most profound ramifications of the Covid Pandemic was a fully remote work status. In pre-pandemic days, prior leadership was always reticent to approve remote schedules. This was reserved and granted only for extreme, extenuating circumstances like a coworker of mine who tore his ACL and was immobilized for several months.
When March 2020 rolled around and first-world knuckleheads were losing their minds hoarding toilet paper, the mandate came down from HHS to go fully remote if possible. This necessarily excluded staff involved with patient and animal care as well as facility workers who kept the campus operating, but for most of us, we were given leave to work from home. My 40-minute commute was replaced by a morning stretch and 40-second stumble to my cobbled together home office.
At first, my colleagues and I were unsure of how to work in this new dynamic. Remote water cooler conversations revealed most of us were, surprisingly, clocking longer hours because it was harder to find a definitive cut-off to the workday. It was hard to ignore a request after hours when your laptop was pinging you three feet away from where you were having dinner.
We all eventually settled into a routine and found a multitude of ways to separate work and home life. For myself, I carved out space in a small upstairs bedroom and stocked it with a few of my favorite things. Vintage books and comics from my childhood, wooden ship carvings and a plastic plane I assembled as a kid, and mementos picked up from some of our travels were placed around the room. It looked like an eccentric recluse’s study, which is damn close to the mark.
Andrea learned how surprisingly self-sufficient this space was when she brought up a cup of coffee for me. “Oh! I forgot sugar; I’ll be right back.”
“No worries, I’ve got some.”
“You have sugar up here?!” I nodded and pointed to a sugar dispenser in front of a small collection of vintage pipes inherited from my father-in-law.
Semi-jokingly, I told her, “I am fully prepared to weather a few more years in isolation.” I pointed out mason jars full of my favorite tobacco, a humidor full of cigars, and several bottles of bourbon sitting next to my printer.
Sometimes remote work doesn’t mean work from home. I clarified this with a former manager of mine. “Wayne, I don’t care if you’re in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean as long as you’re reachable and able to dial in.” Copy that. Even when isolation was lifted. Andrea and I still avoided flying because of the accompanying hassles of security checkpoints, unreliable schedules, and the chance of encountering knuckle-headed fellow travelers.
When Andrea’s conference schedule resumed, if the destination was drivable, we turned them into road trips. Our current ride was delivered with an onboard modem, and I added an inverter. The result was a mobile office that allowed me to take meetings rolling down I-80 on the way to Chicago or I-95 to the Florida Keys. As a matter of fact, more than one Rock-tober entry was posted on the go with interstate scenery zipping by outside the passenger window.
The pandemic changed our world and the resulting remote work movement spawned seismic shifts in our work culture. Vacant offices in business districts are affecting not only corporate landlords but the mom-and-pop business that relied on daily workers as their customers. Job seekers started stipulating work from home privileges along with their salary requirements, and businesses looking to hire first rate candidates touted their generous remote work benefits.
The effects spilled over into our leisure hours, also. Multi-generation households are on the rise as families came together to weather the months in isolation. On the other end of the spectrum, the teardrop camper lifestyle, espousing small, mobile family units, hit a massive surge in interest not seen since the years immediately after WW II. Not surprisingly, I’m in the second group. Among other items on my never shrinking project list is building out a teardrop camper from a kit. I’d love for a future post to be written from a remote campsite out west. Maybe it will be in North Dakota as I check off the last state in a quest to set foot in all fifty.
No comments:
Post a Comment