Work-at-home habits of the lazy and soon-to-be unemployed: Pt. 1

The revolution cometh, people!

I just love working at home!
It’s fan~~tastic and has dramatically improved everything in my working life!
But, some folks…feel there is no joy in Virtualville.

Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction. Characters, places and professed work-related anecdotes either are products of the author's limited imagination or are described mostly fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual, very dutiful company employees (such as the author), places or persons, living or dead, is, again, mostly coincidental. Especially if anyone in the company I work for actually reads this. 

At first, exclusively working from home sounded ideal: no commute, no traditional work attire, and a break from office intrigue and people politics. However, the COVID pandemic lingers with waves of new variants. So there’s no definitive end in sight to this massive shift from working in an office space to rocking it in a spare bedroom. Instead of in-person interactions or conversations, at-home workers constantly rely on computers and phones to stay connected. Many are hitting the wall of technology fatigue, too, because we’re all using tech in every aspect of our lives now. Thanks very much, Silicon Valley.

“Remotely working” is the appropriate description of productivity for many these days. The pandemic continues and business has decreed work-at-home to be “the new normal” for white-collar workers. But growing numbers of them are bored as shit by it all, and have embraced stealthy rebellion. It’s becoming a growing insurrection of the virtual class.

Why are NeoLuddites growing in number?
- You know the bean counters see cost savings so work-at-home will be continued with some flimsy justifications.

- When the highlight of the week is changing your background to try and amuse your co-workers, or you’re sending never-ending salvos of cheap emotion-laden GIFs…somethings gotta give.
- Too many, WAY too many eye-draining, soul-killing online meetings.
- People miss office pranks.

Some coping mechanisms until the revolution arrives:
- Secure your own dedicated office area at home with good ventilation and a beer fridge. Ignore spouse and kids’ claims for private space…this is w-o-r-k.
- Wear shorts not skivvies for Zoom conferences when it’s hot. Exception: if forced to attend a virtual Happy Hour, skivvies OK and, indeed, recommended.
- If in a Zoom meeting with only audio: make faces at the co-workers or external collaborators you despise without making a noise. They can still feel it.
- If in a Zoom meeting with video: randomly mute others claiming a bad line creates feedback. Click mute with imperceptible hand movements, but continue nodding with the conversation flow.

Courtesy of themarketoonist.com by Tom Fishburne

- Schedule a meeting, kick off the meeting by asking another attendee why they requested the meeting and topic, savor his or her baffled look and fumbling response, then with a patronizing tone re-schedule “so people can do their prep.” At the next meeting, check the result of the meeting with another meeting. All these meetings = no paper trail.

More to come...