WhatsApp is flush with silly videos of men in ties conducting Zoom meetings. As the camera pans below their waists, you see they are sporting underwear beneath crisp top-half raiment
Till very recently—circa the advent of corona and subsequent lockdown—I didn’t have Wi-Fi at home. For the longest time, I was immensely chuffed that I could do away with broad-range technology hovering around helpfully in every conceivable nook and cranny of my personal space, and be alright. Other than “What do you do for streaming services?"—to which my standard response used to be: “I watch DVDs that I pay full price for"—I used to get hit by something else. A lot.
“What do/will you do in case you have to work from home?"
This was an interesting question.
Because “I believe in work-life balance, don’t carry class notes back home" wouldn’t have cut the mustard. As a journalist, my job was—at the risk of sounding irritatingly bumptious—“24 by 7". So I would say, “I use data, pretend my BlackBerry is my laptop, and, well, I’m in business. And if it’s a production-related matter, I hop into a cab, go to office and sort it out."
The pandemic changed it all. Now whether I—and a legion of others—like it or not, work from home is the new state of play… by order, the management.
As it turns out, I belong to the old-school minority set that is not embracing—at least notionally—of this arrangement. (Don’t ask me why I don’t approve of it, I don’t have a compelling answer. At best, I’ll say it is like my inbuilt aversion to shopping remotely.) In the US, data gathered from the 2020 State of Remote Work survey indicates that a whopping 98% of respondents would now like to work remotely—from home. While offices around the world may or may not yet have the infrastructure necessary to facilitate the actual implementation of work-from-home in perpetuity, the figure may be a pointer to the public mood worldwide.
WhatsApp is flush with silly videos of men in ties conducting Zoom meetings; as the camera pans below their waists, you see they are sporting underwear beneath crisp top-half raiment. I forwarded one such clip, along with an eye-roll emoji, to a friend of mine, who promptly messaged back to say that he “attends" important video conferences in his boxers as well. “Man, it’s so liberating! I’m flex—no mulling over Friday dressing, no weekly stocktaking of ‘corporate’ wear, never want to go back to the workplace."
Amid all the sartorial perks, the best part, he claims, is that he’s way more productive working from home. “I now realize that most of my workday was spent on the commute, in dead-end meetings and general chitchat," he explained. “Oh yeah, lunch was a time-consuming big deal—it was like a strategic conclave, you know, depending on what was on the menu: lunching with the boss, with the team, with a human resources colleague, or with a friend who works for the competition."
Another friend, who’s worked from home in pre-corona times because her company was (obviously) equipped with foresight, maintains that she will continue to “log in" and “log out" so she can keep tabs on her professional routine. Her old experience ensures she doesn’t need to scramble around because her boss suddenly happens to call while she’s watching Netflix. “Just because I’m at home doesn’t mean I’m flex."
When and if the pandemic deigns to desist from its reign of terror, will we get back to our boardrooms and our cubicles? Already, many companies are mulling over making remote working a permanent agreement, with provisions for occasional attendance, perhaps. While I’m pretty sure this will not apply across all sectors, for many of us, it will be a new reality.
In Everybody Loves Raymond, Ray’s wife Debra used to get angsty each time he chose to work from home, creating little (sometimes big) messes all over their suburban house; she’d keep haranguing him to get back to work and expend his nervous energy on colleagues instead. I was reminded of my favourite sitcom when a cousin informed me her husband is gleefully reporting he can now be with her “all the time". “You know it’s just the slightest bit terrifying when he says that. I’d rather he reports to work… alas, that’s not to be, not in the foreseeable future."
She’s not the only one—and I’m giving sexism a very wide berth here. Many of my female friends and relatives, who live with significant others, are not very happy with this new corporate trend. Man about the house the whole day long, sitting in on virtual meetings in form-fitting shirts and coming-apart-at-the-seams shorts, tossing half-eaten bags of potato chips on the floor—not a good idea.
Someone else I know said that she’s prepping for work-from-home becoming a constant till the end of her professional life, a scenario where both she and her hubby are disparate colleagues at home. She’s devised a formula. “We’ve set up ‘temporary offices’—his is the den, mine is the bedroom. I’ve made him promise that while we work, we will not see each other’s faces and stay put ‘at work’."
It has worked like a dream for them, she says, and she’s now a convert to the cult of #WFH.
Sushmita Bose is a journalist, editor and the author of ‘Single In The City’.
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