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Remoteness is in the eye of the beholder
Apr. 25th, 2023 01:39 pmIsn't it odd how language, vocabulary and terminology evolve, often over a relatively short time span? Like a generation or two. Or maybe just three years.
In March of 2020, most federal public servants were sent home to carry out their work. They didn't choose to go home, although many eventually decided that they preferred the new arrangement. Their offices were shut down and deemed unsafe. Suddenly we started using a whole bunch of new words, old words used in different ways, new phrases, and so on. Bubble. Pivot. Social distancing. Self-isolation. Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE. Remote work.
What IS remote work, anyway? The term is used these days to denote work done off the Employer's premises, but still on the Employer's dime. Except that when the Employer is not providing and maintaining those premises, that work is, willy-nilly, to some extent on the EMPLOYEE'S dime.
I find that there are some interesting subtexts to the term. There's this hint that "remote work" is somehow not REAL work, not proper adult work, or not really a component of the labour force. You know, like back in the day when "Does your wife work?" was still considered a politically correct question and "No, she's just a housewife" was considered an adequate and even a self-explanatory answer. Besides, a married woman in the paid workforce, especially if she were also a mother, would be taking work away from men!
Doesn't it make more sense to refer to those who go out to the office or the construction site or the embassy abroad as the "remote workers"?
Historically speaking, the separation of home and workplace is a relatively recent phenomenon. Some date it back to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of factory work. On the other hand family farmers these days might prefer to farm full-time yet are often compelled to commute to an office job in the city just to survive!
Growing up in the suburbs of Ottawa in the 1950s and 60s, I enjoyed a fairly typical middle class lifestyle for that time. Mum was at home. Dad went out to work. Like the fathers of many of my friends, his work was top secret and directly related to the Cold War. I really didn't have a clue what he did. He was the more "remote" parent from my perspective, although he wasn't really cold or distant with his own family.
Times have changed, of course. Like a lot of women of my generation, I was in the workforce for pretty much my entire adult life until I retired. I went to the office first thing in the morning and came home in the late afternoon. I had a number of workplaces over the years and relationships with co-workers ran the gamut from friendly and cordial to stressful and strained. Likewise, there were some jobs I loved, some I hated and many others that fell somewhere in between.
While I did sometimes socialize with colleagues outside of working hours, home base was always the "real world" for me, a constant in my life. Work and leisure activities were things that came and went.
As to my retirement lexicon, that's still a work in progress!
In March of 2020, most federal public servants were sent home to carry out their work. They didn't choose to go home, although many eventually decided that they preferred the new arrangement. Their offices were shut down and deemed unsafe. Suddenly we started using a whole bunch of new words, old words used in different ways, new phrases, and so on. Bubble. Pivot. Social distancing. Self-isolation. Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE. Remote work.
What IS remote work, anyway? The term is used these days to denote work done off the Employer's premises, but still on the Employer's dime. Except that when the Employer is not providing and maintaining those premises, that work is, willy-nilly, to some extent on the EMPLOYEE'S dime.
I find that there are some interesting subtexts to the term. There's this hint that "remote work" is somehow not REAL work, not proper adult work, or not really a component of the labour force. You know, like back in the day when "Does your wife work?" was still considered a politically correct question and "No, she's just a housewife" was considered an adequate and even a self-explanatory answer. Besides, a married woman in the paid workforce, especially if she were also a mother, would be taking work away from men!
Doesn't it make more sense to refer to those who go out to the office or the construction site or the embassy abroad as the "remote workers"?
Historically speaking, the separation of home and workplace is a relatively recent phenomenon. Some date it back to the Industrial Revolution and the rise of factory work. On the other hand family farmers these days might prefer to farm full-time yet are often compelled to commute to an office job in the city just to survive!
Growing up in the suburbs of Ottawa in the 1950s and 60s, I enjoyed a fairly typical middle class lifestyle for that time. Mum was at home. Dad went out to work. Like the fathers of many of my friends, his work was top secret and directly related to the Cold War. I really didn't have a clue what he did. He was the more "remote" parent from my perspective, although he wasn't really cold or distant with his own family.
Times have changed, of course. Like a lot of women of my generation, I was in the workforce for pretty much my entire adult life until I retired. I went to the office first thing in the morning and came home in the late afternoon. I had a number of workplaces over the years and relationships with co-workers ran the gamut from friendly and cordial to stressful and strained. Likewise, there were some jobs I loved, some I hated and many others that fell somewhere in between.
While I did sometimes socialize with colleagues outside of working hours, home base was always the "real world" for me, a constant in my life. Work and leisure activities were things that came and went.
As to my retirement lexicon, that's still a work in progress!
