blogcutter

I spent a good portion of the morning cleaning the inside of our fridge. It's a task I used to do concurrently with defrosting but now that we have a fridge that doesn't need regular defrosting, the task is generally accomplished on a hit-or-miss basis. With a little bit too much miss just lately. At any rate, today seemed like a good day for it. We've gone through most of the leftovers from Christmas dinner and today is our usual laundry day, so the cleaning cloths and towels I used will all get dumped into the washing machine at 7PM (when the cheaper electrical rates kick in).

Ever since the great lockdown of March 2020, people have been speculating that working from home for most of the workweek will become the new normal, at least for office workers. Indeed, workers will demand it, viewing it as a basic right or entitlement. But is that really what most employees want? Or what they will want, once the pandemic is behind us? And do the benefits of working from home accrue mainly to the employee? Frankly I'm dubious about these seemingly unquestioned assumptions.

I wonder what kinds of statistics are being kept so far. For example, can we tease out worker preferences by gender, age or family status?

This is just a hunch but I'd be willing to bet that married men (including those in common-law relationships) would be the group most eager to work from home. As for women... well, Guilt tends to be our most constant companion. I'm happily retired but if I were sitting in a home office trying to justify my pacheque by putting in at least 7 hours' worth of telecommuting keystrokes every day, I know I would end up working MORE, not less, even considering that I could dispense with the bus trip at the beginning and end of the day. And that's just the work of paid employment.

In addition to that, I'd be worrying about the housework that needed to be done, the kids who needed attention and the bills that needed to be paid. Many believe that on average, men are much more able to compartmentalize their lives whereas women are expected to constantly multitask. Consider too that women are more likely to be in lower-level positions in the workplace, where they likely have less control over workload and work flow and less capacity to delegate. In my last position prior to retirement, I was in a sort of mid-level (a.k.a. sandwich-generation team-leader) position; we had to sign off on "performance agreements" without necessarily being accorded the authority to "make it so", to bring in the staff we needed and the program dollars to accomplish the basic objectives of our sections. And of course, one has to show oneself to be a good "team player" and get along with people one may not particularly like; if you can't express frustrations outwardly, the tendency for many is to stew inwardly, often to the point that it impacts one's health!

But back to housework. When you do all your work from an office, someone else orders and supplies the appropriate furniture, equipment and other resources. Someone else vacuums and cleans the office and takes away the garbage. Someone else pays the heating bills, fixes faulty plumbing and cleans the toilets. Policies on staff areas like lunchrooms seem variable; I remember one office I worked in where we took up a collection to buy ourselves a mini-fridge and the responsibility for cleaning it was shared, with a rota posted so we'd know whose turn it was that week. I think a microwave oven was supplied but we were responsible for cleaning it. In another office, we used a weekly rotation system for who made tea and coffee at our break times. We also were responsible for arranging and paying for social activities like Christmas and retirement parties and gifts. But still, a good portion of the socializing and enjoying ourselves was done on paid company time - we didn't have to feel guilty about chatting and getting to know our co-workers. In lockdown, I would bet there aren't too many chatty coffee breaks over Zoom.

Pre-pandemic, people in jobs they enjoyed with congenial co-workers often came to regard their workplace as a second home and their co-workers as a second family - or even a first family if they had no family or friends living nearby! Pre- social distancing, your office or cubicle might be cramped but at least you could personalize what little space you had, with a few photos of the kids or other significant mementos of your life outside of work. Now, those returning to the office are faced with a soulless "hoteling" culture with generic little boxes or cubicles "depersonalized" to remove all hints of their former occupants.

I guess the jury is still out on the future of work and the future of the workplace. I began my career when everyone was predicting the great leisure society. It's said that no one on their deathbed says they wish they'd spent more time at the office. But what if your office is now your home and your home is your office? What if, after retirement, you can no longer access the personal and community resources you need to live and thrive in that home? Then maybe you move from home to A (LTC) Home and the downward spiral may already be underway. What does that say about our society?

It doesn't have to be like that, of course. There's no one-size-fits-all solution for all people or all families. And Long Term Care homes and Retirement Homes are all over the map when it comes to quality, comfort and suitability for the individual resident. But let's remember that we're dealing with people here - the ones who live, feel dawn, see sunset glow... not just Full Time Equivalents (past, present or future) or dependency ratios!