RDP Wednesday: FLIPPANT

I have read a few articles about people who want to continue to work from home and they have made interesting points.

They’ve put forward reasons for working from home like:

it’s better for the environment because there are less cars on the road. They have more time with their families, they don’t have to waste money on expensive work clothes and they don’t have to deal with workplace drama. It’s obvious- the old school work environment was a trap and a prison and boomers are just to stupid to pull themselves out of it. But times have changed so keep up!

I have a hard time wrapping my arms around some of the points because they come across as flippant.

The reality is, giving up two trips a day in your car when you now have time to ‘run errands ‘ isn’t really doing much to help the environment and it certainly doesn’t do much to reduce the number of cars on the road.

Maybe some people do spend time with their families when they are working from home and in some cases I  know it does ease the burden on daycare costs but I doubt if anyone is going back to the days when Ma and Pa sat in front of the hearth in rocking chairs and their children sat around their feet reading books and playing with their toys. So what does the modern version of family time look like? Everyone sitting in the same room all day and staring into their phones and laptops? That doesn’t sound like quality time to me. That’s  sounds like how I spend my time when my train is slow or I’m stuck at the airport.

As far as workplace drama- yeah, that’s moved from the Office to social media so I’m not sure why  that even comes up.

As far as the cost of your clothes- come on. I think it actually comes down to being able to wear what you want, which is something you can’t do in a workplace environment. Like it or not there is always a ‘uniform ‘ of sorts. In case you’ve lost sight of the fact- pajamas and ‘comfortable clothes ‘ are a uniform too.

Snark and quips aside,  I would argue that it IS possible to go out into the world  where your workplace is. People do it everyday. They manage the transportation, the costs, they use their social skills ( to various degrees of success ) to deal with their co-workers, their clients and their customers.

Arguing that ‘the world has changed’ isn’t really an excuse for insisting your company  allow you to work from home. The world has not changed. It’s changed for some of us and as for the rest of us it’s moving along the way it always has.

I’d rather be part of  the world- for all of it’s problems then to just Zoom in now and again.