Man Awakes From Six-Month Work-From-Home Slumber
A suburban man exited his house on September 15, 2020 after a languid six-month work-from-home spell as he heard the diesel engine of school buses barreling down the road and the loud chatter of kids walking to school. Sounds he’d not heard since earlier this year, around the second week of March.
Carrying a mug of coffee, brewed right there at home — a morning custom he’d become very good at over the past six months along with other liberating exercises such as peeing with the bathroom door open, forcibly farting out loud just because he could, and eating peanut butter out of the jar with his finger — he nonchalantly picks his wedge, steps out from his front door and curiously surveys the neighborhood scene. The voices of kids he’d heard were those of his own. “Oh yeah,” he recalls, “I guess they were starting that back up again today.”
“That” being school, of course, and it made him wonder, was he too supposed to go somewhere on this particular sunny day.
Should I be going to work? he thought. If yes, what time would I leave? How do I even get there? Do the people I work with still work in the same building? Odd thoughts maybe, but perfectly logical to a human who feels as if he’s been trapped in the Twilight Zone, where his entire company has continued operating, business as usual, while he has been the only one working at home.This is not the case. But then again, how could he be so sure? His wife, whose occupation is on some level deemed “essential”, continues to leave the house for work every day.
At times he’s wondered if, in this weird time in his life, he might be the star of some new version of The Truman Show. But as he debates this possibility with himself in his head, and how absurd the thought of starring in a reality “movie” is, he realizes it is only adding to the absurdity that he had this thought to begin with...because who holds an in-depth conversation with themself about the absurdity of a situation in their head. Isn’t that itself absurd? Was he trying to change his own mind? Or convince himself he was right? This is, after all, a person who convinced himself that living off South Shore bar pizza for the month of April was a reasonable move in an effort to save the local economy. It didn’t take long for absurd behavior to settle in at the outset of the pandemic.
Steering back from this slight distraction, he looks out into the neighborhood and senses a familiar feeling in the air. The sky is a crisp blue. The trees are covered with green. Yes, it could be mid-September. But wait, it could be mid-May. It could be what the fuck.
Did I shower today? he wonders. Wait, did I shower yesterday? Have I showered this week? How long have I been wearing this underwear? More questions arise as he wonders if the street light out front is really a television camera.
Realizing it’s not his turn to resume the work routine from a year ago, he retreats inside to his familiar corner of the house and flips open his laptop. He stares blankly at the screen, and despite having just eaten a hearty breakfast about 17 minutes ago, he goes to the kitchen cupboard, opens it, and stares blankly into the cupboard. It’s too early for Doritos. But a handful of peanuts sounds good. And maybe a Fig Newton. Maybe two Fig Newtons. Damn, those Fig Newtons are good. Maybe just one more Fig Newton. And a glass of water.
He returns to the laptop. As he takes his familiar seat at his makeshift home-office space, he realizes he left his glass of water on the kitchen counter. He returns to the kitchen to retrieve the glass of water. And one more Fig Newton. He returns to his laptop.
In desperate need of some inspiration, he decides that facebook sounds like a good place to start the day. Within seconds, he realizes facebook is not a good place to start the day. Linked In sounds like a better option. And it’s practically work. He contemplates taking Linked In’s advice of “congratulating” a person in his network on their recent work anniversary. But realizing he has no idea if that person still works at that company they are supposedly celebrating their anniversary at, he decides against the congratulatory “thumbs up” click. Because if that person does not still work there, that would be incredibly awkward. He goes back to facebook and immediately remembers he was just on, and left facebook, and for good reason.
His wife texts to remind him that their kids will be returning at lunch time to resume the second part of their school day from home. The man feels his space closing in on him. I have to share my work space? I don’t share my work space. This is MY work space.
Sure, the kids have been home from school for as long as he’s been working remotely. But in the spring, things felt more like an extended snow day that just happened to last for a couple months. And the summer was that three-month span where everyone pretended there was no pandemic. They were out and about. Out of his domain. But the thought of cooler mornings, shorter days...he feels the walls closing in on him.
The text from his wife ends with a request to fold the laundry in the dining room. He shuffles into the dining room and sizes up the pile of laundry in the basket. Out of good conscience, he refuses to fold the laundry feeling it would be inappropriate to do so on what is technically “company time”. So he returns to his laptop, fires up google chrome, and checks the weather forecast for the upcoming weekend. It looks promising. He runs through a list of yard work in his head that would be enjoyable to accomplish in such pleasant weather. None of it will get done.
Noticing he has a Zoom meeting on the calendar at one o’clock later that afternoon, the man starts to reprioritize his morning by putting the search for the perfect Zoom spot in his home at the top of the “to do” list. Picking an area from which to take a Zoom meeting in the home becomes a stressful project now that he will be competing with kids. Just a week ago, he had free range of his domain. A dirty dish or unfluffed pillow could easily be hidden from view by the slight angle adjustment of his laptop. But now, there could be background noise from two teenagers to contend with. And teenagers are unpredictable. Meltdowns from toddlers are acceptable. Meltdowns from teenagers, though just as frequent, raise signals of maladjustment and failing parents to those on the sidelines. Even though we’re in a fucking pandemic.
So he must find a quiet place. A quiet place that doesn’t scream, “I’m taking this zoom from the linen closet.” The background will be just as scrutinized by his coworkers, if not more, than the toothpaste stain on his t-shirt, his unshaven face, and his wispy, thinning hair that has not been cut since February. Wherever he sets up, he must ensure there is no chipped paint on the walls behind him, no dust on the blinds, and nothing too personal that will let any coworkers virtually too far into his home. It must be the ideal background that says, “they have a nice home and cool shit”, while also fending off any background noise of teenage meltdowns or the new Pop Smoke single.
But then, a larger issue than video backgrounds surfaces.
The COVID-19 summer of 2020 was a constant battle of Wi-Fi production complaints from the younger ranks. They dug in hard early on, making a ploy to have the family invest in broadband improvements to the home’s internet structure that they felt would rectify the constant “glitching” and “lagging” that were hampering epic late-night runs on XBox.
But instead of heeding their advice and listening to their pleas for help in desperate calls, such as “Our Wi-Fi sucks!” and “Comcast is stupid!”, the man chose to lecture about the Atari 2600’s 8-bit technology he adapted to in the early 80s with no “pausing” or “saving progress” of games. Assuring the less elder that if he survived a youth of “Pong” and “Space Invaders”, they too could handle a little “glitching” and “lagging”.
What he neglected to consider was how the competing Zoom meetings, google classroom access, and switching back and forth between the eight different platforms he’s required to log in and out of throughout the day for work would divide the 150 megabits per second their router was supposedly able to handle.
And like sanitizer, Lysol wipes, and toilet paper back in April, and bicycles and trampolines in June, back-to-school items like desks and Wi-Fi boosters are the “tickle-me-elmos” of the fall of 2020.
And seriously, who ever really wanted to tickle Elmo anyway?
The man realizes that if there’s ever a moment to avoid as a parent, it’s creating an “I told you so” moment for kids when they’re old enough to realize, “they told you so”. If he had only listened to their suggestion for better Wi-Fi. The big lecture in June did nothing but break two rules he’d set for himself as a parent: never attempt to teach a lesson starting with “when I was kid…”, and don’t diminish the needs of children, no matter how trivial, just because they’re coming from children.
And as the stress of the situation mounts, he decides that he will handle it as he has handled most work-related problems he’s faced since working from home in March, by heading back into the kitchen for another Fig Newton.
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