The commute is much better. But what the positive work from home propaganda fails to mention is how much it sucks. It's boring and lonely. It eats your soul. Because your workmates aren't there.
Workmates are the best mates. Employment brings people from all walks of life together to pursue a common good. Working from home takes away much of what makes your working life great.
Where are the coffee trips, lunches and after-work beers? Where are the jokes and the ribbing? You are just a cog in the wheel at home. More robot than human. Sitting at your stupid laptop in your lame front room at your horrible home desk on your own looking at your stupid lawn.
My lawn really needs a mow - It's an hour later. I got distracted by my lawn and mowed it. These are the kinds of distractions you don't get in the office.
Your workmates are your pack. A vicious group of bloodthirsty wolves on the hunt. Running wild and free together. Chasing down prey together. Be it sales, productivity targets or catching criminals (if you are cool enough to be a police officer). You know your place in the pack. Maybe you're upfront. Maybe you are in the middle. But you are running together. You know which way to go.
Every day your work pack catch and kill metaphorical elk, caribou, deer and moose, sheep or even salmon. Do you want to be there with your mates when you pull the beast to the ground or at home by yourself staring at a screen? The work from home guy doesn't get to tear the throat out of their prey. They don't get all bloody with the alpha. Sure they can watch it on a screen or get a txt that explodes into balloons. But where's the visceral thrill of the business kill?
The workplace is more than a workplace. It's a war room, a club rooms, it's half of your life. When you aren't killing metaphorical prey It's also a great place to find love.
A Vault Survey from 2019 found 58 per cent of American workers have engaged in some kind of office romance.
Some 38 per cent of long-term relationships are work-related. You get to know someone over time.
You warm to people around the office then one day - boom, you get married. Look at Pam and Jim in The Office or Tim and Dawn in the UK Office.
How about April and Andy in Parks and Recreation ? These stories are happening for real across New Zealand workplaces every day.
It's wholesome and awesome. Mostly. Sometimes it's an HR disaster. It can be creepy. But that's all part of the rich tapestry of the workplace. Better than what's happening in the home office. I don't want to get into the type of love most work from home people find. Let's just say it's not super-productive.
Maybe working from home cuts costs. Maybe fewer germs get spread. Maybe there's a little less pollution in the air. It makes sense for many.
Artists, writers, property flickers. If it works for you then great. But for the rest of us, there is more to work than work.
Work is a big part of our lives. Our workmates are life partners. They are our pack. Part of our support network. Let's not give up the office too easily. Because a place of employment is really a place of workmates and who doesn't want to hang out with mates 10 hours a day?
