Remote Control??
- wordsnerds00
- Jul 14
- 7 min read
Updated: Jul 15
In March of 2020, those of us who were not deemed “essential", were all sent home from our offices, schools and places of work for what we thought would be 2 weeks to quarantine and mitigate a deadly pandemic. The 19th coronavirus would turn out to be a history-making event, contributing to an untimely death for ~7M people worldwide and impacting every area of our lived experience.
As irony would have it, just a few months prior to the madness, I accepted a new job,“working from home” for a small tech company based out of Philadelphia. Everyone in my circle, including myself, kept sharing their surprise by my new choice to work remotely. In traditional office environments, I typically played the role of social director. I took pride in bringing groups together, building culture and having focused 1:1 time, sitting across from my colleagues while building a strong relationship. Remote working would make those efforts a little harder, but at the time, I was indifferent about the change. During the first few months, (Nov-March) before COVID, I was traveling a lot, including to our office in Philly, so I didn’t notice a major difference. Suddenly, In March, a new office mate (my husband), sent home with the rest of the world, moved into my space. It was not long after that I learned exactly what kind of chaos was in store for me.
At first, my husband and I created structure and established an unwritten code of ethics that seemed too easy. I would work upstairs, while he stayed in the dining room. Our home was big enough to spread out, so we didn’t irritate or distract each other during meetings. On most days, he kindly brought me lunch to my desk, which happened exactly zero times with my former co-workers in an office. Despite the world outside our 4 walls being in turmoil, we started off pretty strong together. This will always be a moment in time I wish I could have frozen. Sadly, nothing lasts forever, including my marriage. The transition from a stressful day at the office into my home was now 30 seconds or less. I never fully appreciated the natural benefits of an hour-long commute. We collect pressure and stress from our jobs and our ability to detach from those emotions at home is acutely critical. In September 2021, thirteen months after this new way of working, my relationship with my husband John would end. And while my divorce was partially a by-product of this era, it’s not what this article is about. My reader will simply have to wait for that article resembling a modern day “War of the Roses” vibe, and I’m 100% Kathleen Turner. Over time, I have met so many people who say, “COVID wasn’t the cause of my divorce, it just accelerated it”.
As a proud, card-carrying member of GenX, my communications with both parents was built largely on non-verbal language and assumptions. We were known as the “out of sight, out of mind” kids and the majority of our adults did not TALK much with their kids, certainly not about their feelings. Because of this, I aspired to a different life as an adult, forming greater depth in relationships with “non-family members”. Somehow, I believed this game of “guess the emotion” would stay isolated within my family. It would become a nostalgic tradition, played at Thanksgiving, like Monopoly or UNO. The reality is non-verbal communication is a critical skill to navigating and quite frankly, surviving business. I recall sitting in conference rooms as leaders shared information with their teams. If the content was sensitive or controversial in nature, it was professionally life-saving to scan the room noting the supporters vs the detractors based on the involuntary body language around me. Similarly, social gatherings and happy hours that came along with office culture provided a strategic edge assisting mobility, recognition and team strengthening.
Prior to COVID and practically in concert, we all left our homes, endured our commute, and went to work approximately 8-10 hours every day playing a slightly different version of ourselves. Most of us even had entirely separate wardrobes purchased for the office, just as flat and boring as the furniture scattered throughout the common areas. And yet, we still showed up every day until we found a new job at a different company to start this cycle all over again. When changing jobs and relocating to a new office, we got a unique chance to revisit our style or approach and decide which parts to keep. This opportunity to do a full reset on how others’ view us, was a type of personality amnesty that I wished for as a child but was never granted.
After the sobering reality set in and most of us adjusted to the idea that things would forever be different, the waves began to crash. Stuffy dress clothes and business suits quickly became pajama bottoms or sweat pants. The public lunchroom was now the same dirty kitchen you walked away from after breakfast. “After work” social events quickly transformed into a solo glass of wine at 3pm…..then just weeks later, a bottle at 1pm. The need to suppress your reactions and personal feelings to avoid alienation at the office was no longer as important. Now we have mute buttons and the ability to turn our computer camera on/off. For some, an 8 hour work day was now 10-15 sets of 20 minute work periods, with large gaps of personal time in between. We divided ourselves into two groups of Splitters and Blenders. Splitters prefer very clear boundaries between personal/professional lives while Blenders, like me, are more comfortable with an integrated approach.
Speaking of integration, those that had children, now had officemates who lacked boundaries and structure that was previously being monitored by teachers in daycare or school. Sadly, those of us who didn’t have children weren’t 100% immune. We had to tolerate those new office mates as well, pretending they were adorable when they interrupted meetings or made unexpected cameos. We even got to see how our colleagues decorated their homes and in some cases, how they DIDN’T!! In the prior world, the one we just departed, I didn’t even know half of my co-workers' significant others' names. Now, I was being bombarded with personal information and details that I didn’t know how to accommodate in my mind.
In a recent article by Gallup titled, The Post Pandemic Workplace: The Experiment Continues, researchers found that civility at work was declining at a rapid pace, eroding engagement of employees. The overall feeling of disrespect or being undervalued had fallen to historic lows. “Remote-capable workers forced back on-site reported the largest decline in feeling respected, dropping from 46% to 35% in 2022.”
Alternatively, for some stakeholders, studies report positive growth and productivity as a result of the shifting remote workplace. In a 2024 publication by the The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: The total factor productivity growth over the 2019-2022 measurement period is positively associated with the rise in remote workers across 61 different industries. The productivity gains accrued to businesses, however, did not result in increased compensation to workers. Whether you felt undervalued or newly productive, there wasn’t much debate, we all felt different. Everyone wanted answers, direction or guidance on how to navigate this new world. For many, the question was simple, “how long will this last?”
Now, almost 5 years later, I am personally looking for answers to a new set of questions. How did something originally intended to be a short term avoidance of disease transmission, quickly become “Day One” of an entirely new world order? Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to imagine the December 2019 version of “me” being told this story as his inevitable future. In every vision, my former self simply laughs it off as a defected fortune cookie or a terrible joke. The punchline turned out to be a lot stickier than I imagined. Was my former world, lit with ambient lighting and built with straw house relationships, merely a stage? After heavy distillation, my previous definition of a “normal workplace” resembles more of the stages I acted on as a youth and less an organization for adult livelihood. If normal is an ever shifting concept, how will I ever adjust? With defiant optimism, I’ve come to accept my only mission is to phase out the concept of “normal” all together. I’ve incorporated a personal mantra that when we keep our expectations loosely defined, our results feel more powerful.
Whether you “split” or “blend”, wear pants or take the risk, my hope is that everyone discovers something dramatically new about themself. Perhaps you reacquaint yourself with a part of you that was intentionally left at home M-F, behind the locked door, in the prior world. Even though the working world was altered for generations, maybe “we” don’t have to be. When I made the decision to name this article (Remote Control) as a way to understand this shift in the workplace, I was envisioning the standard buttons associated with most remote control devices. With the last 5 years in hindsight, which button would you push, if you had the choice? Rewind, Pause, Play or Fast Forward? My only recommendation here is to avoid the STOP button, it gets dark fast.
Was it all worth it? What will the social ripple effect from this global shift create? How will the new ways in which we “clock in” impact the world we had built to enjoy once we “clock out”? Will we all show up at work as more authentic humans, or will our personal lives become as rigid and toxic as the cubicle farms we used to occupy. For me, I’ve learned a lot about myself during this time. I’ve learned I can still be productive and possibly more creative. I’ve accepted the reality that the 9-5 illusion never truly existed. At work, I care less about what click of friends I want to join and more about my impact. But most of all, I’ve learned that no matter how obvious the button, how many times we forget or are reminded by other meeting attendees, we will always forget to take ourselves off mute prior to speaking……and maybe that’s a good thing.
“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven’t.”
— Thomas A. Edison
Works Cited:
Harter, Jim/Wigert, Ben: The Post Pandemic Workplace: The Experiment Continues. https://www.gallup.com/workplace/657629/post-pandemic-workplace-experiment-continues.aspx
Wulff, Sabrina/Janocha Redmond, Jill: The rise in remote work since the pandemic and its impact on productivity.
Comments