-“Doctor…Our bosses pretend to put the genie back into the bottle—too late.”
Dianne X. is a successful, qualified professional of the Commercial Real estate industry that has been working in a hybrid form for two years already. Out of the blue she received a memo last week that all personnel should report back to the office in July. She has earned her right to work from home three days per week and only report to the office two days to attend meetings, courses, train the rookies and show properties. She has voiced her opposition to management’s Orwellian demand to give up her hard-earned privilege and she has received the solidarity of many of her colleagues.
If the myopic honchos, that fill the top-heavy management of Corporate America, harbor the illusion that they can corral all women back into their holding pens, they got a Big Surprise coming their way.
There is a significant difference between the concept of Home Office and Working from Home, which most of us have been practicing even before the pandemic struck. In order to engage in a Home Office set-up you need two elements to play:
- Specialized equipment for use at your residence and good connectivity.
- Focused strategy to maximize your efficiency while working alone.
What most people did doing the pandemic is much more modest proposition dubbed as Working from Home, which only entailed basic equipment and enthusiasm. But slowly and steadily the “home-stayers” learned daily, with its difficulties, how to work and produce meaningful results for their employers while being at home. Slowly a culture of trust spawned as the employees learned that it was in their best interests to keep the wheels of commerce running to the satisfaction of employers. The traditional bureaucratic arrangements in companies sought to control the employees by always “keeping an eye” on their subjects’ use of time. However, that tight supervision never prevented employees to check their personal emails at work, spending took much time at the water cooler to gossip and to stealthily take time off.
Moreover some people were never comfortable in the office settings to begin with. Minorities and Women may feel “out of place” in an environment still largely run by older white men that have a tough time understanding their very special needs. Individuals with young children at home love the idea of sharing parenting duties. To dispel the widely held belief that people working from home are loafers that use paid time to engage in personal activities and not the business of the corporations, a recent study showed that individuals working at home spend on average 48 more minutes per day on their work duties. Freed from the travails of grooming themselves and enduring large commuting times to their offices, they are much more efficient.
An interesting phenomenon dubbed as Nightshift means that when dinner is ready at your home, you interrupt your work for an hour to share the meal with your family. But oftentimes, the employees do not go with their kindred to watch a Netflix series at the living room and instead eagerly resume their tasks at their working stations.
If any of these so called Masters of the Universe harbor any illusion that they can just crack the whip like in the good old times (before the pandemic) and millions of ladies doing a delicate balancing act by combining work and family needs in a hybrid work environment, will stand up in attention like a meerkat family in the Serengeti plains…well, they are in for the rudest awakening of their lives. Instead of hoarding more mola, you should date more ladies. Or you can make it easier for your limited manly brains and read our new book Emotional Frustration – the Hushed Plague to gently, slowly imbibe your underdeveloped minds with the secret workings of the feminine psyche.
Wake up, you dummies!!!
Stay distant. Stay safe. Stay beautiful.
What do you think? Please tell us.
Don’t leave me alone.
