TemiO: Before You Complain About Working From Home

Whether your city is on a total lockdown or there is a strict curfew, the Covid-19 pandemic has affected everyone one way or another. This is especially true for the labour market.

Employers who were once averse to their employees working from home have had to (stubbornly) agree to remote working.

To many employees, remote working used to be the grass on the other side that looked greener. Now, it has become the gift that keeps on giving and we seem to have had enough! Who can blame us? Employers have taken this opportunity to request for meetings and reports whenever they feel like and this has made us work round the clock. PHCN operations are skeletal (as per usual), there is a constant struggle for internet bandwidth with tik-tok’ers that are preoccupied with all forms of challenges and for the parents, the children are a lot to handle.

Whilst these challenges are all valid and can make working from home very challenging, let’s not be too quick to forget the struggles we encounter anytime we step out of our house to work.

Traffic

It looks like Lagos workers have forgotten so soon the pepper that Monday morning traffic showed them. You forget that deceptive feeling at the end of a day that makes you feel you are the most hardworking person, meanwhile, it is traffic that has you so fagged out. The kind of traffic that will leave you wishing you had a magic wand or a private jet to wish it all away. Let’s all remember that waking up at 4am or leaving the office at 9pm just to beat traffic is not something to be missed at all!

Sunday Scaries/Monday blues

Anyone else notice that Mondays are not so scary anymore? Sunday nights are also a little bit less depressing without the thought of the horrid Monday morning traffic or the never-ending meetings. The fact that all days are now muddled up into ‘yesterday, today and tomorrow’ also helps.

Fugitive lifestyle

‘Fugitive – a person in hiding’.

Let’s be honest, isn’t that what we all are in the office premises? Sneaking to watch Skinny Girl in Transit using office Wi-Fi or replying that recruiter’s message on LinkedIn. Not forgetting the many times we have snuck out of the office even though it was past official closing hours. Now, there’s no need to quickly close that tab when you see your line manager approach. You are free like a bird!

Leeches (‘a person who sponges on others’)

The gateman at the office that strangely knows when it is salary day, the police man at the roundabout, the office assistant that helps you buy lunch with the expectation of a tip, remember them? On average, at least one of these people will locate you in a week and bore a hole in your pocket. Now, all that you should worry about bleeding you dry is DATA! (seriously, Nigerian network providers, when are you going to be like your mates abroad and #CutDataPrices?)

Remote working is likely to become a key feature of the new world order once the pandemic is over, so we must all adjust accordingly. A recollection of the experiences that are not to be missed in our daily commute to work could make working from home even more pleasurable.