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February 11, 2021,
It is the new normal.
At least for now and probably in the upcoming months. Most likely years.
Working from home is a current reality.
According to cnbc.com, “Working remotely is more popular than ever before. One Gallup survey found that 43% of Americans work from home occasionally. That’s up from 39% of those who did in 2012. And according to Quartz, U.S. Census data indicates that 5.2% of U.S. workers completely worked at home in 2017 — that’s about 8 million people.”
Due to the recent Coronavirus outbreak, more and more, we are all becoming part of that statistic.
As reported at mercurynews.com, “San Francisco mobile payments giant Square will let employees work from home permanently after coronavirus restrictions are lifted, the company said Monday.
The move follows a similar policy announced last week by Twitter, the other San Francisco firm led by CEO Jack Dorsey. The social media company told workers they could do their jobs remotely “forever” if they wished and their positions allowed for it.”
For those of us who have done it for years, as you might guess, there are pros and cons to working from home.
Let’s start with the few negatives which are truly subjective in matter.
The first is that you don’t get to socialize like you did when you worked for a large organization. If you are young, that could be a big deal.
From at least two aspects.
If you love to people watch, especially romantically, there is no better place than probably sitting in a mall or on bench in a city plaza.
Yes, we know that you should keep your mind on work but most of us, even if we don’t act upon it, love to look at a gorgeous body.
Just don’t act on it. Unless they come on to you first.
The second aspect is related to the first.
More and more it is becoming difficult to truly meet and connect with people and what better place than someone who you have sacrificed with, brain stormed with, shared company lunches with and perhaps private conversations too.
We know someone in our circle who fell deeply in love with a co-worker and his love interest was intrigued and flirted with him and they often had lunch together. It never really went anywhere since he was married and she was in love with someone else.
Where was her real love interest?
In the office too.
That is how powerful the work place is once you graduate from high school or college. Your social circle massively shrinks.
Never knew how great we had it when we had access to such a large population in those school settings.
Another challenge with working from home is that you must be self-motivated. It is critical because there is no supervisor standing over you.
Beyond that, since we have extensively worked from home ourselves, we can’t see many negatives.
You will need to purchase your office products but even that is not extensive and your employer may even pay for some of it.
Now the benefits.
They are tremendous.
If you are self-motivated then you can begin to set your own hours as to when you desire to work. Not everyone is wired for the 9-5 structure. Personally we hated it. You can now find your peak working hours and believe it or not, for some of us who have been writers for years, that could be at 2am in the morning.
You can work after waking up and get some prime efforts in until you get sleepy or want to watch television. Get some exercise too.
Then there is that darn freeway.
So glad that is over.
Fighting snarled traffic and angry motorists can be a nightmare. No more extensive commutes. Stuck in hot cars on 100 degree days. You absolutely save money on gas and automotive repairs.
That can be huge.
We can remember easily shelling out over $200 a month just in commute gas alone and that was in almost a decade ago dollars. The repairs were another expensive matter.
Get this statistic and this one surprised us. The Census Bureau estimates that in 2018, employees who worked at home out-earned those who walked, drove, carpooled, or took public transportation to get to work.
Their information went on to say that the median earnings for a person who works from home were $42,442 in 2018, which was far above the median earnings for all workers which were closer to $38,184.
Median earnings were $21,752 for those who walked to work, $40,184 for those who drove, $30,338 for those who carpooled and $40,519 for those who took public transportation.
We don’t know about you but we really hated taking mass transit to work. There was crowding, sneezing, sometimes even fighting on public transportation. We don’t miss that at all.
Eating is more enjoyable because you can pick the times to eat when you are hungry. Who says that everyone should eat at noon or 1pm? Too, your food costs go down dramatically because you are not outside purchasing lunch which over time can become fairly costly.
Dressing down or working in your most relaxing clothes can be nice. You don’t have a dress code there. You set up your own dress code. Very nice.
You can create an environment that you love.
No more annoying co-workers who made your life miserable and brought a lot of anger into it.
When a friend worked at a large media company, he worked in a cubicle with other co-workers one foot away and there was no windows. Did that for years. How miserable.
Now you can set your work station up by a window and design the environment that you love.
As far as naps or taking breaks and for how long, that is completely up to you.
If you have children you can teach them from home and have your schedule revolve around their needs. All of that picking them up from school and once again, fighting traffic, is a thing of the past.
Then there are the doctor and dentist appointments. Instead of having to coordinate all of that around your co-worker’s schedules, you can pick the appointment time that best suits your needs and when traffic is the lightest.
Above all, you will sense an increase in your personal power and abilities if you are self-motivated and take it seriously. Your overtime is your own choice.
While we miss the social aspects of working around others at a large company, we’ve tried to imitate that in other ways like going to the gym or getting more involved in neighborhood activities including working with the board on their HOA committee.
Is working from home for everyone?
Nothing in the world is for everyone. That is why we are all unique. Still, like so many choices in life, you have to ascertain if the benefits outweigh the detriments.
Given the current pandemic that is sweeping the globe, our options to not work from home appear to be shrinking.
Maybe that is a good thing.
For the environment for certain.
Hopefully for us too.
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