Covid Chronicles: Oh So You Thought You Were Just Gonna Work From Home?
Look. I don’t have any kids. I don’t have a spouse or a live-in significant other or even a roommate. I have earned the right to be free of such encumbrances.
“This is a total change to our lives. It’s surreal.”
So all I know about the experiences that working parents with kids are having during the Covid-19 shutdown is through first- and second-hand accounts from my coworkers and friends.
One of my coworkers confessed today:
“Everyone at my house is stressed.” She doesn’t trust her two boys to go off on their own because they don’t get along and they have the shaky reasoning and judgment of pre-pubescent males. Her husband is getting irritated, even though he agreed to cover the kids while she attends to her work day. “This is not just working from home,”she laments. “This is a total change to our lives. It’s surreal.”
Things are slower. Priorities are different. You have been impacted.
On a regular work day, you’re focused on a variety of relationships - with your colleagues, your boss, your staff, the lady in the lunchroom. Your spouse and kids are in the background. They wait until you get home. You carve out space for them at the end of your work day, to make sure you give them the time and energy they deserve.
source: The New Yorker
Now that you are at home, this all has to shift. Your coworkers and all of those interactions are in the background. Your family and housemates are in the foreground. The people at your job may not only need to recognize that you are human, but that they are too.
Hell, you may even be having a hard time coming to that realization.
“The shape of work is changing… and it won’t be coming back.”
Another of my coworkers who has a toddler, has a block of time on her calendar titled, ‘toddler time’ (she uses her baby’s name instead). Not only has she prioritized and protected that precious time, now, when I look at her calendar, I’m aware of what’s really important to her, or at least, of what she needs to do to make her day work for her and the people she lives with.
As a single person with no kids, my work-from-home adjustment hasn’t been the same as my coworkers’, but it has come with its own challenges. Yes - all my snacks are my own to eat; No - I don’t have to worry about somebody doing or saying something weird in the background of a work call I’m on, nor do I have to feed, educate or entertain anyone in my household.
But, I am the only pair of hands in my house. Which means all of the extra work of work - the 9-to-5 days that are now more like 8-to-10, plus all the extra work of home - cooking multiple meals a day, doing dishes, grocery shopping, laundry, grooming, yardwork - are now mine and only mine to do.
Adjustments have definitely been made.
Kisha Solomon is an Atlanta-based writer, knowledge worker and serial expat. She writes witty, poignant stories about the lessons she’s learned from her life, work and travels. She deals with the sometimes frustrating and often humorous side effects of being black, female and nerdy. When she’s not writing working or travelling, you can find her in deep conversation with herself or her four-legged familiar, Taurus the Cat. www.lifeworktravels.com
