How are you doing? Are you comfortable there on your couch, taking on another workday with your computer—and maybe the family pet—resting on your lap? Or maybe you’re at your kitchen table, working amongst the remnants of your family’s breakfast. Or if you're lucky, perhaps you're at a desk in the back room, two monitors giving you a panoramic view of the growing number of open tasks still in progress. You’ve got your Zoom background to hide the mess behind you, but you’ve had to duck out of a meeting more than once to take care of a screaming child. Welcome to the world of tomorrow, today.
Across the United States, employers and employees alike are trying to figure out what working from home long term is going to mean, not just in a logistical sense but in a human one. Our workspaces, for those of us lucky enough to be able to take them with us, have blended into our homes, and our officemates replaced by our families, roommates, and pets. A dizzying change that happened all at once from coast to coast, the delineation between on and off the clock has eroded into almost nothing. The nine-to-five becomes more of a general guideline than anything else, because if you’re not in the office, you cannot stop your life from breaking in. Even your cat attends your meetings, demanding to rest front and center on the warmth of your keyboard.
Once upon a time, you worked solely in an office. Perhaps it had a break room and provided free coffee. It certainly provided you with office supplies and an environment conducive to focus and creativity; if nothing else, it removed you from unfolded laundry, the mess in the kitchen, the garbage waiting by the door, and your bored, energetic children. But now, distractions abound, and you’ve had to learn not only a new way to work, but a new way to be at work, cobbling together a semblance of a workspace while cursing your slow internet connection. This is not what your job was supposed to be.