Have a Lovely Weekend.

As a librarian I have to thank you for this sweet comment. Fills my cup. Know that they truly miss you too. Xx

Yes! A caste system is forming. Nancy Pelosi, for instance, hosted a dinner recently and every guest was unmasked while members of the “waitstaff” were all masked. The divide is glaring!

L, thank you so much for this. This is so important to name! There is an inherent privilege that often goes unrecognized for those with the opportunity or sometimes choice to work from home.

I’d love to see a feature on this divide, too, CoJ team! And thank you for your important work as a librarian, L.

Yup. You really hit the nail on the head. I know it was an innocuous little comment about a sweater, but life for those of us who have been working in person is very different then those who are working from home. We have a different experience in this pandemic…

I hear where you’re coming from – because sectors like education and health end up being the last to adapt to sea changes because they’re so integrated into our government – but to ignore or shame the fact that there has been an enormous shift in our entire culture to working independently from home (for better or worse) just feels antagonistic.

Anna that has nothing to do with anything. We have had friends marry during the pandemic and it was the same set up. Servers wear masks while guests who are eating don’t wear masks. And that’s all it was nothing to read into.

I totally agree. A “divide” really is happening.

Thanks, L. I’m currently on maternity leave and for the first time I’m seeing what this work from home thing is about. Not that I’m actually working right now, but watching my husband take a couple of steps to his “office”, having the flexibility to take a couple of minutes out “to see to the baby”, splitting his paternity leave into half days so he could maximise it and yet reply to emails since work doesn’t stop even when you’re on leave… I dread going back to work. 6 day work weeks in a hospital with an infant at home. I’m spending this time looking and applying for jobs so I might not have to do that indefinitely.

Eliza, I’m sure you didn’t mean your comment to be hurtful, but those of us who have been working on the ground for the past 18 months are feeling so sensitive to this stuff. To imply that folks in sectors like health care and education are in-person and not keeping up with societal change because of the slow pace of bureaucracy and not because, y’know, a patient can’t be intubated via Zoom is pretty callous. Sure, there’s been a cultural shift toward at-home, independent work…for highly paid white collar workers, who are already disproportionately represented in media. It’s important to share alternative narratives.

This comment and the responses are interesting and I agree a separate post could be worthwhile. I have been mostly WFH – academia. In my field, because students are adults, at home learning is a lot easier than say K-8. But it is still very much not the same and I feel the loss on both my teaching side and their learning/experience side.
One other thing I would add is that I generally disagree that there is a 1:1 socioeconomic divide happening between WFH/not WFH. While yes service jobs are generally lower-paid than non-service jobs, plenty of professions that can only be done in person are highly paid and equally essential. Want to build a rocket engine? You kind of have to be there. Brain surgery? likewise.

@Vanessa, I know your comment was casual, but I just wanted to underscore that point that if you just had a baby and are at home caring for them you are totally working! Just because you love your job does not mean it is not still work. It is and you, and your husband especially, must recognize and acknowledge that going forward.

Lainey, I’m really sorry that came off as callous. I guess I’m just saddled with my own frustration because I have had to work from home (in not a high-paying role – I’m in administration in healthcare) and it’s come with its own negative mental health implications for me at least. Sometimes it feels nice for people to still acknowledge the huge shift this was for everyone in a small way. I used to teach elementary school so I understand that certain jobs will always be in person, but I guess I just think it’s not so black and white when it comes to working from home means you’re a highly paid white-collar worker (which I am definitely not)

I agree with Eliza. Why be so sensitive to something so innocuous when it will only serve to upset you? Perhaps just read references to “working from home” as “working from anywhere.” Many of us are indeed working from home, and it has been a huge shift, so the recognition of this shift is important.

It was really affirming to see these comments here, although Joanna’s description of the item as a WFH item didn’t bother me. It’s just nice to hear from others who aren’t living this dreamy life at home with their Peloton and homemade bread and endless free time. I am a teacher who has been back in school since August 2020 and the last school year took a dramatic toll on my well being. It’s jarring to experience and process that alongside some people gloating that the last year was the best of their lives. There clearly has to be a world in which some people report to work in person and some people work from home. That’s fine! But the narrative about the WFH shift is typically presented in a way that feels really tone deaf and insensitive given what essential/frontline workers have had to endure for the last year and a half… and it’s not over yet. I would love to see a thoughtful exploration of how to navigate this in a way that allows some people to celebrate what appears to be a silver lining of the pandemic while not alienating the people who don’t have that.

I’m a work from home, corporate mother, who went from being told you couldn’t have children in the home while working, to being trapped with them and carrying on as normal. Nothing ever slowed down since we worked from home. The only habits I picked up were drinking “after work” for the separation and snack plates for supper, because I’d already been preparing meals and snacks all day already.
Oh and then when it was time for evaluations, not the “holy shit, how did you get ANYTHING done” I was expecting but “meets expectations fully.” No Peleton, no bread baking, just absolutely no division between me the worker and me the mother and me. My sweater is still hanging on the back of the office chair I haven’t seen since March 13, 2020.
I have zero tolerance for mask wearing or polite conversation, since I am basically a troll under a bridge and have the eyebrows growing down my eyelids to show for it.

Tech workers and most any corporate salaried work is based on the rate of the zip code you LIVE in, not where you work. If only it were that easy…

My husband and I made the Halloumi Burgers from BA not too long ago. They are SO GOOD! They were delicious, easy (and fun) to make, and a nice vegetarian option. We opened a bottle of chilled wine, set the patio table, turned on the outdoor twinkle lights, and voila, we had an at-home date night. It was a nice escape from the busyness of life we’ve had this summer.

I agree with you Mary. The toxic positivity pervasive in our society is exhausting. I’m sorry that you and your husband had to go through that. Sounds impossibly difficult.

Mary, I agree with you, that is crap. For him, and for you, and I’m sorry that was an experience that you had.

I would urge you and those replying with their +1 to actually read the article. As it often happens, it seems we are commenting on the title / (pretty awful) caption vs. the article itself. In the article, it says, in part:

“For the first half hour in her office, we just talked about how sick I felt and how frightened I was. Then—nervously—I confessed: I wasn’t doing the work of healing myself. I wasn’t being positive.
“Why do you need to be positive?” she asked in a neutral voice.
I thought it should be obvious, but I explained: Because I didn’t want to die!
Coscarelli remained just as neutral and said, “There isn’t a single bit of evidence that having a positive attitude helps heal cancer.”
What? That couldn’t possibly be right. How did she know that?
“They study it all the time,” she said. “It’s not true.”…

When I began to understand that attitude doesn’t have anything to do with survival, I felt myself coming up out of deep water. I didn’t cause my cancer by having a bad attitude, and I wasn’t going to cure it by having a good one.”