"Remoted"

It’s a strange new world.

Monday afternoon, during an extraordinarily hectic and stressful day at the office, people in my work group were informed that some of us were being moved as part of a relocation program I wasn’t fully aware of (if at all). Surprise! Departments were being split up and team members moved to other areas or working from home as a precaution to spare entire departments from being wiped out with illness during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When the designated People Rearranger arrived in my team’s area, after hearing him say I was being moved to another department, I rushed to the toilet (always pee before you go!!) then put on my coat. My oatmeal, cocoa mix, and granola bars had been collected from my drawer and put into a little brown bag earlier when someone else on our floor mentioned they were being jettisoned out. The CVS bag of just purchased tissues and dish soap for the house sat next to my tote bag now containing a printers proof needing review, two notepads, my favorite blue Bic stick pen and two highlighters. I waited to be escorted to another area of our campus by the People Rearranger, who had disappeared after saying he was collecting folks from another department to come sit in ours under the workplace version of a student exchange program.

The best part about working with a team is when someone hears something wrong (me) there are others (my colleagues) who hear it correctly and can set the person (ahem, me) straight. The People Rearranger was not taking me to another department. Apparently, he had said I was being “remoted” not relocated. For an undetermined length of time. 

When the work day ended, I left the office and went home to what would now be my new workplace.  A quick look around revealed that the BungaLowell was in no shape to be a home office. Sitting on a futon for a few hours after work, laptop literally in the lap, is a different scenario than sitting there and working on that laptop for an eight hour stretch.

This needed a bit more preparation than just getting up in the morning and logging on.

The night suddenly became a fitness program involving moving a bookcase in the living room to unplug the power strip for the computer (and moving it back), then trying to plug the strip into the wall behind another full and heavy cabinet in the dining room. The dining table had recently become a construction site for Steampunk top hat festooning and jewelry assembly before that event was postponed due to COVID-19. The table/workshop needed to be cleared.

There was no time to finish the project underway and no time to be methodical and neat about clearing it, so it was all picked up and transported upstairs to the guest/storage room. On the sorry day when it’s time to finish up the hat and jewelry projects for the new event date in September, it will probably be easier to buy more stuff and start all over again. That is the exact logic that led to buying and decorating a new hat instead of looking for the top hat already somewhere upstairs with the costume stuff. By 8:00 I was beat. 

Tuesday, known to many as St. Patrick’s Day, was also Day One as a remote worker in the COVID-19 pandemic and time of “social distancing” to “flatten the curve” of infection, attempting to maintain a level the healthcare system can manage. The day unfolded to reveal several lessons.

When home and work become one.

1. Not worrying about attire, makeup, preparing lunch, diapering dogs, or dealing with traffic and parking garages allowed for 30 extra minutes of sleep, and I was still ready to sit down and work a full hour earlier than the usual start time at the office a mere two miles away.
2. Important decisions included which of four chairs to sit on. Facing the door? Facing the buffet and wall of art? The position closest to the outlet and power strip was chosen for practical reasons.
3. My house makes weird noises. There was a tapping sound that sounded like it was inside a wall of the new home office/dining room. I pounded the wall and it stopped.
4. I didn’t bring home the correct office supplies. Just one of my favorite blue pens? No mechanical pencil? I found six brand new pencils in my kitchen drawer, but no sharpener.
5. The 60 degrees my thermostat is programmed to from 8-5 is freeking cold! I’m always cold at the “real” office, but it did not prepare me for this! A decision may be needed whether to reprogram the thermostat (and boost the gas bill), or pile on more clothes. The herbal tea reserves are already low, so hot beverages won’t be an option for long.
6. My phone battery is not so good. By noon (sometimes earlier) on any given day, it is already diminished to 30%. But most days I don’t need to use it for more than a timepiece and comfort token. Remote Day One involved several phone calls and even more rapid depletion. The battery situation has been building for a while, but a long-standing aversion to malls (where the Verizon store is located) and inclination to be a hermit (natural social distancing) are proving to be a detriment.

At 5:30, the laptop was unplugged to officially end the workday, and carried into the living room for the usual evening of Facebook and online Scrabble. Easiest commute ever!

Remote Day One done. No specific deadline to this project. This will be an interesting endeavor.