Mike Richards is WFH

One of the things I don’t miss about working in an office is when your fellow workers return from some obscure holiday destination armed with “sweets”.

It would appear, the further east you go, the more inedible the food.  Even though staying in a mud hut in Tibet “was amazing”, Himalayan Smarties are not like what you get over here.

I’m a fussy eater – a decade of going home for dinner and only ever having an egg ‘n’ chip diet did not help my desire to sample the world’s foods (although it does give a hint of why I have high cholesterol).

People returning from less than an hour’s flight from the UK is fine – this will generally involve sweets with so many e-numbers, after a packet of which feels like you either want to jump off a high building, run a Marathon in your lunchbreak or they’re so chewy you feel you’ve contracted tetanus.

But no one is going away; no one is returning and sharing the goods they’ve hurriedly bought in the Duty-Free Shop at Lhasa Airport – even if it is Kendal Mint Cake in the shape of the Dalai Lama.

However, working from home means you are in control of the sweet table.  And that means nothing resembling a miniature Mount Everest which looks like a Toblerone but tastes like something Sherpa Tensing’s had in in his walking shoes since 1953 or some Turkish Delight with a sell-by date when Mustafa Kemal was a child need appear.

Also, at home you don’t have to share (a concept I struggle with being an only child) but you must pace yourself – never furtively try and eat a Twix during a video call and never eat Skittles at least five-hours before a client call (or maybe that’s just me).

Given there are restrictions on visiting dentists, toffees; humbugs and anything with the word ‘Brighton’ or ‘Blackpool’ running through it, should be avoided.  Also, smashing rock on a desk could seriously damage your wrist, so a potentially unnecessary trip to A&E – more MRSA than M&M.

Also, working from home, no one can see you put an entire scone in your mouth. 

For many parents during Lockdown, while juggling work and video calls, there is also the requirement for home schooling.

I’m lucky, insomuch as my youngest kid is 27 and so there is no need to force him to conjugate French verbs; draw an ox-bow lake or help make scones.

However, I do wonder, should this home schooling have been happening when I was a school kid, in the early ‘70s – and how might my parents have coped?

I would have been at an immediate 50% disadvantage as my mum rarely attended school (evacuation to Dorset, where she said there wasn’t a single school, and then returning to London and the Blitz, when she wasn’t allowed to leave her flat until the end of the Korean War).  A consequence of these continuous absences meant she could barely add up and couldn’t spell.   This would have left my dad to have done maths and English.  My dad had a large vocabulary but was incredibly vituperative – I’d have returned to school as if I’d spent months in The Shed.  Maths would have invariably involved cigarettes: “If I have 20 Senior Service and buy another forty…” (his daily ration) “…what would I have?”  The answer is either a massive coronary or 60 – depending on what I’d learned in science.

My mum would have done biology.  She was stunningly attractive – blonde-haired, blue-eyed and two other massive assets – which weren’t spelling or adding up.  An afternoon’s shopping with her in and out of the shops along Balham High Road, where we lived, showed you, all too obviously, how boys and girls interact – bit like birds and bees.

Dad would have done geography as he’d served his National Service in Singapore and, after he was demobbed, travelled in an old taxi with several mates throughout NW Europe – not for the desire to travel, more to find cheap fags and learn how to swear in several different languages.

Neither parent knew a foreign language so I’d have to teach myself German (plus ça change as the Greeks would say).

History would have been revealing with my mum as she had a lot of history with the Balham tradespeople – no one got cheaper veg than my mum.

PE would have been dad teaching me leg breaks in an effort to make me a modern day Ramadhin and Valentine (only taller).

Music would have meant me learning the entire discography of Frank Sinatra; RE would have been me learning prayers to offer to God asking for less veg with every mealtime and careers advice would have entailed dad suggesting I try advertising and mum recommending I go on the game.  I haven’t got the legs for the latter, hence a career in advertising it was.

Is it playtime yet?

We’ve all got used to having unexpected things happening on video calls these past months – everyone loves to see a cat make an appearance, less so if it suddenly deletes the PowerPoint chart which you’re presenting.    But how would you react if it was more than just a harmless pussy on your screen (insert your own gag here)?

Unlikely though it may be, but you wouldn’t want to be on a video call with Siegfried and/or Roy when suddenly one of them is attacked by another ‘member’ of the crew.  If you were on that call, and either Siegfried or Roy were being dragged away from the computer by something who has mistaken them for a piece of steak, you’d hope they’d click the “Leave the meeting” button on their way out.

Pet ownership has increased during lockdown, especially exotic pets.  Have you got a ready-to-hand antivenom should someone on the call be bitten by their recently procured Black Mamba?  If you had, you’d struggle to get a DPD driver to pick that up – he’ll be too busy getting a small stool and a whip round to Siegfried and Roy’s.

Parrots are far too dangerous to have, especially if you don’t like your boss and you’ve been telling a packet of Trill that.  That vituperative word’ll cost you when the company swear box comes round.

Dogs are acceptable.  Particularly if you’ve bought a load of sheep to occupy it (let’s recreate the Nativity, they said; rustling’s legal in most parts of Surrey, they said; it won’t destroy your new shaver, they said).  Dogs can, with the use of a suitably-pitched whistle, be sent several messages to gather the sheep in – no one will ever know, unless you’re not on mute and you suddenly think you’re a Northumbrian farmer auditioning for One Man and his Dog.

Aardvarks are good to as they’ll never raise their heads above your desk, so never in camera; plus, they’ll get all the ants out of your carpet.  I wouldn’t encourage getting a sloth, because, if you’ve got Zoom fatigue, who’s going to walk it last thing at night?

Get a gerbil: they have vast periods of inactivity, they love children (although they prefer sunflower seeds) and how often do you get to call a pet, Rommel?

There is a limbo, like that of being through Passport Control and not technically being in the country anymore, before the commencement of a video call.

I have Zoom Professional because, and this article is an excellent example why, I am professional.  A direct consequence of this is that I invariably control the “waiting room”.  But what is the Zoom waiting room?  Is it like a real waiting room?  A selection of Woman Weeklies from the ‘60s; a tropical fish tank to make you relax before two-hours of root-canal treatment or an officious person asking loudly, “have you produced a specimen yet?”?

No, the Zoom waiting room is a parallel universe where time stands still and you have precious moments to adjust your hair; add Clearasil to your mental shopping list; take Quality Street off, even though the previous tin ostensibly evaporated over the Christmas period.

If you’re a professional Zoomster you have the power to, like the video call equivalent of being Judge Jeffries, admit who you want into the meeting – that moment before you are, yet again, suggesting your visitors’ cameras aren’t on.  There are two reasons why cameras are not on: one is that geography homework is being checked, the other is that you’ve not quite understood the concept of diuretics.

Perhaps there should be relevant messages for people returning to the call and putting their cameras back on?  They should say: “now please wash your hands” or “that’s not what an ox-bow lake looks like”.

The etiquette, therefore, for the Zoom waiting room is have a hairbrush nearby; a packet of Wet Wipes for that rogue Toffee Finger, Strawberry Delight or Fudge that’s not quite gone 100% inside your mouth and an empty Lucozade bottle – because, if it’s good enough for Sir Alex Ferguson…..

If, however, you are “waiting for your host to let you in” then, if you’re new to a Zoom call, please don’t expect your ‘host’ to greet you, take your coat, offer you a canape and introduce you to his or her neighbour who’s an actuary and has a large collection of cacti. 

And whatever you do, don’t give anyone your car-keys.