WFH – Mike Richards is WFH

Gonk, but not forgotten

When he was in lockdown, Alan Sillitoe wrote a book entitled: “The loneliness of the long-time working from homer”; after ten-months, social interaction is almost a thing of the past.

As a commute substitute, I walk each morning and hope to greet other passers-by. But, because I don’t own a dog, people ignore me. (It could be the Bayern Munich bobble hat and loudly singing along to various choral works I have on Spotify which puts them off). After three-months, I crocheted a giant snake-shaped draught excluder and now drag it around local parks telling people it is a Dachshund who suffers from narcolepsy. Anything to have a brief chat with strangers; something my mother actively discouraged until I was in my mid-twenties.

I am only child and can cope with my own company – as many of my childhood imaginary friends can attest; but there is something about office banter what you don’t get WFH. I have erected a water-cooler in my Man Cave for me to stand round and talk to myself about the Bundesliga, the latest episode of 24-hours in Police custody and how many toilet rolls are secretly hidden around my house.

When at my desk, and not on a video call, it is important for me to have someone to talk to/at. So, I have rescued from the loft, my lucky gonk I had on my desk, keeping me company during my O-levels (a 16.6% success rate suggests the gonk was that lucky). The gonk, like me, needs a decent haircut.

I’m lucky that I sit near a window; together with my Teach Yourself Advertising book and 1847 edition of the Observer Book of Birds (it’s so old, it suggests you might spot the occasional dodo during the summer before it flies to back to Mauritius) I gaze forlornly, in the style of Madame Butterfly, out the window. Sadly, I haven’t got a giant bird sticker on my window, so I witness the occasional avian fatality. The only sticker I have says: “Vote Whig” (it’s an old house) and this fails to prevent any accidents.

Before I discovered Sonos, which, before lockdown I thought where Captain Corelli’s Mandolin was set, I’d only got an old transistor radio; it’s quite difficult using a PC while one hand is constantly up at your ear. Sonos has been my saviour. Because I am an intellectual snob I have BBC Radio 3 on – everyone needs to be listening to Mahler when you’re creating a media plan and BR-Klassik, a Bavarian classical music station which helps with my German, as I can listen to Mahler (although, Wagner (the 19^th century local Bayern boy composer, not the one-time X-Factor star) is played more; weather updates – handy to know if it’s snowing 550-miles away and traffic updates – again, if the Munich to Nuremberg Autobahn is busy, that could have an adverse effect on the congestion on the A3 and then I’d never get to Aldi and back in time for Hollyoaks.

With the radio on it is another inanimate object to whom one can talk and moan about the inclement weather and heavy traffic just outside Augsburg. Because of this lonely existence I have created my own imaginary desert island and provided myself with two books and a luxury item, so, when it’s lunchtime (or February – wherever we are) I have the Bible; the complete works of Shakespeare and a copy, in the original Greek of Where is Spot? Next week it’s my turn to hide in the laundry basket.

That’s not my yogurt!

When is a house not a home (as Burt Bacharach asked in 1964)? When it’s your office. Since last March, and you’ve been working from home (WTF), the chances are that some of your rooms have blurred into one and the same.

A modern day Cluedo couldn’t cope with WFH, unless Dr Black was battered to death by Miss Scarlett in the Billiard Room with a pile of lever-arch files or was killed by Mrs White in the Conservatory using a calculator with a very sharp point. Obviously, if Dr Black was on a Zoom call, unless he’d chosen to use some pretend background, you’d be able to see which room he was in and the perpetrator – and the industrial stapler used as a weapon.

In my day your lap was something you ate your tea off and didn’t have a tiny computer on. These days you could easily mix the two functions up and before you know it, you’ve got egg ‘n’ chips all over your keyboard – while trying to work and watch Pointless.

The kitchen would be the only familiar place which is at home and in the office. However, you’d not have the arguments over who had stolen your Armenian goat yogurt, which you’d marked with your name writ large on a Post-It note. Although, sadly, gone are the opportunities of eating something better for lunch than you’d already brought it.

Lunchtime would be the time you’d normally leave the office, but, you’re WFH so, in effect, you’re in prison. So, sit down with your egg, chips and yogurt and feel at home by watching Porridge; Prisoner: Cell Block H or Sixty Days In (which, if you’ve had to quarantine, is quite apposite – hopefully with less violence or as much making of hallucinatory drugs out of old pay slips).

Dressing down box

With the government restrictions in even greater force, we are left to ponder, for our ubiquitous video calls, what our 2021 professional wardrobe should look like?

When dress-down was first introduced into London offices, men struggled, believing that not wearing a tie was dress down enough. Undoing the correct amount of shirt buttons depended on how hirsute you were.

As a bloke, you’d stand in the queue at Starbucks and sometimes enviously notice men in front of you who seemed to have mastered the art of dressing-down better than you; this is because they were either American, had discovered Banana Republic while on holiday in the US or robots.

I remember a time when there was rioting going on and the aggrieved (this time) were people against capitalism; attacking the City was an obvious target. Firms would send notes round suggesting staff didn’t make it obvious they had money (so Harry Enfield impressions were banned for the afternoon). This should confuse the rioting proletariat (that was the gist of the warning email).

I thought the downstairs bar of a Devonshire Square wine bar would be a safe retreat. However, upon my arrival, there was an old City gent, together dressed in his salmon pink- coloured cords, a cravat and Gucci loafers. He might as well have had a badge on saying: “I hate Stalin”.

But we won’t, of course, be going into any pubs or wine bars anytime soon (upstairs or downstairs), but, if you are exposing yourself (professionally speaking) on a video call, these are not the times to be wearing a hand-knitted jumper, a present from a long-lost aunt demonstrating her new lockdown hobby skills; check you’ve taken your Christmas party hat off and if you’re wearing a tie, make sure it’s not from Hermès – there may be socialist spies watching.

And make sure you’ve shaved – at least the top half (although what you get up to down your local salon is none of my business) – unless you’re auditioning for the reformation of Wham!

Fat Larry has a lot to answer for

In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was a tricolour lolly with more E-numbers than several packets of Skittles, in the ‘80s it was a song about “your heart going boom” (song lyrics by Christiaan Barnard) and in the 2020s Zoom is now a way of life.

There are, of course, other forms of video conferencing: Webex (this sounds like Tinder, only for divorcees) and Google Meets (an Internet cafe-cum-butcher for dyslexics), but Zoom seems to have become almost ubiquitous and over the past ten-months we have learned to introduce friends, family, and especially workmates, into the room which is now your office, but was the place in which things were dumped; you ate in or where you carried out your secret taxidermy hobby.

Zoom has also exposed our failings to master the medium – Zoom is basically FaceTime, but for professionals. Although you’re not professional if an uninvited pet appears on your screen; a client asks, “are all those books on the Nazis?” or your mum comes in and empties your bin and proceeds to ask what you’d like for your tea (at least she’ll know what time you’re going to be in!).

2020 will have been the year when the most repeated phrase between 9 – 5 was “you’re on mute”; people with poor urine retention would have been found out by regularly having their camera video disabled – that, and they’d return to the meeting with their flies still open or knickers tucked into their skirts depending on what sex you were or type of clothing you choose to wear.

Unlike Jeremy Hunt, there seems to be an accepted dress code – albeit only for the top half of your body (although, it seems such a long time ago that I wore a tie; I asked Santa for a couple of clip-ons this Christmas, just in case I have a new business presentation to give). Of course, you can take these calls in your pyjamas. I don’t, as I don’t possess any and it would be unfair to share the evidence of several hernia operations, plus, with snow forecast in London, I’m not at my best when there’s a cold snap.

We’ve seen into peoples’ houses too and, like that time you were charged with covering your school text books only to witness the next days the person next to you clearly had the most horrific red flock wallpaper in their house (they could have lived in a cinema I guess?) you learn more about people and their environs through a Zoom call. You can, of course, change the background and give the impression you’re taking the call in front of a blue lagoon. Well, unless you’re on the set of the next Brooke Shields film, it’s not terribly professional.

So, as we enter 2021 and Zoom very much still in our lives, I do hope everyone got some decent (and comfortable) PJs for Christmas; given their pets access to their Outlook Calendar and remember, WTF isn’t an abbreviation for Working From Home, but might as well be.

You’re still on mute, by the way!