The Covid Pandemic has been a tipping point for us all. It has tipped us into rocky waves and into seering doubts of self-reflection. It has turned the workforce and the workplace upside down. Where we go from here is anyone’s guess.
At the beggining of the pandemic, I stayed a few weeks at home with a really bad flu. But, ostensibly could have been, covid. I didn’t have the antibodies a few months later so I will go with the flu. Admittedly, I used to skip the flu shot pre-pandemic. I’ve had adverse reactions due to a high number of immune systems issues. Anyway that’s all besides the point.
After a few weeks, I was desperate to go out and back to the office. It so happens that I work in healthcare. I wanted to be there with others. I did want to feel a sense of connection. I believe many did during those times.
However, I mightily disagree with journalist Malcolm Gladwell who noted to the NY Post that working remotely is destoying some core psychological tenets of our lives. In terms of working remotely, he asks “what have you reduced your life to?” He also states:
“As we face the battle that all organizations are facing now in getting people back into the office, it’s really hard to explain this core psychological truth, which is we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary.” Malcom Gladwell
Look I get it in part. I felt a great need to go into the office. But not just any office. It had to be an office that was small and allowed for both interaction and non-interaction.
However, I have seen firsthand how working from home has freed up mental space and helped people get closer to family members and save money. Working from home isn’t for everybody. However, it can help in many ways we may not fully understand yet.
Further, it’s quite rich of Gladwell to be so reductionist about working remotely when he has benefitted greatly from working on a laptop in his home couch or local cafes.
Lastly, just because you go into an office doesnt’t mean you are connected to others. There are gossipmongers, mean girls (and boys), tyrants, clueless ineffective colleagues and irrational antagonistic bosses that can deepen a wound as opposed to lending to a sense of interconnected healing. I personally think a hybrid model is great. I also think we should make for allowances regarding toxic work environments when considering the worthiness of forcing people to go into an office cubicle as opposed to working on a laptop ftom home while bonding with family, pets, and your favorite news anchor. In a way I think people are more caught up with the world. That’s my perspective and Gladwell has his.
Categories: Culture, current events, Management, mental health, Pop Culture, Psychology, society, workplace
psychologistmimi 
Well, most Filipino workers such as me would like to have a word with him.
As someone who’s worked white-collar jobs for a decade now, the WFH scenario has proven to be a godsend ever since the pandemic. No more long commutes or long drives, no more expensive gas and parking fees, and no more office drama. Yes to more time for yourself and your family, too!
Regarding the part where he says that face-to-face work seeks to make employees “have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary,” I call bull on that. Decades of service and you only get a jacket, a pen and gift cheques?
Reminds me of what Dad told me some time ago: “When you die today, a company simply replaces you the next day. But your family will feel your loss. Between the two, which would you want to spend more time with?”
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Hear hear! My doctor’s office has a similar poster about how replaceable we are in the office
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“we want you to have a feeling of belonging and to feel necessary”
I have never had an employer with this attitude. Their attitude has uniformly been, “If you want a paycheck get to work and do as you’re told. Your other needs are none of our concern.”
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I can’t begin to describe how freeing it’s been to be away from toxic coworkers and the mid-level managers who act as their enablers. This probably can’t last but, for the time being, good riddance to it all.
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Most Always In Program(S) Administration, Management,
Supervision, And Yes Direct Customer Service With my
God Thousands Upon Thousands of Human Beings Then
Through my Career in So Many Hands-On Ways There’s No
Way i Could Have Worked From Home Yet my God the Last 5 Years
It Would Have Been Just
Nice to Focus on Either
Mechanical Cognition or
Social Cognition Instead of Having
An Open Door Policy With No Escape
to Focus on Any
One Job During the Day
Anyway a Lady Who Worked
With me Named me ‘Superman’
Also Interesting in College While
Earning 3 Degrees then With 3 Part
Time Jobs At Once One Of The Young
Women Peers Named me the Same then
Yet College Was A Breeze And Yes All Those
Degrees and Part Time Jobs Versus What Almost
Killed me in the Last Years of Work Yep It Surely Might
Have Been A Life Saving Device to Focus on One Task
on A Computer At Home With No Open Door Policy For All
The World It Seemed Yet
This Much Is True And Science
Shows it So Human Empathy Has
Dropped Off Particularly in Measure of
That Empirically So Ever Since the 1990’s
As Humans Became More Attached to Screens than
Face-to-Face And Anecdotally i Find Humans Less Human
Than Ever Before Particularly in Relatively Easy Customer Service
Jobs As They Really Do Have Less than What Science Shows is the Attention
Span of A Gold Fish On Average ‘These Days’ For Human Beings Yep Dear Miriam
Less than 3 Seconds
As We Went to a Customer
Service Desk at a Grocery Store
And the Customer Service Person never
even Looked up to Let Us Know if He was Still Open
And Additionally College Age Folks Suffer From Some Kind
of Depression and or Anxiety at levels up to 60 Percent With
Generation Z Assessed As the Loneliest Generation of All even
Lonelier than the Oldest Generation With So Many Family And Friends
Dead
Dead
Dead…
When the Youngest
Generation is the loneliest ones
Ya Got Real Problems in Society
And Ya Need Real Solutions However
When No one Has Much More Attention Span And
Focus than A Gold Fish on Average It’s Just a Spiraling
Stair case
Lower and
Lower Until
Folks Lose All
Desire to Even Reproduce…
Well, Well, Well, Welcome to Mother
Nature And Balance It All Fits Together
Actually As We Are Just Eventually Culling
Ourselves This way Out of Balance With Two
Thirds of Animal Species Gone away in the Last 50 Years
And 1 Out 8 Animal and Plant Species Forecast to Go Away
Extinct at the Hands of Humans in the Next 50 Years Indeed There
is A Price to Pay From Encroachment on Wild Life Habitats and Pandemic Disease
to the Domestication of the Same And Swine Flu, And Bird Flu, And Monkey Pox
And All the Rest
Still to Come
Nature
Is the Rule
With Balance
LiVE iN Balance
Or Pay the Natural
Karma of Actions and
Consequences And Humans
Are Doing That Globally More and More
As We Continue to Live out of Balance Now…
Indeed Not Looking Up From a Customer Service
Desk And Noticing Humanity is Around is a Microcosm
of the
Human
DiSeASE
Out of Balance
With All of Nature now…
Yet Again When all is Twitter Breathing Shallower And Shallower
Depth of Becoming We Stall and Perhaps fade away into the distance…
Humans Are Evolved to Focus on One Task in Detail And Holistic Way
of Small and Big Picture
Views in Balance of
Left and Right
Hemispheres
of Mind too
Modern Society
is Sheer Insanity…
Yawn At Least at Home
THere is Choice to Turn the Rest of it Off
Just Birds Singing Outside the Green And Colors of my Windows Always FLoWeRinG
SPRinGinG into Eternity of Nature Free NeW NoW As close As A Back Door Into Paradise Free..:)
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True. The quality of your coworkers makes a big difference.
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