‘WFH’ in a world before it went global
Suddenly our homes have become busy places for most of us
Today a large section of the world is working from home. In many homes, in addition to the adults holding down full-time jobs from their dining room or bedroom or wherever their laptop can rest, their children are also “attending” classes online, and depending on their level, developing projects and writing exams as well.
The home has become a really busy place and all of us are respectful of each other’s “working hours”.
It was a little different some decades ago when I started working from home — writing. I had no employer and no approved assignments. I had no idea if anyone would accept what I wrote and if they would want more on the same lines or require something quite different.
If it wasn’t clear to my office that “working from home” was not synonymous with lounging at home with endless cups of coffee and magazines to browse through, how could I convince friends and family that I was actually gainfully employed?
Hours were spent in ruminating and planning, and then I clacked away late into the night on a manual typewriter. I was hugely dependent on the Indian postal system and reliable as I always found it, sometimes I had left the town where we were stationed before I got an acceptance or rejection or payment for what I had submitted.
By the time I graduated to a computer, we were in a city and we had the internet to make everything faster and easier. That steadfast old typewriter, the two-coloured ribbon and the carbon paper, were replaced with a printer that got me as many copies as I wanted on demand.
Sometimes, I didn’t even need to print anything to send by post: All I had to do was attach a document to an email and click “Send”. Sheer magic after the many years of the slow slog!
In the city, I found employers and assignments — and deadlines: a wonderful thing to encourage productivity! With that cornucopia before me, I was tempted to branch out, and soon began to juggle creative activity along with editorial work.
Opting to work from home
I did the sensible thing and joined a company, went to an office, learnt about editing the medical reports they specialised in, and then opted to work from home. I could spend the time I saved on dressing up, packing my lunch, commuting, etc, on my story writing, and then I could do the required quota of editing hours and still have time left over, according to my calculations.
I soon found out, of course, that much of the time I saved was spent answering the doorbell and the phone, jumping up to search for and then hand over a beret or baton or something else that the Commanding Officer spouse had forgotten at home, or extending a welcome to a casual visitor who was “so happy that I had stopped going to the office and was available for a chat at any time of the day”!
As for the work itself: As I was done with the day’s quota, there would be an annoying “Ping” late in the evening and I would see emergency files uploaded for me to go through for errors — because all the regular employees of the office had gone home to a well-earned rest and I was, after all, comfortably at home anyway, wasn’t I?
If it wasn’t clear to my office that “working from home” was not synonymous with lounging at home with endless cups of coffee and magazines to browse through, how could I convince friends and family that I was actually gainfully employed?
So, today, when WFH is more or less the norm for all whose jobs can be done from the house, I can empathise with those juggling their office work and their household tasks and the family and the constant stream of minor disturbances that make it all so difficult.
Perhaps the up-side for everyone is that we are far ahead of those old days when WFH was not considered working at all.
Cheryl Rao is a journalist based in India