The Cost of Going Back to Work?
People who don't work virtually already understood...
I try not to watch the news too much. I often caution others about the same. It’s a little like sunshine. You need some to be healthy, but too much just gives you burns, leathery skin and cancer. I’m not saying the news give you cancer but, well, who knows?
However, this morning as Jan and I were watching television there was a clip on one of the assorted news shows about the high cost of people going back to the office to work. The point was that those who had worked from home during COVID suddenly discovered that it was expensive to buy work clothes, buy food for lunch, pay for gasoline, pay for childcare, etc.
I wondered how much of a revelation this could be. In an age of pretty stunning inflation, I’d assume that these costs were already realized by everyone.
But it then occurred to me that there are a lot of Americans who live, and work, in jobs that can be (and have been) done from home. Their work can be accomplished online, and their meetings can be virtual.
The news report seemed to equate these people with Americans ‘getting back to the office.’ There was great sympathy in the reportage, since these poor folks now have to endure all sorts of forgotten costs now that they must emerge from their COVID bunkers and face the harsh and shocking realities of working in person.
And yet, in my day-to-day life, during and after COVID, the people I know, work with and see as patients have been well aware of the costs (and the dangers) since the beginning.
They’re nurses, physicians, medics and techs, firefighters and police officers, who never got to work from home because, honestly, it’s remarkably hard to do CPR from home, or arrest a criminal virtually unless you’re playing an online game.
Add to the list are truck drivers, rail-workers, pilots and crews, maritime crews and others who (thank God) never stopped working and delivering everything from meals in a box (to those safely ensconced in their fortresses of solitude), to protective equipment, vaccines and the assorted medications we needed to treat the sick.
The brave souls climbing poles and keeping the lights on and the Internet connected? They’ve been paying for lunch and gas and clothes and childcare all along, as have the men and women who make the electricity (or mine the coal or gas) around the country Farmers? Gasoline prices rising, fertilizer costs rising and they’ve been producing food the whole time.
It’s odd, really. To watch the news is to get a very clear sense of who matters. Those people who finally have to return to work are really struggling. They have jobs, real jobs, that they did from home and now have to navigate in person once more.
The men and women who did it all along? Who never stopped? Not really as important. Their costs and struggles are somehow less dramatic or interesting.
Look, some people worked from home doing very important things. I get that. Businesses and investments, law and IT, retail, so many things we need went on via miserable virtual meetings with kids trapped in the house like chocolate hyped ferrets, running around in the background.
Everyone struggled and everyone still does.
That’s just not the way I heard it this morning.
On the news.
Great, now I’ll get skin cancer.
Edwin