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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But he’s right. Lots of people are actually enjoying a much more balanced life during this pandemic. They don’t have to commute, they don’t have to waste time going through silly rituals at the office, and productivity is up among most companies.

Much of what we do in our work is performative busywork. Covid has exposed it as such. And there is no defense for wasting time and energy in performative acts. Or worse, making others below you do so.

If you don’t think there is something enriching, something of value, inseeing all of the inefficiencies and unnecessary rituals removed, your powers of perception must be dead. How many years did I take a train into the office, or drive down the expressway in heavy traffic, to go sit in a huge office building and do what I could’ve done from my fucking kitchen? Why did we all have to wear all those stupid corporate casual outfits? Why did we waste so much gas, at destruction of the environment, to drive to and fro for no good reason?

A lot of the legacy businesses and legacy rituals that Covid has removed from our lives should have been gone long ago if we were at all interested in efficiency and true work/life balance.

I feel bad for people in service industries who are disproportionately impacted, and we should give them a shit pile of money to bridge them until they can go back to work. But I don’t think it is heresy, or should be considered verboten, to say that this thing has some silver linings for a lot of people.

If nothing else, it is showing the idiocy of our prior workaholism. You don’t have to run around, and fly everywhere, and sit through endless meetings, to get things done. People are more productive when they work from their houses and can actually focus on the job, rather than put up with loads of people taxing their limited powers of attention at the office. Often with administrative horseshit. It’s also eliminating a lot of office politics, and weeding out the people who thrived on playing those games.

All of the victims of Covid are worth grieving. Except one: Busywork. That Covid has clarified what work is necessary and what is superfluous, and made us question why we ever bothered doing the latter, is a gift.

I don't really do that crap anyway and miss my, mostly-active, commutes. It's a lot harder to get out for an hour of biking during the day than it is ride to and from the office (when that time is now taking the kid to and from her grandma's). But sure, hopefully people will learn to devalue those sorts of games.

I won't miss the winter snowy-day bus commutes though.