After almost a year of working from home, I’ve lost touch with working in an office setting. I miss the casual banter that filled the hallways and maintained the necessary veneer of politeness. No more negotiations about cutting in front of someone at the photocopier because you “just need one.” No admissions of “well, the diet starts next week” when someone catches you bisecting the remaining piece of birthday cake. I still make plenty of work calls, but gone are the days of live spontaneous small talk about the Padres, Paleo recipes, and who sent this ridiculous bouquet of flowers to Jessica? While that office and my job there still exist, that work environment seems very far away.
Instead, it feels like I work with my family at a small start-up company. Our house has become an office and instead of cubicles we have work stations in the dining room and on the ping-pong table. In addition to residential real estate, we also have significant operations in online middle schools, both teaching and learning. All of us spend the day working diligently on our individual assessments and tasks. With the lines between home and work sufficiently blurred, one thing has become clear: my wife and kids have become my co-workers.
Ryan is that super chatty employee who can’t stay in his seat for more than five minutes. You could be completely focused on figuring out your spreadsheet error, and Ryan would pop his head around the corner to remind you to sign up for the company softball team. Meetings exhaust him and as soon as one of his on-line classes ends, he needs to find a human being to socialize with. Throughout the day, he barges into my office to update me on his science grade or share an interesting fact about feudalism.
Chase is more absorbed in his work, sitting at his work station with his headphones on, completely immersed in his own world. Oblivious to anything going around him, we have to throw things in his direction to alert him of the staff meeting that’s about to take place. If you can break his attention, he removes his headphones, pauses his video, and meets your eyes with a slightly disgusted gaze. He’s the IT guy that everyone is afraid to ask for help.
My wife, Jenni, is the head of marketing research. As of this academic year, she is now teaching students the same age as her own children and she frequently uses them as educational guinea pigs. I have literally seen her leave out two novels in plain sight in order to observe which one our resident bookworm would choose to read first. Dinners now feel more like targeted focus groups. “I’m going to show several ways to punctuate a sentence. Please let me know which one you find most appealing.”
Collaboration is a big part of our office culture. The boys have one parent who is an English teacher and another who used to be a math teacher, so there’s help available for them. Like everyone with distance learners, we want to help our kids, but we also have jobs to do. Jenni actually ordered a “Do not Disturb” sign so no one interrupts the boss when she’s making class recordings. Supporting the local Etsy economy is another of our company values.
Like in any corporate setting, the boys have figured out how to work the system. I’ve actually been e-mailed from the floor above to set up a time to get math help. Pretty soon, the e-mails will look like this:
Hi Dad – I just wanted to ping you so we can circle back on the use of exponents. I’d love to do a deep dive so I can learn best practices and get into alignment with my math teacher. If you have the bandwidth, can we touch base and calendar for next week? My hope is by putting this on your radar we can really move the needle by the end of the semester. P.S. Let’s grab lunch soon. Have you tried the kitchen next to the living room? I hear that place is 🔥!
Our kitchen is just like any other office break room. It’s our company’s social hub and where the best gossip is shared. Someone has left out their son’s Boy Scout popcorn order form in hopes that it will be filled out by colleagues who will need reciprocal help with Girl Scout cookies and Pop Warner sponsorships. There’s good small talk at lunch about Chuck Norris memes and upcoming Super Smash Bros. downloadable content. The only thing missing is a passive aggressive note above the sink, “Please do your dishes! Your mother doesn’t work here!”
Well…actually that’s not true for most of our employees.
