Before the Deluge

There was a time when I could think of nothing better than having the opportunity to work from home. In my first job, I shared a small office with two smokers who seemed to be engaged in a daily competition to ingest the most nicotine. Back then most communication was done by telephone and when I had my head down trying to work I would be regularly interrupted by one of them shouting abuse at a tax officer or client who was slow in paying his bill.

At least the commute was easy. It was about ten minutes on a bike, eight if the gale from the Irish Sea was behind me.

Commuting has been an issue in every job I’ve had since. I’ve sat in traffic jams for hours in London, Luxembourg and Dublin. Melbourne was probably the best in this regard, but we couldn’t afford to live in the city centre, so even with excellent public transport, I still spent two hours a day on a tram or on my bike.

The technology to work from home was not in place for most of my working life. I’ve owned a PC since the early nineties, but it was only when I got to Australia in 2007 that I found a job that would allow me to connect to work.

But I was working for a Corporate Bank then, with a boss with the management style of Tony Soprano. The work from home option was set up to allow you to work at weekends or in the evening.

My then boss was so old-school he was probably educated in Latin. I had a colleague with a two hour each way commute who wanted to work from home between Christmas and New Year. He was treated with the contempt that a conscientious objector would have received during the First World War.

My current employer has always been more flexible. They were pioneers of the concept of the four day week which they adopted into a flexible model long before Covid came along.

When that little respiratory tickle came along, the game changed for everyone, in New Zealand and beyond. The first lockdown was a novelty I guess. It lasted for seven weeks and we were amused by washing our groceries with a damp sponge, zoom calls with friends and family overseas and the chance to walk in parts of the city that are not normally open to plebs like me.

Auckland has had several lockdowns since and they became progressively more boring as the novelty wore off. With each lockdown I became more nostalgic for the old days of commuting and office life. Commuting in particular is seen as a total negative. But my cycle to work kept me healthy and gave me a front row seat of the city waking up each day. Even when I was stuck in a car, I could listen to whatever I like without being told to ‘turn that bloody racket down’.

Time in the office is a delicate balance between fascinating social engagement and annoying assholes that you have nothing in common with other than the same employer. But you can work this to your advantage. I spent two hours today chatting to the people I like. We discussed whether the new Auckland Mayor is as big a dickhead as the media are portraying him and whether Ireland should throw the six nations championship and concentrate on the World Cup. I work in a large open plan office were you can see the dickheads approaching like slow moving Wildebeest on the savanna and take appropriate avoiding action.

But I also got lots of work done. Technology has come a long way but you can’t beat standing at a whiteboard with somebody to nut an issue out or having three screens and a colour printer at hand. I’ve made a lot of improvements at home in the three years since Covid came along. But it’s impossible to recreate the office set up experience. When I’m in the office I plug my laptop in and sit back in my comfortable chair and watch all my applications pop up magically. At home, I have to jump through more hoops than a Russian hacker trying to get into the CIA database.

These days I can work from home as often as I like. During the school term, I drop my daughter to school, grab a coffee and then amble into work. I work from home once a week, mainly to catch up on admin. And I have to admit it’s nice to have the house to myself.

School was supposed to start again today and normality would have resumed. Then the rain came and all that was thrown in the air. Last Friday, parts of Auckland got 300mm of rain in 24 hours. That’s about 40% of the annual rainfall in Dublin, a city that I knew from personal experience is wet and miserable for most of the year.

It brought landslides, power cuts and flooding to many parts of the city. We were told to work from home for the rest of the week and school reopening got pushed back to next Tuesday. We got the dreaded “home schooling” text from the school principle.

Triggered is a strong word. It invokes trauma, memories of dark days buried in your sub conscious. But it feels appropriate. Being told to work from home for even a day or two brings back memories of those lockdowns. I’ve been working for forty years, most of that in an office environment. I don’t exactly pine for it but I don’t like being told I can’t go there. Covid brought more than a virus, it also unleashed an existential crisis for many people. We have lost the ability to plan for the future with any confidence. I’ll be back next week. At least I hope so. You can’t be sure of anything these days.