Working from Home

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Good morning all. Today's discussion is brought to you as a result of some rich idiot comparing working from home to being a benefit cheat. I think the guy who said it is (or was) a plumber but is now somehow clogging our airtime. It was rather ironic that he was, in essence, working from home while telling us that working from home was bad. As someone who works from home, I am quite defensive of the position There are all sorts of things that have been said by people who appear to believe that working from home equals doing nothing. I think there are those who have confused 'working from home' with 'furlough'. If people have been furloughed then, yes, they probably should return to work. If, like me, they've been working from home then they've been working. There is no 'return' to work, we haven't stopped. In my job, we are considered 'essential workers'. This basically means that our job is necessary to keep key worker services running, that we're essential when it suits for us to be essential but without us receiving any of the perks awarded to actual key workers. My little sister works in a shop that happens to sell a few food items, so she was considered a key worker. That shop stayed open on a technicality and wouldn't have been missed if it had to close. My job can, quite literally, involve life and death situations but I'm just an office worker so my job isn't important. Anyway, this talk about working from home has brought up a lot of silly ideas. It reminded me of an article I wrote in 2016. At the time, I was working from home as a writer/journalist/editor. I was working partly freelance and partly as an intern. That was much easier and more enjoyable than what I do now. Sadly, I wasn't earning enough at the time and had to take on other work. That led to the job I have now. It began as an office-based job, which changed to working from home when our government said that we should work from home if we could. The employer was reluctant and only agreed after basically being told it had to happen. Vulnerable people were sent to work from home first. The fact that my closest colleague and I were the only ones having to travel a longer distance on public and that he had a vulnerable child was entirely ignored. Anyway, that's that story. I also realised something else recently that hadn't occurred to me before. A lot of people would say that if you don't like your job or can't afford to live on the wage then you should get another job and improve your own situation. That's easier said than done. I know because I'm trying to do exactly that. However, I have already done that. I've gone from poverty (at least the definition of it here, which is where your income is less than 60% of the median average), working part-time in whatever job I could get but mainly having to rely on benefits, to a 'white-collar' job that some people would class as 'lower middle class'. It's still very much a working class wage, though! I've gone off topic there. I was also reading comments about various things like WFH jobs being more easily outsourced or that people who work in an office should be paid more than those doing the same job from home. I think people forget (or simply didn't know) that there have been work from home jobs for a very long time, and that there has also been outsourcing for a very long time, and that any job that doesn't require face-to-face interaction can be done from anywhere. The article I wrote in 2016, I've shared it on my Facebook author page. I noted that I'd considered updating the article but that I probably wouldn't. I changed my mind about that. Well, sort of. I linked that article to a new one I wrote on Vocal (if you want to find me there, please look for Sapphire Ravenclaw on Vocal.media). I'm waiting for that one to be approved. Assuming it gets approved, it will be my second contribution there this month. That's very unusual as I can rarely manage one per month! I'm off work this week so I am going to try and work on some more writing. I'm also going to do what I can on my survey sites and here on myLot. Money is very tight right now so I'm going to spend the time trying to earn any extra penny I can! How have you been? Are you working (from home or otherwise)? Has Covid changed anything for you, and are you getting back to normal?