‘I’ll tell you just how my life has changed’

A new report from the CSO has confirmed what hundreds of thousands of us already knew – that the Covid-19 crisis has had a profound affect on our working lives.

Aside from the hundreds of thousands of people who were laid off in March, another significant portion of the population – me and most of my Westmeath Examiner colleagues included – have been working remotely from home since the pandemic began.

For many people living in Westmeath, especially those with long daily commutes to Dublin, working from home has given them back a huge chunk of their week, which it appears many filled with baking.

In fact, if other companies follow the example of Twitter, whose CEO said his employees can work from home “forever” if it is viable, some will have a lot more time on their hands to feed their sourdough starters.

I am not one of those people. BC [Before Covid-19] my daily ‘commute’ to the Examiner office consisted of a leisurely 20-minute walk or when Mullingar’s new smart traffic lights were at their most infuriating last winter, a 25-minute drive.

Aside from commuting, looking at social media and talking to people, where you stand on the working from home versus the office debate seems to be heavily influenced by whether you have children.

I have three young and very distracting reasons why at times I long to return to my office desk. To be fair, working from home would be a lot less fraught if my three-year-old twin boys weren’t quintessential three-year-old twin boys. My almost seven-year-old daughter is well able to occupy herself for a couple of hours, especially under the guidance of Nanny Netflix or her colleague Disney Plus. The boys, however, because of their age and seemingly genetic predisposition to inflict pain on each other at every available opportunity, need a lot more minding.

To make things that bit more challenging, my wife is also working from home. Most of the time, with a bit of flexibility on both our parts – more from my wife if I am being really honest – we have made it work up to now.

There have been a few times each week when we have both had things to do at the same time and it’s then that I find myself wondering if Leo’s Covid-19 restrictions need to be quite so restrictive .

More than once I have had to excuse myself during a phone interview or editorial meeting to go and break up a fight in the garden or to warn them that if they weren’t quiet Peppa/PJ Masks/Toy Story was going off and not coming back on again until tomorrow.

Thankfully, the people you are interviewing are also stuck at home and, if they don’t have little ones to contend with while working, they have a brother/sister or work colleague who has, and feel your pain at least vicariously.

Of course, there are some upsides to working from home. I have never spent as much time with my children and when we haven’t been killing each other we have had a great laugh. There is no doubt that they have enjoyed having us around more, even if it hasn’t been overly reflected in their behaviour.

The fact that we haven’t been able to go anywhere for the last two months also means that we have explored every nook and cranny in our neighbourhood – for which we have a renewed appreciation.

I am still looking forward to returning to the office, though. If Covid-19 has made many of us take an involuntary step back and take stock about what’s important, then it has also made me more appreciative of social aspects of office life. Whether there will be a huge spike in my productivity when we return to something resembling normality remains to be seen, but it will certainly be easier to concentrate.