Blurred lines: W ork Zoom calls have given employers awkward glimpses into our home life
Awkward intimacy of Zoom calls has blurred the personal and the professional
In the early days of lockdown, as we were all getting to grips with working from home alongside our partners, a hilarious thread about work personas began to gain ground on Twitter.
“A funny thing about quarantining is hearing your partner in full work mode for the first time,” remarked Laura Norkin, Deputy Editor of InStyle. “Like, I’m married to a ‘let’s circle back’ guy — who knew?”
Norkin’s tweet went viral and hundreds more soon joined the conversation to share the glaring differences between their partners’ work personality and home personality.
Some were surprised to discover that their partners were fluent in corporate speak. Others were horrified to discover they had married micro-managers, clockwatchers and keyboard-thumpers.
We can all relate to Norkin’s thread, but it’s worth noting that it reflects the earliest days of our lockdown experience.
Back then, we were all trying our best to cultivate an air of professionalism amidst an environment of utter chaos. Two months on, however, and the mask of the work persona is beginning to slip.
In the early days of lockdown, we all wanted to portray ourselves in the best light possible during our daily Zoom calls. We put on our make-up, curated our bookshelves and did everything we could to appear as though we were thriving rather than merely surviving the upheaval.
Screaming children were shushed, barking dogs were exiled to the garden, oblivious partners were given the death stare if they even dared to clank about in the kitchen. And it didn’t make things any easier.
In truth, we all struggled with the awkward intimacy of video calls during the early days of lockdown. People who would never ordinarily be invited into our homes were given an opportunity to peep through the keyhole and scrutinise our wallpaper choices.
We caught a glimpse at our colleagues’ personal spaces — and whether we care to admit it or not, we made snap judgements about the possessions they surrounded themselves with.
Likewise, we saw inside our bosses’ homes and it felt a little like being seven years of age and spotting our teachers in the supermarket.
And while we all tried our best to keep up appearances, we soon realised that the carefully cultivated facade designed to portray our unerring professionalism was beginning to crumble.
Over the last few weeks, the boundary between work life and home life has begun to blur. We’re still connecting with our co-workers, but the patina of professionalism doesn’t feel that important anymore.
First went the costumes and make-up. Why fake a wide-awake look with lashings of mascara when nobody else has bothered? Next went the props — the vase of fresh-cut flowers wasn’t fooling anyone, especially when there was a stack of dishes piled up in the sink beside it.
Finally, we began to reconsider the overall mise en scène. In the
‘Why fake a wide-awake look with lashings of mascara when nobody else has bothered?’
early days of lockdown, Zoom staging was part and parcel of the WFH experience. Nowadays, children scream, dogs bark and oblivious partners clank about in the kitchen — and nobody blinks an eye.
All of the old rules — keep your personal life private, manage your emotions, dress for success — have gone out the window. And it’s those very rules that shaped our professional personas in the first place. Remote working is going to be part of our new normal in the post-coronavirus world — that much is a given. What’s interesting, however, is that employee expectations will have to shift too.
We have laboured for so long under the quiet tyranny of professionalism. Now we’re beginning to wonder what exactly that means. Are you a professional when you pretend your husband didn’t just walk into the frame of your conference call in his boxer shorts?
Are you a professional when you never lose your cool — even as your children decide to paint the hallway with Sudocrem?
It’s important to have healthy boundaries at work, but perhaps it’s time we considered the boundaries that perhaps aren’t so healthy.
After all, being human doesn’t make you any less of a professional.