This is . . . just fine
In amongst all the coronavirus worry, The Southland Times ,in conjunction with Sarah McCarthy, has revived the Uptown Girl column. We all deserve a bit of sarcastic humour and cheering up. Is she still an uptown girl? Read on . . .
Hi! I came back. Everything is weird right now, so of course I thought, ‘‘What the world needs now is me ranting about how nobody ever told me that neck wrinkles are an actual thing.’’
I worried for a bit that I might not be relevant, or interesting, or even still funny. But then I thought, ‘‘Well, that never stopped Mike Hosking,’’ so here we are.
It appears that a few of you are now working from home.
I’ve been working from home for a few years now. Mr mr (still alive) and I have our own wee business (we call it a company, which actually sounds pathetic as it is just the two of us and our company assets include an email address and old OfficeMax school stationery boxes stuffed with bits of paper) and we’ve done the majority of our work from our kitchen table, pausing to wonder why we have sore backs and then sitting back down again on rickety chairs that would make any health and safety team member vomit.
The first thing to know about working from home is that you really should put on a bra for work.
Mr mr has a whole havea-shower-and-get-dressed thing going on, whereas I normally end up doing the majority of my work with my phone rammed under my chin while I do the dishes in my nightie, and nothing stops the flow of conversation like hot soapy water sloshing over your top.
Another thing to know is that the jobs around the house that appear desperately unpalatable while you are slobbed on the couch will become irresistible when you are faced with a spreadsheet or a difficult phone call (ha, I say spreadsheet as if I regularly handle spreadsheets. This is a lie.)
I’ll sit down to do something (I know that it sounds like I don’t know what it actually is that I do – weird) and then I become overcome with an urge to clean out the blackened area beside the oven or rearrange the plastics cupboard. If you ever go to someone’s house and they work from home and their house is a disaster area, it’s a sure sign they are super focused and don’t get distracted by Facebook or fighting over what to listen to on the radio with their husband (I Do Not Want To Listen To Kathryn Ryan I Want To Listen To Bleak And Depressing Ladymusic).
Another thing is children. I have two children. And you have not lived until an important phone call is interrupted by a 3-year-old telling Daddy that said 3-year-old needs to do poos on the toilet.
Or had one in a meeting with you, happily ensconced on the iPad with headphones on, who then does a massive fart but doesn’t realise everyone else can hear it.
But upsides include cats in the office, and lunch is normally pretty good and you don’t have to share the microwave with fishy Jim and if someone is being a prong you don’t have to go through your manager – you can just get a divorce.