Work-from-home: I missed the office and the camaraderie

Shyam A. Krishna, SENIOR ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Working from home would be fun. That was what I thought. But the coronavirus-induced stay-at-home period was anything but fun.

When the pandemic upended our lives, home became my office. I loved it. I didn’t have to hurry through the routine of ironing, shaving and showering before a hasty drive to the office, dodging the Sharjah-Dubai traffic. Life became easy. I would start work with a coffee and take breaks whenever I wanted. This was too good to be true.

As days became weeks, the cracks in the work-fromhome routine began to show. I realised that there were no start and end times for office work. There was no routine. Family life and office work merged into one seamless day. The short breaks away from the workstation didn’t help. And I worked till the work was complete, which would be way past 9.30pm.

This certainly was not the work-from-home plan I had in mind. It was disruptive. There was no spare time. No me-time either. No time to go for a walk. I couldn’t catch an episode of ‘New Amsterdam’. I didn’t have time to unwind. And I began to add inches to my girth; my frequent trips to the kitchen didn’t help.

I began to get annoyed easily. Irritated, when my concentration was affected. Angry, when I was chasing a stiff deadline. I started to hate working from home.

When I returned to the office, everything clicked back into place. I loved the routine of getting ready for the office. The traffic didn’t matter.

I began to get irritated when my concentration was affected. I began to hate working from home.”