Interesting article from Gallup in their series on "returning to the office". They recommend only two or three days a week for those who can do their jobs at home.
Why the Commute?
The following is adapted from Culture Shock, Gallup’s new book about the biggest leadership challenge of our time. For more insights, preorder your copy of Culture Shock today.
The top reason employees give for not wanting to return full time to the office after the pandemic is that they don’t like the commute. In fact, the shift to hybrid and remote work during the pandemic demonstrated that millions of employees don’t have to commute to do their job.
Working in the same place we sleep is deeply embedded in our brains; throughout history, working from home has been the norm. For example, hunter-gatherers in primitive societies worked in their home preparing food and making clothes.
Working from home was not just a primitive way of life. It was also common in the Middle Ages, as working-class people in England plied their trades and crafts from home -- their work and life were combined.
Commuting is a relatively new phenomenon. The Industrial Revolution brought with it skilled factory work that required people to travel to a plant or mill and work on-site. Yet even throughout the 19th century and some of the 20th, many people continued to work from home providing services like laundry and food for factory workers.
The modern-day office didn’t emerge until the 20th century, driven by advances in technology like electricity, telephones and public transportation.
Commuting became embedded in our work culture because of a dismal aspect of human nature: the concept of “learned helplessness,” which results from people accepting a norm because they think they can’t change it.
And like many other animals, humans have a herd instinct. There is safety in numbers. We’re social creatures who generally like to be with other people and often get more done in teams.
Gallup has found that among remote-capable jobs, two to three days in person optimizes employee engagement. But in the current workplace, five days in the office relates to the lowest levels of engagement.
But commuting has become more and more stressful. In 2019, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the average one-way commute to work was 27.6 minutes; this is an increase of 10% from 2006. That’s 230 hours a year to and from work -- the equivalent of almost 29 eight-hour workdays.
Long commutes are also associated with high blood pressure, tension, anger, stiff necks, fatigue, lower back pain and obesity. Gallup has found that commutes of 45 minutes or more are linked to poorer overall wellbeing, daily mood and health. And in 2022, Gallup found that commutes of just 30 minutes are linked to higher stress and anger. After being able to avoid commuting during the pandemic, even half an hour now feels intolerable for many people.
Interesting that I essentially did something similar to this when I worked for the Mental Health Board. I did not have much of a commute, only about five miles.
ReplyDeleteI did usually go into the Board office each day. However, I did a lot of my work on my computer at home.
My normal work pattern was to arrive in the office sometime around nine and ten a.m. After sorting through my e-mails, returning phone calls, making contact with my staff and colleges, I went home for lunch.
Most afternoons I did data analysis at home where I would not be interrupted. However, one can do data analyses for only about three or four hours a day; I maximized this time by spreading it over the whole seven day work week. It was very easy to be very productive, anytime I wanted to work I simply went to my downstairs office, which is about half my basement. Everything there is arranged for maximum productivity, e.g. file cabinets of previous data analysis, research articles, etc. And no interruptions.
Now there were several board committee meetings in the evening. each month. About once or twice a month I gave data presentations to the board and agency staff in the board offices. Often, I did individual agency presentations, by going to their offices. And then from time to time I represented our board in technical meetings, e.g. the Health Coalition.
No one ever asked "how does Jack spend his time?" They saw me all the time when it was needed, and in processing my research reports they probably wondered how I managed to spend the time to get them done. Very simple, I was only in the office for the minimum time necessary.
I can see how a long commute is a big time- waster, not to mention the wear and tear on vehicles and the expense of fuel. Personally I didn't have a long commute, just two miles. And I liked that I could leave work at work, and just do home things at home.
ReplyDeleteI wonder about all the real estate which is tied up in office buildings. With many people working from home, even in a hybrid way, will employers find that they are occupying more space than they need, and shrink their commitment to building or leasing? If so that will probably mean deflated property values or even vacant buildings.
Convert office space to housing, especially for single people, and couples who are not raising children who might enjoy having a short commute or walk to their work.
DeleteThe layout of my home is convenient even if I had been married and had children. There is no reason for anyone to go to the basement. The half of the basement that is furnished is big enough to be divided into two spacious offices.
The other half of the basement houses the furnace, a tool bench, much storage and a treadmill with a computer. So one can read, take phone calls etc. while exercising.
Not everybody is wired the same way or has a house big enough to get away from the family commotion.
ReplyDeleteI used to go to the office or faculty library to grade papers on days I didn't teach because it was too hard to concentrate at home and spread out. I got distracted by dirty sinks, making dinner, cats, neighbor kids, The Rifleman reruns blaring on TV, etc.
I also found I could not work well in a vacuum. I preferred to have other people around whom I could bounce ideas off and vice versa.
And I hate talking on the phone with a fiery passion, though email took care of a lot of that.
A lot of women joke that they work to get away from their families. But it was true to a certain extent for me. It's why I paid the day care ladies a big bonus at Christmas.
Work comprised the larger part of my social bonding. I rarely ate lunch alone. We would even discuss work at lunch, the fun engineering stuff. I could have done optical design and proposals at home. But I can't imagine the shell I'd be in if I didn't go to work 5x a week. My grandparents often lived in company housing near the steel mill. Commuting was by feet. And you lived next to people who worked in the same place. I had that somewhat when I moved to Stroudsburg. A lot of coworkers within six miles.
ReplyDeleteI've worked from home for over a decade now. I'm at least as productive here as I am in the office. I did have friendships in the office, and I miss them. On the other hand, there also were people whom I didn't particularly care for (and vice-versa, I'm sure!), and I don't miss them.
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree that not having to commute is a huge benefit. Not to mention not having to wake up early in the morning to shave and shower. In some of my past jobs (esp. the insurance industry) I also had to spend a fair amount of money on work clothes - suits, ties, dress shirts, dress shoes, et al.
I feel that I had the best of both worlds: a couple of decades in the office, ftom which I learned good office work habits; and now a decade or two at home, where I can apply my good office habits but without all the drawbacks of office life.
FWIW, none of my kids work from home. One is a teacher, one is a nurse and one works in a grocery store. These are jobs where one pretty much has to be at the workplace. The other one is an engineer. He could work from home if his employer let him, but his employer wants employees in the office, and considering how young and inexperienced he is, I'm sure it's best for him to be surrounded by more senior coworkers and mentors who can teach him both the profession and how to comport oneself in an adult, professional environment - very different from the college lifestyle!
I agree with Katherine that companies not having to spend as much on real estate is a big cost savings. Even employers like mine and my wife's, which are encouraging some RTO (Return To Office), want it to be a "hybrid" model. People who go to the office no longer have a workspace to call their own; it's all "hoteling" all the time. No pictures of the family, no houseplants, no Dilbert cartoons pinned to the cubicle walls anymore.
My company closed its local office during the pandemic but now has opened another one downtown. I'd have to commute to get there - for me, that would mean riding the train and then walking a few blocks, so probably about an hour and 15 minutes door-to-door. Riding the train usually is less stressful than driving, so it wouldn't be too bad. But I'm a creature of habit and have been ensconced in my work cave for years now, so it will take some exogenous shock to get me to emerge.
I occasionally drove to visit the Pentagon and Night Vision Lab in VA. Dealing with Washington beltway traffic was not a fun experience. I usually took the western side of the beltway. All in all, I liked my visits to that area. I had relatives who lived in Annandale until 1990 and could sometimes stay with them.
ReplyDeleteThe DC area is an amazing place to live and work. It has so much going for it. Besides a lot of natural beauty, it has so much history, so many museums, most of which are free, lots of cultures and cultural activities, a very interesting group of people including the employees of all the embassies, the international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, etc, several colleges and universities, a well educated population (with the exceptions of the inner city), and proximity to the Chesapeake Bay, three hours drive from the Atlantic beaches, and basic skiing only two hours away, near you, Stanley, in Pennsylvania. It has a relatively easy climate, not too extreme, and is safe from most kinds of natural disasters. Driving around the west side on the beltway is still the the best route to Annandale. Beltway traffic has gone from somewhat manageable in the 1990s, to totally unmanageable gridlock most of the time now. People now commute from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to afford housing!
ReplyDeleteIf employers want people to work from home, are they going to pass office space savings to workers so that employees can afford a home big enough to accommodate a work silo?
ReplyDeleteWill employers pay for the computer, phone line, desks, and chairs that they would have provided on site? Everybody I know who works from home had to buy their own office and computer.
If a worker isn't paid enough to set up an OSHA-approved workspace at home, will the employer be liable for injury?
Jean, in a corporation dominated country, all change happens to the benefit of the corporations. I suppose the home workplace expenses are deductible but probably don't exceed the standard deduction.
DeleteI was no longer consulting during the pandemic, but heard tales through my connections. The people who worked in the workplace worked at home. And the obverse was true.
You can claim the workplace portion of your home as a deduction, but then you have to pay capital gains tax on it when you sell. At least that's the way it used to be set up.
DeleteAt the very least employers should provide the computer and internet hook-up, and OSHA approved chairs and desk.
DeleteWell, Google took care of its employees. They provided all the office furniture, internet, computers etc. They also gave every employee a very sophisticated, electrical home Covid test machine that is as accurate as sending the tests out, and a supply of test swabs that could be ordered ten at a time, with no limit on refills. The test results were done in about 20 minutes. I looked up the machine - as a single purchase it was $700. The swabs were about $200 for a set of three as I recall. Of course, Google paid far less for the Covid testing supplies because it has 135,000 employees and supplied every employee with them. Volume discount! A few years ago they gave every employee a 10% raise because housing prices are so astronomical in Silicon Valley that many employees couldn’t get mortgages in spite of nominally high salaries. And equally high taxes.
DeleteWhen our employees were sent home for COVID, the employer paid for a laptop computer for everyone, and also reimbursed for office setup expenses - desk, chair, floor mat and so on. It was up to the employee to pick out a chair that wouldn't require physical therapy or back surgery down the line.
DeleteThere was a reimbursement benefit for Internet and cell phone usage. In a lot of cases (it varies country to country), those now have been discontinued, as the employer wants its employees, or at least many of them, to return to the office.
When I started working from home, I worked for a different employer. It was supportive of work-from-home, as it reduced the company's real estate expenses. For work-from-home employees, it paid an additional $10/month to cover work from home office setup-related expenses. That works out to $120/year. I guess it's fair. I've had the same desk for a decade-plus now. I do go through chairs every few years.
Work from home strikes me as a great way to ease lots of employees into the ranks of gig workers. Hang onto your obergrupenfuhrers with $$ and incentives and move to ritzy digs in the Caymans. Move everyone else into a home office. Pay initially for a lap top and desk, then convert that to a yearly cash stipend that gets whittled away as workers turn over, and finally move everyone off salary or hourly and convert to pay-by-project.
DeleteMake a new revenue stream by converting old office space into Japanese style micro apts, teeny little work pods with beds, and renting them to gig workers.
There's the premise for your dystopian novel.
As my brother used to say when things were changing faster than he could cope, "Now I know why we die. We want to."
The Writer’s Guild strike in LA is apparently not only for higher salaries, but because of a fear that salaried, unionized studio screenwriters will be replaced by freelance writers. They kept working throughout the studio closures during the pandemic. They have always worked from home a good bit of the time. The father of my best friend ( I’ve mentioned her before) from birth to age 10 when we moved was a screenwriter for Warner Brothers, way back in the 50s. He went to meetings at the studio, which was about 15 minutes from our neighborhood in those days, but did most of his writing at home. He taught me to swim when I was three, while teaching his own daughter. I’m sure that he was focused on keeping the friends of his daughters safe because we spent so much time playing in their yard ( all year - the California lifestyle is outdoors)
DeleteBut many people like working from home. It provides much more freedom and control over one’s time. It enabled me to raise three sons without nearly as much stress as a full time office job would have required. Not to mention the daily commute. No benefits but I was covered by my husband’s health plan and I funded my SEP-IRA accounts for retirement, but without contributions from an employer. I suspect the evolution to gig work is more likely for the non- professionals in administrative support and clerical jobs. They too use computers and the internet as their tools, but are more easily replaced. Silicon Valley workers, like workers in DC, LA and other large urban metro areas with horrible traffic, and lengthy commutes embrace work at home. An office that is a distance measured in single digit miles is unheard of. A ten minute commute is also pretty much unheard of. Even in downtown DC, to have a commute of ten minutes would mean living in a very, very expensive condo- $750,000 and up. Also $1000+ in monthly condo fees. With kids, add in private school tuitions because the only decent public schools there are in neighborhoods where you’d need a minimum of $1,000,000 to buy a small townhouse house in the good public school neighborhoods.
There does seem to be a glut of commercial space in many cities these days. And a lot of vacant strip malls in the suburbs. Given the housing affordability crises in many major metro areas, converting some of the office buildings and uninhabited strip malls to apartments seems a good idea. Costly, but adding a lot more units should still result in lower rents by expanding supply to better meet the demand. Governments might also be able to buy up some of the excess inventory to convert some of these empty commercial spaces to housing the ever growing homeless populations in cities like San Francisco, LA, Phoenix, etc.
I'm all for solutions that cut down on traffic, pollution, clothing consumption, and general stress. I just think that those eager to embrace it need to think about whether it makes their jobs more flexible and secure. Or whether it makes them more vulnerable to employers looking to feather their own nests.
DeleteI also wonder whether having a large number of home-based workers doesn't give big corporations yet another edge over smaller competitors, pushing us closer to the day when everybody works for Worldwide Consolidated Corporations Unlimited and its subsidiaries.
Monopoly is the natural outcome of capitalism. Unless you regulate and enforce and that's been a mortal sin for 43 years. No matter what changes or evolves, the overlords can harness it for their benefit. Dystopia is here. Is anybody going to do anything about it?
DeleteThose of you who have worked from home could maybe answer this question; is it hard to establish boundaries of when you are "at work" and when you are on your own time? Rather than employees goofing off while on the clock, I think it is more likely that some employers would expect you to always be available by text or call, regardless of the day or hour. Because some of them already do that, even if you work on site at least part of the time.
DeleteKatherine, since I was self- employed, not a regular employee. I’m not sure that I know how it is for normal employees of a corporation. I did not often have those problems with one exception. Usually I had specific tasks to complete by a certain deadline and I was generally left alone to do the work wherever and whenever I chose. It was primarily research, analyze, write a report. But one client was a small non- profit. The President, who was the founder of the organization, occasionally called me at odd times and wanted a quick response. She did this sometimes when she was at an out of town conference and wanted me to research something at 9 pm and get back to her ASAP. Sometimes she was working late on something and would call and ask me to come in. Generally when this happened she was working at her home in the evening or on the weekend and I joined her there. I was flexible to the nth degree! But it didn’t happen often. On one occasion she got a last minute invitation to be interviewed on TV. Her executive assistant called me while I was doing errands in my car and asked me if I could meet her at the TV studio to be available to give her a last minute briefing on research in her field. So I went downtown to the TV studio! That was interesting for me because the interviewer was in New York and she was in DC, so she couldn’t see him, only hear him. I could see both of them on a split screen TV monitor that was in the room, but not visible to my client or whoever was being interviewed by someone in a remote location.
DeleteWhen visiting my sons, I wasn’t aware of many interruptions during their post- work hours - family time - but sometimes the work hours were extended - by them - in order to meet deadlines.
Re: goofing off while on the clock - I am sure that happens to some extent at home, just as it happens to some extent at the office; and of course the goofing-off is easier and more enjoyable at home.
DeleteThe great question on the table is: can workers be as productive at home as in the office. Workers think, Yes, we can be; supervisors tend to think, No, they can't be. Many more workers would work from home if supervisors trusted them more to get the work done.
On the other hand: our company provides call center services to large corporations. Call center work is highly measurable: the system can tell how many calls each worker-bee took, i.e. how productive they are. In general, productivity has slipped a bit during the work-from-home era. Not catastrophically, but a bit. Wringing an addition 2% or 3% more calls per shift out of workers is ample justification for making call center workers come back into the office.
The time I spent working at home involved entertaining an only child. Once he was 4, he spent 6 hours a day, M-Th, in day care with other children his own age. I figured any kid who hung with his 40+ year old mother exclusively would get pretty damn weird.
DeleteCommuting wasn't fun but carpooling with my colleague and friend cut the burden in half. No radio and the passenger went into delta sleep . For a while, we had our supervisor in the carpool but he would bug us about administrative chicken stuff on the way in. So we found a way to dissolve the carpool and reform it without him. We carpooled for thirty years. We were two dependable people dependable to each other. There were other carpools that lasted as long. I don't know if they even exist anymore in my workplace. I doubt it.
ReplyDeleteCarpools are relatively rare in the DC area I think. I never have known anyone who was in a regular carpool. Few people work a predictable schedule here outside of some of the federal government employees. But a couple of the major highways into DC in Virginia require 3 passengers/car during rush hours. . So every day commuters wait at unofficial but we’ll known locations to pick up rides. These are known as slug lines. Many end at the Pentagon or Reagan National where the passengers can hop out and continue the commute on the metro (subway)and the driver continues on to wherever she/ he works.
DeleteDon't many of the advantages of working from home--not getting up early to shower, not having to commute, not having to see annoying people--apply to church on line? Why go live when you can sit in your lazy boy, since Communion is only required once a year?
ReplyDeleteWhy go anywhere when you can Zoom and text?
There is a legal answer and a theological answer. The legal answer is: it's a mortal sin to skip Sunday mass for no very good reason. The theological reason is: God pretty clearly wants us to gather communally to offer him thanks and praise, and to be sanctified by him.
DeleteBut God never said that the community has to be hundreds of people in a church. It’s a manmade rule. The church is a man- made institution that evolved over centuries as the numbers of followers of Jesus grew too large to gather in private homes. God mentioned two or three gathered in my name. He didn’t specify a location. Jesus normally gathered with his small group of followers in someone’s home. They shared a meal, prayers, and Jesus taught. Most early followers did that also. There were no priests, no hierarchy. Men invented the hierarchy. God also didn’t invent the liturgy of the Catholic mass. And God certainly cannot be blamed for the rigid rules known as the GIRM. I have never read anywhere in the Bible that skipping physical attendance at a Roman Catholic mass was a sin. In the Mosaic laws it does say that God wants us to rest on the seventh day ( Saturday) and keep it holy.
DeleteExodus 20. 8 "Remember the day, Shabbat, to set it apart for God.
9 You have six days to labor and do all your work,
10 but the seventh day is a Shabbat for ADONAI your God. On it, you are not to do any kind of work -not you, your son or your daughter, not your male or female slave, not your livestock, and not the foreigner staying with you inside the gates to your property.
11 For in six days, ADONAI made heaven and earth, the sea and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. This is why ADONAI blessed the day, Shabbat, and separated it for himself.
Not a single hint about going to mass, only an instruction to not work and a declaration that the day is blessed and that the day is set aside for God. The assumption is that it is for prayer. God didn’t define sin as mortal or venial. Besides, the RC church wasn’t invented yet when Jesus lived. He was a Jew, so big group religious gatherings were in the temple.
The practice of gathering to worship and partake of the sacred meal is attested to in the New Testament itself, which is our earliest record for what believers did. It seems clear that this practice was rooted in existing cultural and religious patterns, especially existing Jewish cultural and religious practices. Yes, that means that it is "man-made", in the sense that humans obviously are the ones who have done it and who have stewarded it over the centuries. Speaking for myself (and of course I am not alone in this): I see God's goodness and sustenance at work in this.
DeleteIn this classic book, Liturgy of the Hours: East and West, Taft summarizes the NT teaching on prayer which is simply to pray always and everywhere, whether alone, with two or three others, groups, ,
DeleteJesus, himself, engages in all of these as examples. (He spent a lot time going off praying alone!).
In summarizing prayer during the first few centuries, Taft concluded that what one did pretty much depended upon who was around when it came time to pray, e.g. a bishop, presbyters, deacons, readers, cantors.
Our present distinctions between public and private, liturgical and not liturgical prayer did not exist in the early church.
Yes Jim, we agree on this but only to a point. People gathered, as Jesus himself suggested. Jews met and prayed together as human beings created some structures and rituals that they thought were helpful. But it wasn’t a command to gather with dozens, or hundreds. In the OT I think these gatherings were mostly families and groups of families in the tribe. But Jesus said that as few as two could be a gathering. The early followers met in homes as you know. No churches. They shared a meal, a real one, discussed Jesus’s teachings, and remembered him with bread and wine. He didn’t tell anyone that they would go to hell (mortal sin) if they didn’t go into a building with hundreds or thousands of others every sabbath, which was supposed to be Saturday, but was changed by the men of the early institution to be Sunday because they assume that Jesus rose from the dead on a Sunday. I have long thought that God has a spiritual path for everyone. But it isn’t the same path for everyone. You seem to have an emotional reaction to the very possibility that some people may have a spiritual path that is not the same as yours.
DeleteJack - …. Taft summarizes the NT teaching on prayer which is simply to pray always and everywhere, whether alone, with two or three others, groups
DeleteI will look for his book.
Our present distinctions between public and private, liturgical and not liturgical prayer did not exist in the early church.
Prayer has been made overly complicated and legalistic by men during the last 2000 years. Stone by stone they built an ediface man-made control of Christianity, reserving all power to the clerical class, controlling it through fear - so missing mass became a mortal sin and if you die with a mortal sin on your soul you go to hell. It worked with me when I was ten And twelve. I didn’t fight my mom about going to mass. But eventually I saw this church rule, made by men, for what it really was.
That wall has weakened, cracks have appeared, and stones are beginning to fall. Probably a good step towards healthier religion, and a creating a deeper, Jesus-based, spirituality.
Taft's book is very scholarly, basically intended for graduate students in liturgy.
DeleteWell I’m definitely not a grad student in liturgy! And since liturgy doesn’t really interest me maybe I’ll skip it. But I do like what you quoted.
DeleteAs is the case in various other fields, I have found that a good test one's interest in liturgy is to try to read graduate-level essays or books. If one can't put it down and starts searching for the books referenced in the footnotes to read those, too, then one has zeal for liturgy. If (like me) one finds one's appetite quenched after a few pages, one probably isn't called to the vocation of liturgist. Anne, you are showing the path of wisdom in this :-)
DeleteEventually I plan to summarize each chapter of Taft on my site for the Divine Office. Obviously, I will begin with the first chapter. So, you will be able to find all the scripture references, etc.
DeleteJim, I may not be a big liturgy fan, bit I do much prefer liturgy to the kind of services the evangelical churches do. I’ve never been to one in person, but I’ve watched videos. So liturgy, but I prefer simple liturgies. For regular Sunday liturgies I prefer the EC to the RC. My favorite were the weekday masses I used to go to at the chapel of Holy Trinity church in Georgetown. The chapel was actually the original Jesuit parish there, long, long ago when the founded the university. I had to be downtown most days for several years, so I went to their late afternoon mass at times. The chapel is very simple and very lovely. The mass was short and sweet. Good homilies - maybe 5-7 minutes. Short and to the point. No filler. No music. Maybe 10 or so people. Even though I didn’t know the priests or the people (often parents and a prospective Georgetown student there to tour the campus) it felt more like community than Sunday mass at my parish. There was a homeless man who came sometimes. He sat as far away from others as he could., He also cleaned his chair with some kind of cloth before leaving the chapel. I felt sort of helpless - I didn’t know whether to approach him or not, but he always quickly walked out and sort of disappeared. I couldn’t tell if the priests knew him or not.
DeleteIn person or remote? It’s just another individual preference I suppose. Jack and Betty have created a deep spiritual life without needing to go to mass in person. Some people have a strong need to be part of a physical gathering in a church. Or in an office. You stay home because of health concerns. Your husband likes to be with others. Jim is parish staff, so he has no choice. Besides, he’s an extrovert with a need to be around people. Katherine seems to have a strong preference for being in the church itself. She’s not staff but her husband is. And she has to be there as a volunteer in the music ministry, which she loves doing. I prefer silent prayer. Liturgy is not something that is important to me. I can stay home. My husband wants to go to the church. Sometimes we do and sometimes we don’t. But he won’t go alone as Raber does. So I go with him now and then so that he can go. I am in a different situation than most because of the severity of my hearing loss. So I text and email. I don’t Zoom because I often can’t understand what people say. I had to stop working when I was about 67 because of the hearing loss.The only zoom sessions I’ve sat in on were two holiday extended family sessions during Covid and I just let everyone else talk while I sat there and stayed quiet since I couldn’t follow the conversation.
ReplyDeleteAfter years of being self- employed I accepted a full time normal job with a company. My husband had been forced off his very small company’s health plan (30 employees) because of his age. They let him keep it for a few years after he turned 65, however it was getting too expensive for the company to carry. But since I am seven years younger, I wasn’t eligible yet for Medicare. So I went back to an office job just to get health insurance. It was on a DOD contract and, as usual, no guarantees that the company would have it renewed. It wasn’t. So I found myself without health insurance for a year or so. I took out a catastrophic coverage policy that was expensive, but at least we could manage the premiums. It would only kick in after many thousands out of pocket, but was there if I needed some major surgery, or extended cancer care etc. But I stayed healthy until Medicare age. Once back in an office I realized that working at home was not only better for me personally, but that I was far more productive working at home. I was also putting about 70 miles/day on my car commuting. Jean, around here the lay Eucharistic ministers often bring communion to the home bound. So you could meet the Easter “duty” requirement without immersion into a germ filled church congregation.
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DeleteYes - Jean - many people benefit from working in an office. As I said - personal preferences are involved, along with opportunities. I created my own freelance career. I didn’t have to work to expand, to found a company or have partner. I did it primarily for my own intellectual satisfaction, but it was a handy second income because I could earn enough to help with paying for family travel and school tuitions. But I could only do it because my husband earned enough for the day to day, and because I could be on his health insurance. Not everyone could afford to do what I did. So I have done both. But offices are often hotbeds of gossip, backbiting, and too many people stepping on others in order to advance. When I worked for myself, I didn’t have to worry about a work colleague who was a higher level employee presenting my analyses to the boss as his own. I didn’t have to worry about the gossip etc. I often spent hours at a time in client offices. I usually was given a desk and computer for the times I worked in the offices. But I was removed from the pettiness. From the office politics. I observed it - the fly on the wall - but wasn’t dragged into it. I saw more backbiting than tolerance. I also made a couple of good friends while working with them as an outside contractor. Most of my friendships from full time in office work 45+ years ago faded away years ago, even though they did last for years after no longer working together. People moved away. They had kids. Their time for their old office buddies became scarce, until it was only Christmas card connections. However I am still in regular contact with school friends from elementary, high school and college, in spite of more than a half century time gone by, and distance from California. I see them when I’m there, email and phone calls and texts when I’m east. A couple of the work friendships I made as a consultant have endured to now, even though I am 15 years older and haven’t been with these particular friends professionally for more than a dozen years. They are still working.
DeleteChurch works for some. I hadn’t had the impression that it does for you. You mentioned several times that you usually tried to find a seat in the church that was away from others. Your opinion of the Church Ladies is spot on in applying to many churches, Catholic and not Catholic. Frankly, I can more easily love some neighbors ( and family) from a distance than through coerced attendance at church ( a mortal sin! You will go to hell!) or at family gatherings. I had forgotten that you voluntarily stopped going to communion years ago. To each her, or his, own. Right now I’m trying to overcome my lethargy to better love a couple of friends who are widowed. And a widowed neighbor whom I have never liked but is now physically incapacitated and housebound with only a part- time caretaker who comes four days/ week. The people at church never noticed when I finally gave up going. Jim and Katherine are immersed in parish activities and friendships. But most in parishes of hundreds or thousands (my parishes here had thousands) often don’t even see a familiar face at mass. That’s not what I call community. My small centering prayer group was community. Usually more than two or three gathered in Jesus’s name, seldom more than six or eight. It was a true community and God’s presence was palpable. Which it never has been at huge Sunday mass for me. That is one reason I started skipping Sunday mass but would go to a weekday mass with few people.
The comment above was misplaced.It is a response to Jean’s comment at 11:33 below
Delete"But most in parishes of hundreds or thousands (my parishes here had thousands) often don’t even see a familiar face at mass. That’s not what I call community. My small centering prayer group was community. "
DeleteYep, I get that. Whether it is a parish or an employer, it is the group-within-the-group that provides the social "glue". I wouldn't get much (or any) community fulfillment in being one of 600 people at mass every week. But as a person on staff, or Outreach ministry, or the choir - that is the real community.
In addition, Fr. Andrew Greeley's social surveys of parish life showed that Catholic schools provided "glue" for parishes. Parents bonded because their children were attending the same school. He was very critical of bishops in the 1960s and 1970s who dropped the ball on Catholic schools.
Jim, isn't a very good reason to keep cars off the road to prevent pollution and to reduce the cost of maintaining church buildings?
ReplyDeleteYes, I'm kind of being a smart ass here, but I do think that the loss of communal workplaces erodes human connections as much as attending St. YouTube's Anytime Mass for the Slothful and Misanthropic.
God knows I love YouTube church, which ought to make anybody think twice about it. If I see the officiant is somebody who gives an indifferent sermon, has an annoying accent or manner, I can hop over to another service in seconds. And there are no MAGA parishioners. Best of all, no Church ladies!
None of this is conducive to loving God through my neighbors. It is mostly private navel-gazing. And while the workplace was not ordained by God, it is still where many people find meaning, communion, and learn tolerance.
Anne, I haven't taken RCC Communion for 15 years, and do not plan to. If you want a family member to have Communion here, you can ask the priest to send you home with with some type of kit, but there are no visiting Eucharistic ministers.
"And while the workplace was not ordained by God, it is still where many people find meaning, communion, and learn tolerance." Very good point! In a Richard Rohr book I read last year, he noted that many young adults in particular find corporations are more conducive to issues that are important to them, such as environmental stewardship and inclusivity, than the Catholic church. He suggested that corporations were filling the "space" in people's lives that the church could and should fill.
DeleteI never found the Dow Chemical Corp to be inclusive (except for a women's executive development program called Sally Seedling) nor interested in environmental issues (makers of Agent Orange and napalm). But that was 50 years ago.
DeleteBut some companies might find it helpful to recruitment and retention efforts to pretend to care about inclusivity and hot topics. Not sure it fools anybody.
Otoh, the local parish has only ever gotten "activist" about abortion and gay rights, always from an "anti" standpoint. Once kids have seen Catholics in their local parish marching against women who have had abortions and LGBTQ friends, it's impossible to try to point out that these positions stem from a respect for life teaching. At least I found it impossible.
It might=be easier to sell anti- abortion as respect for life if the teens saw the same folk pushing for affordable child care, affordable health insurance, mandatory maternity leave, ( one of my daughters in law had zero days maternity leave. She was told to use her own sick leave and vacation days) and other family support measures, not to mention gun control, eliminating the death penalty, and care for refugees and immigrants. The Seamless Garment approach is the only truly pro- life approach but it’s not embraced by the anti-choice crowd.
DeleteWhy go anywhere when you can Zoom and text?
ReplyDeleteWhy not make the home, the center of one’s social networks?
Why have other locations like work and church try to make themselves the center of our social lives? All those other locations tend to ignore all the locations and networks that compete for our time. They are organized for their own purposes. They function and dissolve on their own times tables.
At the beginning of the pandemic the parish where we did Commonwealth Local Community and Betty was a cantor got a new young pastor who has his own ideas, so it is unlikely we will be going back to those networks. Our nearby pastor and music director are both aging and have had poor health in recent years, so that whole scene could change in the next few years.
Ultimately as the data from the Friends book indicates, we all have limited social time. Our brains can only process about five people as intimate “friends”, another circle of ten “close friends” who hopefully will also be supportive of us, and a group of about 50 friends whom we see briefly each month. Some of these are family, some work related, some neighbor related, some hobby related, some church related. While all these people are in our networks, most of them are not in each other’s networks.
We need to be personally integrated, and project that personal integration unapologetically to everyone. Our home is the obvious center for our integration.
Of course, not all homes are designed for such integration. However, my current house works out very well for such integration. My family of original home would have too. I had my own little two-bedroom apartment upstairs with one used for an office. If I were married it could have been used as two offices above the first-floor family space.
The great room of my present home functions as the church with its cathedral ceilings. A large monitor fills in the front of the unused fireplace which is one center of the great room besides the dining area and kitchen areas. It is interesting the important gods of the Roman house were the gods of the hearth. So as the communal center of our house, it is the perfect place for liturgy.
While Betty and I will probably begin to return to our local parish in the next few weeks we will be doing it very carefully, choosing the Saturday evening Mass, coming in before most people and leaving after most people and setting in a part of the large church that is removed from most people. We intend to indicate to everyone that this is very provisional, and will change from month to month, and season to season as our health situations change.
ReplyDeleteWe will note the virtual Eucharist from Saint Meinrad’s, Notre Dame, and the National Shrine will remain the center of our Sunday Mornings as well as the daily celebration of the Divine Office which we are willing to share virtually with members of the parish through my website.
I have also purchased ten copies a month of Word on Fire Liturgy of the Hours Booklet which I will be giving out free to those who join us virtually. I am willing to subsidize people up to three months while they decide whether or not they need the booklet. We are willing to invite several people at a time to our spacious driveway area during the summer to help them with their ipads iphones, etc.
If we manage to recruit one person a month, that would mean by the end of a year or perhaps two summers, we would have a network of about a dozen people. That will be about as much as we can handle. Hopefully after that we can slowly add people to the virtual network so that we can be more critical about people we chose to invite to our house.
I think we could provide an extremely valuable Liturgy of the Hours ministry to the parish without the need for parish space or staff support. Of course, the pastor and staff may not be very happy about that. But then I suspect that over the next ten years we will outlive them as their health conditions force them to move on!
Thank you for the conversation, everyone. It has made me look more closely at what I got out of my work life. The comments have made me deeply grateful that in my teaching life I was able to make eye contact with every student and that I was able to see when they learned something new or were completely flummoxed. I am also very grateful to have had many colleagues who respected my skills and worked collaboratively with me. Few of these connections turned into deep or long-lasting friendships, but they are certainly lights along the way that I remember with a lot of satisfaction and make my life feel less futile.
ReplyDeleteWell, the teaching profession does seem to be most effective in person. As a student i would not have liked being taught virtually, especially in high school or college. The discussions among students and teachers were always educational. But I did research and analysis and a whole lot of writing. I was helped tremendously by my first boss at the World Bank. I learned more about international economics during that year than I did in my formal studies. I also learned a lot about going to original sources, which often meant phone calls to experts overseas. I was shy about doing this, but as soon as I told the gatekeeper who answered the phone that I was my boss’s research assistant the expert was immediately on the line. It turned out my boss was an eminence in the field. Sadly he left the World Bank a year after I started working for him. But that year gave me the foundation I needed for my freelance career.
DeleteWhen I worked I asked the people whom I supervised to fill out a " position evaluation" midway between annual performance evaluations. I asked three questions.
DeleteWhat do you like about your job?
What do you dislike about your job?
What would you like to do in your job that you are not now doing?
I always found the "likes" very informative because people often don't articulate them, and in fact it would be very easy to eliminate positive aspects of a person's job without even being aware of their importance.
Dislikes were usually very predictable. I was a little disappointed that I did not get more creative responses to the wish-list question.