A new Microsoft Survey reveals how much work has changed. And no amount of magical thinking is going to bring the concept of work back to what it was pre-pandemic.
Have you ever noticed men’s shirt buttons are on your right while women’s shirt buttons are on your left. Why? Most men usually dressed themselves in ancient times, while rich women often had servants to help them put on clothes. To make it easier for the servants to button dresses, dressmakers placed the buttons on the left. Few women have servants who dress them, yet their buttons remain on the left. Even though, for most women, it would be far easier for buttons to be on the right. But the tradition persists for no good reason.
Similarly, we still send flowers to a funeral home when someone dies. Why? Before embalming became common, flowers were needed to cover up the …ah…smell. Another tradition that exists for no present purpose.
Pre-pandemic most of us robotically trudged to the office to work. Every day without question
And pre-pandemic, we did the same with work. Jordan Furlong recently made the point that, like the buttons and funeral flowers, pre-pandemic most of us robotically trudged to the office to work. Every day without question. Says Furlong, “Way back, before the pandemic, many of us would leave our homes early in the morning and travel to our collective workspaces. Then, when we were finished doing all the work things for the day, we would leave the workspace and travel back home. We would do this because, well, because that’s the way things were always done. “
But Furlong points out (as have I, although not nearly so articulately) that that may be forever changed. And a recent Microsoft Study supports