Post-COVID Poll

[SOTTREADER]

Yes, I agree, office politics are sometimes quite distasteful. But I think of them as the way I would see our immune system, it has to interact with the world in order to remain strong and prepared.

Office politics and the hierarchies that form around social gatherings are part of what we can use to learn a lot about humanity, and ourselves. I consider myself an introvert and I am very comfortable being alone, social gatherings can give me some anxiety from time to time, specially around strangers. But it's one of those things where I realized at some point that I was too self involved in my own head about it, and so I had to work out that social muscle, and go through the discomfort, sort of like going to the gym represents discomfort.

I think if done with that idea in mind, the office politics can be something one could learn to appreciate as it teaches one to "behave", not to be obedient, but to be considerate, to learn boundaries personal and those of others, to be courteous and sincere, and to see other human beings as such.

To put a quick example of my recent experience, I now have a coworker who is an ardent Biden lover who also is an absolute believer in the narrative of the virus. If I interacted with him purely online, I probably would not be able to stand him and work with him as I would make a lot of assumptions about his character based on that one dimension of his being. But being able to interact with him, and see him everyday, I can safely say that he's simply a man that I deeply disagree with on several levels, but with whom I am completely capable of having a sincere, courteous and professional relationship because he is still a human being.

And funny enough, we now joke about it which actually reduces stress immensely, it almost eliminates it. Quick example, the other day he asked me if he could borrow a pen, I said: "sure, you're gonna love it, it's a blue pen, which means it's a democrat... it has covid though". We laughed and we found a way to be kind to one another despite the disagreement.

And I think that this is one of the downsides of the working from home situation, it gives everyone a false image of what other people are like, it deepens polarization, it turns everything into a cold social network conversation, and we're disconnected from one another constantly making assumptions about what other people are like. And if you ask me, that's the largest form of divide and conquer I've seen in maybe ever.

All very good points. I suppose relationships and especially face to face relationships are the bread and butter of our "lessons" as it were. So in that regard one learning to adapt into an office environment has the opportunity to confer positive learnings on the individual. So I guess it's about adjusting ones attitude to something which is both one of the best and worst attributes of being a human. We can adjust to I guess accept the nature of these relationships in offices with the accompanying politics which may benefit us in many ways BUT on the other hand, we can adjust to accept lockdowns, restrictions, mandates and all the rest of it which again, dependent on ones attitude (think Don Juan & petty tyrants) can indeed provide one with positive learnings.

So basically life appears to want to be about adjusting and extracting the positive from situations whilst looking out for your emotional, mental and physical well-being rather than rejecting and whining about situations.

 

[Chu]

I guess for some people remote work may have been good, because it showed them how much they were slaves to their work pre-covidiocy. But for others, the isolation is hard to bare, together with the points you all brought up, like the lack of separation between work&home, and the social interactions.

Since part of the plan is obviously to isolate people, they'll probably keep pushing for remote work and remote schooling more and more. In big cities, and for people living alone and in small apartments, it seems to be the hardest. Not to mention the effect it's having on children!

The thing is, they are probably going to abuse this one way or another. Just like @Aquarian1962 said, perhaps monitoring what you do at home. So, it's not real "freedom", although it may be temporarily. One way or another, they'll try to push more and more. OSIT.

The very idea of having this kind of "poll" gives the impression that it's a choice, but we know that's ultimately not true for most.