CW: Capitalist nonsense

This is about a year and a half late, but we need to talk about the truly awful work-from-home materials that were produced early in the pandemic (and are still being produced). These fall under the umbrella of workplace wellness because 1) I want them to and 2) they were created supposedly for your personal benefit but their true purpose is to make you a productive and compliant employee.

These materials also wildly overestimate the amount of space people have at home and the amount of control they have over their surroundings and any other living beings they share their space with. This betrays a lack of audience awareness, which is an original sin of communication.

A disclaimer: I have a home office and I don’t have children, making me an employer’s dream, so if even I find these documents condescending and unhelpful, I can only imagine how awful these seem to someone with kids in a 1-bedroom apartment.

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

One document from AllOne Health, titled “Working in a Home Office,” says in its introduction: “Working in a home office and maintaining work-life balance requires preparation and regular evaluation of your work practices. If you are not careful, your home office can take over your life. By following a few guidelines, you can avoid burnout as you take advantage of working at home.”

Reading this, you might think, “Finally! A document that understands I’m not only worried about being an employee, but also about work creeping into all aspects of my life!”

Dear reader, you would be wrong.

The rest of the document focuses on setting up a home office space to maximize your productivity, reducing distractions, and warning you about the dangers of having a family. It says zero (I just went back and re-read the whole thing to make sure) things about how to leave work at work so that you can have a balanced life. This is like the moment in Scooby-Doo when they pull the mask off the villain. Wait, we thought it was a creepy ghost, but it’s actually…CAPITALISM!

I know—I’m as tired of this reveal as you are at this point. I’ve found myself wondering if I even need to write this blog anymore because I always end up in the same place: workplace wellness exists to make you an employee who never takes time off, never gets sick, and never requires anything from an employer beyond below-market-average pay and that awesome new kombucha bar that will 100% heal everything that ails you.

And yet, despite being completely obvious about their motives, people keep making these things, and so I continue on. OK, back to this AllOne Health nightmare document.

“Working in a Home Office” also loves admonishing you about what your office and work are and aren’t. For example, “Remove items from the office that are not work related. It is not a storage shed,” or “Schedule breaks for activities like social networking. Do not constantly surf the internet,” or “Limit the office use for work. It is not a play area.”

Now, as someone who teaches technical writing, I understand that the imperative mood has its time and place, especially when it comes to writing clear instructions. However, the tone here created by the imperative mood is paternalistic at best and insultingly condescending at worst.

Our offices aren’t storage sheds? (Are she sheds OK? What if your home office is an actual storage shed because you don’t have any privacy indoors?) Wait, surfing the internet constantly or playing a game of Twister all by myself might not be the best use of my time? Dear me, the revelations in this document are truly groundbreaking.

The piece of advice about your office not being a play room makes it clear that children are your one true enemy when it comes to work, a stance that the document makes even more explicit later on. After noting that “your family can easily forget that you are working,” the document states, “Ask your family to stay out of the office while you are working. Family, children especially, can be very distracting.”

First, this is another piece of obvious and condescending advice. Kids are little bundles of chaos engineered for maximum distraction. I don’t have kids and I know that. Every parent knows that. Second, during the pandemic this advice to keep your family and work lives completely separate is pure fantasy. Add in the fact that this document doesn’t address how to keep work from creeping into your home life and you have a piece that has a pretty clear message: your work comes first.

Other media created for employees early in the pandemic had a much stronger “we’re all in this together!” tone while still shaming you for being a person with needs and challenges. I can no longer find this video created by the City of Minneapolis for its employees when the pandemic hit the US, but Past Me did Present Me a solid by screen-capturing the whole thing so that I can now present it to you.

Looking back at this video in the Delta Variant Times of 2021, I feel like it has an innocent and cheerful air about it completely at odds with where we are now. It does some good things, like telling you to not work all the time (without mentioning that managers should be adjusting workloads) and telling you to reach out to people if you need help, which the AllOneHealth thing doesn’t do at all. It has a sweetness about it that almost makes me feel bad for hating it.

Almost.

However, it still hits all the same bad notes as the AllOne Health piece: Your kids and pets are distractions! Your kids and pets will understand that their parent needs to go serve that Great Beast Known as Capitalism and accept only short interactions! Get all of your work done despite extraordinary circumstances! Wear clothes and comb your hair, you disgusting primate! Make time for yourself in the midst of working and also caring for others! DO IT ALLLLLLLLL!

So, what to do in the face of terrible advice/directives?

Really, at this point, I’m all tapped out on advice. I’m basically a raccoon hiding in a dumpster hoping that today isn’t garbage day and that I can just take a nap under this grease-stained pizza box. But if you do have energy to do something at this point, the only recommendation I have is relentless mockery.

If you need some inspiration, I made this alternative video for City of Minneapolis employees, or really anyone who is getting bad work from home advice from their employers. Go forth, hellfriends, and mock relentlessly.