Everyone hates working from home, right? There’s the long commute, constant surveillance from micromanaging bosses, ugly environment, endless busy work until you’re allowed to go home … oh, wait, that’s working in an office. And I’m not even getting into dealing with rude customers!
Working from home, by contrast, freakin’ kicks ass. You don’t have to spend an hour in traffic or run to catch the bus! You can poop in your own toilet! If there’s a lull between meetings or you need to clear your head, you can do some quick tidying or take a walk! And the best thing yet: you can work from the comfort of your own space, instead of a windowless box with buzzing fluorescent lights!
It’s a lifestyle that some control freaks apparently can’t stand. In a new article supposedly revealing what remote work is doing to workers, Daily Mail has painted a terrifying future for anyone with the gall to want to earn a paycheck in their PJs. Unless bosses corral their workers back into offices where they belong, in 70 years workers will end up with “a hunchback, dark, swollen eyes, and claw-like hands as a result of working from home.”
The article, and its accompanying tweet, show a terrifying-looking woman in a pink leotard. Her shoulders are hunched, her fingers are clawed, and her eyes look gaunt and sunken. She has seen the unthinkable hellscape of not spending eight hours a day in a cubicle, and it has sucked the life right out of her.
The article explains that the rendering was produced by a furniture company, and this context is super important. The woman in the picture looks like the last refugee from an aerobics class on a planet hit by a meteor because she doesn’t have “a proper place to work at home.” It’s not the practice of working from home that’s ruined her, it’s the fact that she’s doing it curled up on her bed, hunched over a laptop.
In short, the picture isn’t from a serious study. It’s from a company trying to sell office furniture.
But the article is the latest in a long string of hand-wringing thought pieces on the evils of working without a middle manager wagging their finger over your every task.
Workers aren’t having it, though. People who work from home know how awesome it is. People who worked from home during Covid quarantines before being ordered back to the office got a brief taste of the good life. And people who have never been able to work from home know full well what they’re missing.
After the article came out, readers did the only reasonable thing they could: they roasted the hell out of Daily Mail.
So if you work from home, make sure you have an ergonomic workspace set up and you should be fine. And if you’re still at an office but would like to work from home, here’s hoping you’ll reach the promised land someday.
(featured image: 20th Century Fox)
