Taking care of business
Photography Charles Deluvio
‘I guess we’re allowed to take care of our mental health, as long as we don’t miss our video calls’
By Kate Allen
I still wake up every morning around the same time, even with my alarm turned off. Usually, it’s because my cat wants to go outside.
I shuffle to the kitchen to make coffee. While it brews, I check my emails — the international headquarters of my company are in Europe, so even though it is only 7:30 a.m. in Toronto, there has been a lot of activity already. I relish this quiet time before the cascade of video calls begins. My partner has been furloughed and has no problem sleeping in; the mornings are just for me and my cat.
It took only one week of company-wide remote working for the company to institute some ground rules for meetings to protect employees’ wellbeing, including a merciful mandate that video meetings cannot begin before 9:30 a.m. If anything, these new rules, like many other things the organisation has done since the pandemic took hold of our lives, have left me feeling jaded and indifferent. I, like many of my colleagues, have always worked from home and on the road, and never once did anyone think of restricting the time and length of our meetings for our mental health. We always joked about how head office never understood what “being in the field” really meant, but now these jokes feel all too real.
I toss on a baggy sweater and make sure my hair looks presentable before the first video call of the day begins. My boss has taken to wearing a baseball cap in every meeting because his hair has become so unruly, but my female colleagues still look presentable from the waist up. I click Join.
Every meeting starts with the obligatory “How is everyone doing today?” which we are somehow expected to answer both honestly and quickly.
“You know, honestly, we’re doing fine. I’m quarantined with my husband and we don’t have any kids. We’re homebodies anyways so we’re OK. Can’t complain!” I muster.
I am the youngest person on my team; a few colleagues are within 10 years of me, but most are much older. It creates a strange dynamic. I do not have any kids to homeschool, no elderly parents to care for, so what exactly can I complain about during lockdown? I feel the same guilty weight in my chest when speaking with my friends (again, unavoidably, over a video call.) I am in an extremely privileged position compared to most: I am used to working from home, I am still making my full salary, my savings are intact, and my family is healthy. And with my partner (whom I call my husband at work because no one quite understands why I have no desire to marry and I am sick of having that conversation) off work, I feel like there is truly no one I can talk to who won’t roll their eyes at me.
The truth is it doesn’t matter what my situation is. We are in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis. (As an aside, it would make a fun drinking game to take a sip every time someone says “unprecedented” on a video call.) I think I should be allowed to feel hopeless, depressed, anxious, fearful and anything else. I just don’t feel comfortable being these things out loud. Often, I have to listen to my colleagues complain about how lazy and emotional their children (my peers) are being in the wake of the pandemic. I turn off my video and mute my mic so I can scream into a pillow. One second, I feel like I have everything completely under control; the next, a wave of despair has crashed over me with such force that I have trouble breathing.
“Where’d you go?”
“Sorry, my husband must be watching something on the internet and stealing my bandwidth. I shut off my video because the internet became too slow to support it.”
Works every time.
The call proceeds as scheduled. We have the regular animal or child interruptions, the colleagues who cannot understand how to mute their microphones or hold their faces in frame. The call ends and I toggle over to my email.
“First, we take care of ourselves. Then, we take care of each other. Third, we take care of business.” This is what our CEO writes on one of our first days in lockdown. I do not believe it for a second. At least, I do not believe that is the order of importance. Business still comes first. I field calls from my manager about the budget and my priorities, and from my sales representatives to lament their dismal numbers. I’m still asked to meet all of my objectives, in addition to all the COVID-related tasks that have been created. Business is still at the top of everyone’s minds.
But we are taking care of each other — us field employees, anyway. There are not many people who spend as much time alone at home and on the road as we do, and understand the toll it takes on our psyches, our families and our relationships. An essential part of who we are has been taken away from us in this lockdown, and we are leaning on each other. These are some of my strongest bonds these days.
Lastly, I am allowed to take care of myself. But not too much, never a noticeable amount. My boss tells me he thinks some of the sales representatives are using this time like a vacation instead of finding solutions to continue “business as usual.” I guess if someone cannot even be bothered to feign productivity during a global crisis, what good are they? I guess we’re allowed to take care of our mental health, as long as we don’t miss our video calls.
He tells me that he thinks a lot of them will be gone before the year is out. Our team was due for a culling, he reasons, and COVID has only made that more apparent.
If I take time away from my desk during the 9-to-5 workday, I make sure anyone who notices me missing sees me working after hours in the following days. I’ll send emails after dinner, or make sure to mention my 6 p.m. phone call with a customer on the next day’s video call. I think my position is fairly secure, but who really knows anymore? The sword of Damocles is constantly swaying to and fro; as I click Join on my next call, I wonder if everyone else sees it too.
Kate Allen is a remote medical associate working for a large pharmaceutical company out of Toronto, Canada. She has a Ph.D in microbiology and immunology, specialising in virology. Kate Allen is not her real name.
