My mobile working life: It’s a shame the fun has come to an end

When a new virus started to change the whole world, anyone who could worked from home. Everyone had to protect themselves and most people wanted to, especially as the disease was still largely unknown. We knew it was contagious. Contacts had to be avoided.

Even at the start, I didn’t think that working from home was entirely a bad thing. I was already familiar with working from home because I had been allowed to work from home for one day a week for years (now it can be up to five). This still has many advantages. Commuting time suddenly turned into spare time and the coffee is really good at home.

At the time, the IT departments that were preparing for endpoint security and business continuity were able to scale quickly – all  went well. My home office was up and running! In that respect, the virus looked stupid. Not all companies managed right away – but they caught up quickly. The learning curve was steep and unfortunately the hardware was scarce at the beginning.

Today we are focusing more on the details – from the right office to VPN and multi-factor authentication (this is easy because IT says so). Well, I'm definitely doing very well! It's a good fit.

But wasn’t it even more fun? Care packages piling up in my home office

The virus was raging outside and I sat on my kitchen chair and had more free time. Numerous care packages that were suddenly sent from all corners sweetened this time for me – particularly during the lockdowns. Employers and other organizations were sympathetic towards stressed or lonely colleagues at home – that's why at the beginning of the pandemic many packages of baking mixes, jam, pasta, vegan spreads and so on were piling up in home offices around the world.

It certainly made working from home taste better!

And it wasn't just that employers looking after their teams. Packages were also sent out for digital events. Since there was no longer an on-site buffet for the digital talk "How to efficiently design digital meetings", the buffet came to my home in a package. There were so many digital wine and beer tastings that I even canceled some.

Then it was time for sticking to the plan and keeping fit!

Well – with all that staying at home and receiving care packages: The pounds piled on! But there were plenty of offers on the intranet and YouTube for “Keeping fit in the home office”. A coach gave us live tips via teams. And of course, we all learned to structure our day (we were already able to) and to separate personal and business lives in our home offices – that was very helpful. I no longer rummaged in the care packages during working hours. And I made sure to put my pen down promptly at the end of the day.

But now the transformation is complete, the lockdowns have ended: Home office has become as normal as holes in Swiss cheese. Actually, that's a pity – there are no more care packages with a good cheese in them.

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