Homework BC

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

MY FRIEND, colleague and photographic collaborator on my Monday Newsday feature, Trini to the Bone, Mark Lyndersay, like me, has worked largely from home for 30 years. And, this week, Mark used his BitDepth column to give good practical advice to people forced by the coronavirus crisis to work from home for the first time. (https://technewstt.com/bd1241/.)

Now, Mark’s advice for new homeworkers – such as designating a distinct work space at home – couldn’t be technically faulted.

But still, “it ent go work.”

Trinidadians trying to work at home are like pothounds entering Crufts' dog show: they could win, in theory, but, in practice, they will spend all their time trying to mount the champion bitch.

Here, then, using Mark’s BitDepth sub-headings as the skeleton, is the real flesh-and-bones advice a Trini needs to be able to make a proper show of trying to work from home.

Create a designated workspace.

Don’t even bother. Unless you live in a big house, you’re going to be working on the kitchen table, because the children will have locked down the TV room for themselves. And, the exact moment you really get into your work and think, “Hey, I just might pull this off,” your spouse will arrive to start cooking. You’ll have to pick up all your work shiretrit and move to the gallery, with that wobbly little table, hardly big enough for a firetrucking ashtray, and all your papers are going to blow into the car park/street.

Have what you need before you start.

Great advice, except what you need is not pens or paper but a real office, not this home-office, kitchen table firetruckery, and a real boss, who patrols the cubicles to make sure you’re working on the accounts receivable, and not on getting that hot little number from Accounts to like your Facebook post.

Dress for work.

Which means: wear firetrucking pyjama pants. Mark says you don’t need a shirt and tie but I am telling you to wear a long-sleeved shirt. Because the office has something your kitchen doesn’t: air-conditioning. Without a/c in your “home office” – hahahaha, Lord, put a hand – you are going to discover that the most populous creatures in daytime in Trinidad are not the Jehovah’s Witnesses coming to save your soul, but the hordes of mosquitoes coming to the all-they-can-eat buffet of your blood vessels; especially at your ankles, where the skin is thinnest. Socks may help: better to have sweaty toes than to be put into hypovolaemic shock by “musky-toes.”

Have a schedule.

Firetruck that. Have a Sunday Kitchen or Kam Wah takeaway menu instead. I guarantee you will get through more Irie Bites than spreadsheets.

Work comfortably, but not too comfortably.

Mark’s underlying assumption is, if you allow yourself too much leeway, your concentration will fall away – but he misses the point that you’re not going to have any concentration at all, except on Facebook and the new episode of Better Call Saul. Here’s where my pyjama “home working” – hahahahaha – uniform gives double value: when you fall asleep on the couch in front of the TV, you’re already perfectly dressed for the task.

Work when you are at your best.

Mark’s first line here is, “I’m sharpest soon after a good sleep.” So sleep as much as you can because you’re going to be REL sharp whenever you wake up.

Test. Test. Test.

The best advice Mark gives: don’t jump into remote work. It’s intended for employers spoon-feeding office workers into home working, but it works for the rest of us: don’t jump into remote work; jump on to the sofa. Jump into Netflix. Now THAT is remote work a Trini is prepared to do. Watch the English police drama River, if you spend more on books than rims. It will be much more satisfying than attempting to work at home; mind you. So would be Vikings; or, indeed, scratching your elbow.

Have a hot desk.

Mark means this in a techie sense, a desk allocated to several workers as required or on a rota system. It is the one guideline of his that you can actually satisfy, because that kitchen – and, ergo, your desk, the kitchen table – is going to be really firetrucking hot by midday.

BC Pires is clearly a BitShallow. Read the full version of this feature on Saturday at www.BCPires.com