It is a tiresome cliche to point out that the internet is blurring the boundaries between work and home. And I’m sorry because I’m going to do it again, a little bit, to point out that it’s not just a one-way street, a tiny bit of this pattern is leaning in favour of the workers and that’s worth noticing.
Now, obviously, lots of this blurring is terrible and deplorable. It’s unacceptable that businesses like Uber would rather manage their drivers like they manage their servers; as a flexible resource they can spin up or down. And the pressure that many people feel to be constantly connected to work can be oppressive and awful. Precarious employment is a real problem and employers have too much power right now. We need some 21st century unions to help us organise against it.
On the other hand, some lucky employees are seeing some little tweaks in the other direction and some bits of the blur is working for them. For instance, corporate calendars are increasingly being blocked out with little squares marked Working From Home - something good that the modern connected workplace is enabling. WFH should be encouraged for the serious and practical reason that it helps people who need to manage families as well as work cope with both. It’s also tremendously efficient, because the Worker From Home can quickly execute the 45 minutes of focused productivity they’d normally manage to deliver in the office and then get to Tesco before it gets busy.
More subversively, we have to recognise that alongside every bit of serious labour organising there’s another honourable way of striking back at the bosses - skiving off, stealing stationery and using the office photocopier to publish your zine. When I worked as a supermarket shelf stacker it was euphemistically known as ‘shrinkage’.
The internet is enabling an emergent space for petty corporate resistance you might think of as Homing From Work, carrying on your personal and domestic business using your employer’s time and resources. Need to call British Gas about your boiler? Let’s face it, it’s going to take seven hours, best book a meeting room and do it in there. Flyers needed for the bring-and-buy at school? Do them in PowerPoint and use the colour copier. Your startup needs some server space? Your employer probably has some spare room, stick your assets on that. And you can book your holiday and download every movie ever made on that lovely corporate wifi.
Smart employers will soon realise that accommodating Homing From Work will make them a more desirable place to work and they’ll start designing for it. They’ll offer their staff family friendly facilities like creches and they’ll enable the domestic side of that work/life blur. And maybe even, one day, they’ll persuade corporate security teams not to raise their eyebrows suspiciously when you go to collect that Amazon parcel that mysteriously got sent to work.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
