To: Home-Office Headquarters (HOHQ) staff
Subject: Farewell Party for Angela
Mark your calendars! With my spouse returning to her out-of-home office in midtown Toronto any day now — knock on wood LOL — I’ve booked the break room/kitchen/greenhouse for a Farewell Party. Come one, come all!
This celebration is about giving credit where credit is due. Since the COVID-19 pandemic prompted Angela’s homeward transition some 17,880.6 hours ago, she has had an indelible impact on the HOHQ. For instance:
- Angela’s innovative “No Afternoon Pajamas” policy has accelerated all lawn-mowing and snow-shoveling activities on and around the premises.
- The out-of-control growth of Angela’s 17 “work plants” is substantially offsetting our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while at the same time turning much of the office into an actual greenhouse.
- Amazon deliveries to the mailroom/porch, c/o Angela, have fulfilled the organization’s bubble-wrap requirements for decades while boosting office squishiness by more than 82 percent.
- A dongle-hoarding initiative has reduced earbud use by more than 98 percent, and boosted inadvertent HOHQ transparency by 72 percent.
As has been the case with so many home-office send-offs across Canada, Angela’s will be bittersweet. On the one hand, I believe we are among the 70 percent of working-from-home Canadians who, according to a 2021 Statistics Canada survey, reported “high satisfaction” with both the amount of time spent as a family and work-life balance. Joining Angela for lunch on our front porch, for instance, has been infinitely more enjoyable than the lonely pre-pandemic meals I never once consumed in the bath. Likewise, I will always treasure our afternoon strolls to nearby coffee shops, even the ones where one of us forgot our mask and had to loiter out front, prompting countless “are you in line?” queries.
On the other hand, I look forward to recovering certain aspects of my former work-from-home routine. Cleared of binders, notepads, teacups and a thick layer of vegetation, Angela’s dining room office will revert to being my dining room office. The crawl space I have occupied these many months, meanwhile, will again serve as a storage area for VHS tapes and recently retired breadmakers.
While working outside the home dragged the StatsCan satisfaction numbers down to 60 percent, they also dipped to 67 percent when children were involved. Likewise, both forms of satisfaction increased to 71 percent among childless couples working from home. Given that Ontario parents experienced four mass school closures, and that the province’s public schools were closed for some 28 weeks — longer than in any other Canadian province or territory — it is hardly surprising that the quartet of Farewell Parties thrown for our two school-aged daughters consumed the entire HOHQ stockpile of streamers, balloons, fireworks and champagne.
That said, as Angela’s departure date nears, there has been a nostalgic resurgence of the family diversions that sustained all four of us during the height of the pandemic. Backyard campfire cookouts? Check. Games of “throw the hula hoop on the streetlight,” which have so far achieved a success rate of 0.0003 percent? Check. Musical toilets? Rushing to the WC has never been so much fun!
Of course, the HOHQ’s fifth and (hopefully!) final Farewell Party will not be the last we see of Angela during work hours. Far from it! Inspired by her dressed-before-noon initiative, I plan to meet my spouse at neutral sites for lunch or coffee. As was the case pre-COVID, Angela may require occasional sick and personal days to rest, recover and reinforce the new policies and procedures that have revolutionized operations.
The guest list for Angela’s Farewell Party is filling up fast, so please RSVP ASAP. I’ll be there with bells on — being sure not to jingle them too loudly — and once I hear back from the guest of honour we’ll be all set. Just remember to observe the sweatpants-casual dress code, and respect the HOHQ’s new policies and procedures. As we know only too well, nothing hurts both productivity and morale like scrubbing mustard out of a bath towel.