Home

The email from the chairman of the firm addressed to all employees across all the offices of the firm came at 12:21 pm Pacific time. Everyone is required to work from home tomorrow, Friday, the 13^th of March, 2020 because of the looming COVID-19 threat.

While I wholeheartedly support the decision to “test out”—at least for a day—the firm’s ability to provide uninterrupted client service based on a 100% remote workforce if need be, I am not looking forward to tomorrow. Call me not progressive, but I hate working from home.  (And I may not be the only one with this view.) Home is for living. Office is for working. The boundaries get blurred based on necessity, but my preference for compartmentalizing home and office does not fundamentally change.

In the last few days when the world is grappling with the very real dangers caused by the coronavirus outbreak, I have experienced some unexpected moments of joy. The joy of counting our blessings that no business trip is planned in near future for either of us. The joy of the rush hour commute time being cut into half because of less traffic on road. The joy of seeing the introvert IT person suddenly being everyone’s hero because everyone has question about remote work arrangements. The joy of practicing the mandated “social distancing” while emotionally bonding with like-minded friends and coworkers. And above all, the bittersweet joy of realizing how similarly vulnerable we are as a human race under the ubiquitous equalizing power of a pandemic.

Curiously enough, the exact moment when this blog was conceived was not necessarily a moment of joy, but a precious moment of sadness caused by separation anxiety. I have a container garden of mini succulents in my office. I water them every Friday. While leaving office this afternoon after making sure that I have all the things that I need to effectively work from home tomorrow, I suddenly remembered that nobody would be there to water the succulents tomorrow. So I watered them—one day ahead of schedule. I felt their gratitude. I am so glad I did not have to socially distance myself from my little green friends.

I don’t know if we will be allowed to work from office next week. But I know for sure that I will go back to my office at least one more time before next Friday to bring my little green friends home if the work-from-home mandate continues indefinitely.

________________

Post Script on March 16, 2020: Went to office one last time today to bring my plants home. The whole San Francisco Bay Area will be under "shelter-in-place" mandatory lockdown stage for the next three weeks.