The new work order

K, you are right on sister. The new work environment is pretty weird. My work is using a lot of Slack and a lot of Zoom. I have a Zoom meeting basically every day and they are barely about work. I was asked to attend a weekly meeting on my day off, as if just because I'm at home I have nothing better to do than dial into a meeting that has nothing to do with me. I missed the first one and apparently all I actually missed was the director complaining about working at home and how his daughter is sick and he and his wife have to sleep in different beds. Yikes!

I did go to last week's meeting though and spent 55 minutes listening to the directorate talk about things that have absolutely nothing to do with me or the rest of my team. I thought about turning my camera off and walking away but was worried someone may ask me something. Unlikely as that was. Although at minute 55 the director thought he had to justify my team's presence and asked us how we were going. We each spoke about our home office set up for one minute. Most of my team work at our dining table or in the bedroom. Most of the directorate have a dedicated study or the pick of many rooms in their big houses. Needless to say I told my manager I would not be coming to that meeting again.

Slack is something else again. We have a a team channel and a channel for everyone in the research institute where I work, where professors log on and say things like "Good morning peeps 😎" It's pretty weird. People share pictures of the meals they made last night, there wedding photos from years ago. It's weird how these internet relationships bring a new kind of intimacy. Or maybe it's not. I mean, I guess my email relationships with people are different to my face-to-face relationships. But now there's only online relationships. With people we know but won't see for months. Let's hope things don't get too weird.😬