BYE, WEEKEND BY NIYI ADERIBIGBE

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My fuss was always about how short weekends were. We all used to say they didn’t last because they were made in China until we had to buy Hisense. Now, you’d do anything to have those China-made weekends back because the lines between workdays and weekends are now blurry, as your refuge from work has now become your workplace.

If you work in a traffic-ridden city like Lagos and Corporate Nights aren’t your thing, you most likely spend an average of four hours commuting daily. There are even some nights when the hardworking young people who meet periodically to network and drink after work, end up tailing lights home. You never know how stressed you’d be in any week, and 8 out of 10 times, the stress is not at work; it’s on the way to work and back home. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

So, you look forward to the weekend, so fleeting that it ends before it even starts. But you love it. It’s short and sweet. As much as you can, you block out everything that happened during the week, including work. Because even if you try, the weekend is too short to accommodate work. So, you leave everything till Monday and enjoy the short sweetness called the weekend. If you ever get stuck in traffic, it’d be on your terms.

This worked perfectly until Coronavirus struck and forced us indoors, broke congregations, scattered owanbes, took over meeting rooms, and forced everyone online. The work from home (WFH) you begged so hard for, to escape Lagos traffic but didn’t get, is now the norm. You now attend the meetings previously avoided because the conference room was full and you didn’t have to be there in the first place. Say hello to Microsoft Teams and Zoom. Even your old classmates who never cared a hoot about you suddenly want to see your face. 🙄

If you’ve not been added to a new work WhatsApp group or get frequent work-related messages on the app, it’s probably because your boss prefers emails. If you’re lucky like me, your employer or boss has sent you data allowance a couple of times since COVID-19 became a big deal here. You no longer have an excuse not to be online 24/7. Midnight mails are to be replied and Teams meetings can hold on a Saturday or even a Sunday (don’t even try to lie that you’re in Church). You can also touch base on a public holiday.
You suddenly realize that work from home isn’t as sweet as you thought. And for many organisations, it was just a pandemic response that ended favorably. Employees are safe, but they are also working more hours and some are even more productive than they’ve ever been.

Researchers have said we may not be rid of the virus anytime soon and so WFH may become the new normal for many people. If this is true, we may need some time to get used to this new reality. But for now, things will largely remain the same, especially some weekend meetings and your inability to stop working because your laptop keeps staring at you. Change takes time.

Until we get used to working from home and find a way to strike a balance, so long, my lovely weekend.

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