When office workers were allowed to work from home during lockdown, Zoom became the #1 app for communicating with coworkers but it wasn’t just employees that benefited. Quarantined families could use Zoom to stay in touch with each other and for some events like funerals, Zoom was the only way to say goodbye to our loved ones. This situation was something I experienced when my grandmother died abroad and I could not travel out of the country to attend her funeral due to lockdown and quarantine restrictions in both countries.
An article published on April 29, 2020 for the Philadelphia Inquirer, by the Angry Grammarian, discusses how the pandemic has changed our language and how zoom, a video conferencing app, has become a verb (Barg).
-Mom: Son, go outside, it’s warm. Son: I can’t, Mom. I’m Zooming with my physics class” (Licensed_nerd).
Some turned Zoom into an art form. Rosetta, a painter who lives in Ontario, Canada, used her Zoom calls to paint portraits of her friends who also happened to be artists themselves. Check out the interview below:
courtesy of KnowYourMeme
Social Media Trends as of May 23, 2022
Because the Zoom app existed prior to the pandemic, I won’t get any meaningful social media results using the #zoom hashtag, despite its use as a verb. Google Trends showed negligible interest in the zoom search term until the second week of March 2020 when it started to go vertical and reached its peak during the first week of April that year. It’s no coincidence that lockdown was in progress then and people and employers were looking for video conferencing apps to stay in touch with family and coworkers. Zoom also happens to be free to use and requires little setup.
What do you call an employee who only goes into the office on Tuesdays, Wednesdays And Thursdays? The clue is in the first sentence. The original meaning of the term is a derogatory word used often in the United Kingdom.
An article published for SmartCompany.com on February 24, 2022 asks “are you a T.W.A.T?…Before you type me an angry complaint, know that it stands for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday – it’s an acronym to describe the hybrid workforce who only come into the office three days a week” (Elsworthy).
Office workers showing up only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays – TWaT for short – is well and truly a thing, and it’s got the potential to be a big drag on Melbourne CBD’s economic recovery, writes Noel Towell | OPINION#COVID19Vic#backtotheofficehttps://t.co/nh7sw72u4H
The Huffington Post published an article on the new meaning of this expression saying that “City workers have reportedly been using the term [T.W.A.T] to describe their cheeky colleagues taking advantage of the new ways of working…one person defended the employees, saying: ‘Perhaps better described as hypertwats. They are generally super efficient in the 3-day work period'” (Bakar).
There are no social media reports for this term (I get everything but the pandemic meaning).
Depending on context, and if you’re not in the office Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, then don’t be a T.W.A.T.
“My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you’re doing” – Boris Johnson, British Prime Minister.
The pandemic arrived in the United States in March 2020 which was quickly followed by a two week quarantine lockdown. State and local governments passed emergency mandates that required non-essential businesses to close. Establishments such as restaurants, gyms, salons and movie theaters were shut down and those who worked for them were out of a job. Knowledge workers such as those working in finance and IT were generally allowed to work from home and apps like Zoom became popular as a way for employees to stay in touch with management and coworkers. My office closed for two weeks till the pandemic had passed. We were instructed to take what we needed to do our jobs remotely. Two weeks became two months and then two years and I am still working from home.
For many, this “new normal” afforded them the opportunity to spend more time with their loved including their pets. No longer having to deal with office commutes, expensive lunches and difficult employees, the work life balance and quality of life improved for those working from home. There are many advantages as a remote worker. All those chores that may have waited till the weekend could be squeezed in between Zoom conferences. You could take the dog for a walk and do a virtual workout in your lunch hour.
After most people had been vaccinated and the pandemic had passed its peak and became endemic, there was a push to get people back to the office. Some who’d gone a long time without human contact looked forward to being back in the office but the majority of virtual workers wanted to keep remote working.
In some industries such as the financial sector, senior management felt their employees worked better in the office collaboratively. David Solomon, CEO of Goldman Sachs, said “I do think for a business like ours which is an innovative, collaborative apprenticeship culture, this is not ideal for us and it’s not a new normal. It’s an aberration that we’re going to correct as quickly as possible” (McKeever). The British prime minister Boris Johnson said “We need to get back into the habit of getting into the office. There will be lots of people who disagree with me, but I believe people are more productive, more energetic, more full of ideas, when they are surrounded by other people.” Boris felt that workers were unproductive while working remotely and were more likely to spend their working hours drinking slow brewed coffee and hacking off pieces of cheese (Taylor).
Some employees threatened to quit if their company forced them to come back to the office and in the age of the Great Resignation there were plenty of remote working jobs out there. A few few were scared to come back to the office for fear of catching Covid-19 but most wanted to keep their work/life balance.
Not every company was so demanding. Many CEOs recognized the benefits of remote working and employees found they were more productive working from home. In order to meet remote workers half way, some companies proposed a hybrid working environment whereby employees would come into the office a few days a week and work from home the rest of the week. Apple Corp created “return to office plans” that allowed employees to work a hybrid schedule with some days in the office and the rest working from home.
Check out this funny YouTube video on “when meetings are no longer virtual” (Foil Arms and Hog).
The pandemic has changed the lives of office workers forever. Working Monday to Friday in the office from 9-5 is over. Hybrid and remote working schedules are here to stay.
Google Trends: “return to office” as a search term has been around for a while but its popularity peaked in August 2021 as vaccines became widely available and state and local governments decided that it was safe to come back to the office.
