Working From Home Would Not Have Been For Me

This morning I am watching CBS Sunday morning and they are doing a piece on the pandemic and working from home. This got me reflecting back on our working days.

Both Jennifer and I were so happy that we had retired before the pandemic occurred. At various times in our careers we had both worked on pandemic planning. This was back when the chicken and swine epidemics were occurring and their was fear these would cross over into humans. I will be honest that it was not fun for several reasons. Number one on that list was that most of the management felt that this was a waste of time and really did not buy into planning for a total shut down. Second was that it was difficult to envision how business would occur, especially a business that required people to operate equipment. Remember that we did not have all of the technology that we have today. It was very science fiction type stuff and most oil field managers were not big science fiction fans. So again it was not fun trying to convince them that it was in their and the companies best interest to plan for something they felt would never happen. Well in 2020 it happened and we were so glad that we did not have to deal with it.

As far as working from home. I will be honest, I would not have done good with that. Jennifer actually did do it for a while and she was not a big fan. When we moved to San Antonio, Marathon did not have a office in San Antonio. We had a lease on a building, but the office space had not been built out yet. We did have a small field office in Pleasanton, TX, but it also was not completely adequate and we had to do a lot of work and remodeling to try and get it up and running.

At the time Jennifer was actually working in the Corporate safety group so her boss and most of her co-workers were in Houston. So she was working from home. I was working out of the Pleasanton office and initially I was wearing many different hats. I was supervising a lot of the remodeling and also doing safety work and orientations for new contractors. It was a crazy time and some very long days for me. The commute to Pleasanton was about 1 hour (depending on traffic).

Anyway, I would get home and Jennifer would be like a little puppy dog when I got home and she would greet me at the door and she would talking and peppering me with all kind of questions from the time I walked through the door. She was just wanting social interaction. She had been cooped up in the house by herself and while she would have tons of conference calls or phone calls with other people it was just not the same as having face to face discussions. So she just wanted to interact, unfortunately I was on the other end of the spectrum. I just wanted to get home and relax. Looking back now I wish I was more understanding than I was. Fortunately we looked back on those days and laughed about it, but did not want to relive them.

We both were very happy when the San Antonio office finally opened and she got back into a world where other people were.

Again, I would not do well in a work from home environment, but I guess I would have adapted. The CBS Sunday morning piece was interesting. The experts they were interviewing are saying that the traditional office work environment will never return to the pre-pandemic model. They say that it will likely be a hybrid model. A couple of days in a office and a couple of days working from home. Of course technology is what is making all of this possible.

I guess it is what you are used to. Just one of the many strange things going on in this world today, but I am glad we worked when we did and retired when we did.