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Morally Wrong

Got to love it when the world's richest man tells the rest of us what way of working is morally wrong. Not only is what he is saying problematic for many whose only chance of being part of the workforce is working from home because nothing else makes them whole. They are care-givers to children and elderly in their lives because they cannot afford professional help no matter how long they commute and how many hours they sit at the desk to be "moral" and upstanding employees. There are women who have given birth and need to choose between exiting the workforce or continuing to work from home until they are able to return. Maybe in this man's book a mother wishing to stay home and bond with her baby is not quite "moral" because a the full battery of service folks she needs in her life do not have the same privilege. Imagine a new father wants to spend time with his baby because that phase of life is so fleeting. Wouldn't that be a complete outrage.

Not only will every news outlet report what he is saying because it is buzzy and garners the much needed eye-balls to keep the ad revenues coming in. But better yet a very large number of other CEOs will adopt the same position of moral outrage at the "laptop class" of people who could be so bold as to want to work from home. So easy to forget that these very people as reprehensible as they are kept the lights on for everyone else during the dark days of the pandemic. Things got moved to cloud in a heartbeat so services could be provided without interruption and so on. Some of these laptop people are just as essential as those who have to show up to their place of work everyday and did that through the pandemic - as it turns out, there is a world beyond Twitter. I have to believe that the research leading to the production of vaccines that helped end the pandemic were done by people who used laptops from home.

I wonder if he has a problem with the minimum wage earning call-center worker who cannot afford to pay for the gas to commute to work let alone pay for parking once she gets there, What if she needed to work from home to resolve problems for the people who have show-stopping issues with their service providers. In my neighborhood the ladies working at the local barbershop work from their home now because they cannot afford the commute to the shop anymore - they are priced out of the neighborhood where they provide services and the cost of commute is not supportable on their wages. They may or may not have a laptop but they most certainly are not immoral. The man who wants to label them as such should try standing just one whole day in their shoes. 

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