Quick disclaimer: I am not writing this post to brag about how good I have it vs. the rest. I sincerely apologize if it comes off that way and I will delete this post if that ends up being the case. I just want to know how people feel about the growing inequity between the various groups of working classes we are currently experiencing, especially in the USA.
Anyways,
Before covid, there was still a divide between people that worked in traditional white collar jobs and people that worked in traditional blue collar jobs (especially those around the minimum wage level like food service, retail, etc..). The main sources of this divide were the differences in pay and the slightly better working conditions (on average an office was a bit more cushy than a factory, warehouse, grocery store, etc..). What still existed though was a level of empathy between the two groups. White collar workers still had to deal with waking up super early, grueling commutes, bullshit office politics, micro-management, and long hours stuck in a cubical (that Spongebob fish living the same monotonous life day in and day out was a very common stereotype for white-collar employees back then).
3-years post 2020 and I believe the pandemic (and the remote world it ushered in) has destroyed almost all of that empathy between the two working worlds. It made commutes non-existent, which in turn made having to wake up super early also irrelevant (Personally, I don't even set an alarm anymore). Office politics have basically evaporated (It's extremely hard to start any type of drama from behind the screen and in turn, very easy to ignore it as well). It added enormous amounts of energy to your day (Gone are the days of coming home at 6pm and just sinking into your couch because you are too tired to do anything else). It gave you immense flexibility when it comes to non-work tasks (You no longer have to take time off to go to appointments or run errands, you can just…leave). And most importantly, the remote life has drastically reduced the amount of hours you spent working in general. It's a lot easier to ignore requests for extra work. It's a lot harder for your manager or director to see that you're done with your tasks and assign you extra work. And frankly, it's a lot easier to focus at home away from the many distractions of an office. My educated guess is that being fully remote cuts your workload in half (at least) on a day to day basis.
All of this has culminated to living a life on “easy mode.” Just to paint a better picture, here is an example of an average day for me from these past 2-3 years. Not counting the occasional day once per month right before a deadline, this is what I can generally expect my day (and the day of many of my friends and colleagues) to look like:
7:30am – Wake up (This can be shifted all the way to 9:30/10:00 if I've had a long night out with buddies the day before)
7:30am – 9:00am – Eat breakfast, drink coffee, Scroll through Reddit/group chats to catch up on random shit.
9:00am – 10:00am – This is usually when I log into work and then go for a walk. Sometimes I will have a meeting or two so I will bring my AirPods and take that meeting on my walk.
10:00am – Noon – Two hours of focused work (I can normally accomplish what I need to get done for the day in this timeframe).
Noon – 2:00pm – Lunch, bike ride or gym, shower, and then catch up on a show, movie, or game I was playing/watching the night before
2:00pm – 4:00pm – Two more hours of focused work (A lot of times I will have already completed my days tasks so this becomes either video games, making dinner, or going out and doing an errand).
4:00pm – 4:30pm – Catch up on e-mails, make a schedule for tomorrow
4:30pm – 11:30pm – Anything I want with the added bonus of not being exhausted from the work day.
Not only does the above sound surreal but I would have literally not believed it if you told me that was how my day would look like 5 years ago. I distinctly remember back in 2018/2019 picturing how much better my life would be if I could work from home on Fridays or live only 15 minutes away from the office (LOL).
Now back to the concerning part. I can't honestly see how we can continue living together in a society where half of the people are living completely different (and far far easier) lives than the other half. Add to the fact that the people living those much easier lives are also making more money on average (and in a lot of cases a lot more money) and this is a recipe for a revolution. At the very least, this creates a massive amount of resentment by one half of society at the other.
So I'm curious to hear some thoughts on this. Am I being too fucking dramatic? Is this just overthinking to an insane degree and I should just stfu and enjoy what I have for as long as I can? The intent of my post isn't to force remote workers back into the office. The solution would obviously be to increase the quality of life and pay for everyone else but the last 3 years has shown that the people in power have no real intent on making this happen so we're just stuck in this massive imbalance.