This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
romcom idea: childless man has crush on childed man. he's raring to come back to work to hang out with hot dad man, but the latter is forced to work remotely.
the whole plot swivels around how they get around the lack of opportunities to be together.
keep cooking
Fathers versus childless men, rather than husbands vs unmarried men. Telling.
It's a wildly different thing, though.
Married vs. unmarried means you have a companion, but you still got the same demands on your life as before. You might have to arrange schedules, but that's about it. Your day has just as much free time as before, you can stay out just as long as before and your social opportunities aren't restricted due to the fact that you are married.
In fact, there's no difference at all between married vs. unmarried and in a relationship vs single. Getting married changes nothing in that regard.
Having kids, on the other hand, changes everything. Now your social activities are limited by your responsibilities towards the child(ren). Can't stay out until 2am if you know the kids will be awake at 7am and will wake you up 3 times in between. Can't take a random day off and do a day trip if the kid needs to be at school that day. Can't visit friends after work together with your partner if the kid needs to be in bed at 7pm. It's a massive limiter on social opportunities.
At the same time, spending time with the kids is pretty great in its own right, and that's what the article touches upon. If you are married but don't have kids, you might get your fill with your partner after work. If you have 5h or so every day with your partner from getting back from work until going to bed, that's a ton of quality time.
But if you return from work at 5pm and the kids go to bed at 7pm, then pretty much all the interaction you get is eating and preparing the kids for bed.
As a father, working from home means I can see my kids grow up, especially in their earlier years. It means I was there when they took their first steps. I'm there when they start talking. I can actually spend time with them, get close to them, be part of them growing up. I'm there when they cry, when they say the funniest stuff. You know, be with them when it matters.
With my wife, on the other hand, as much as I love her, I'm not going to miss a ton of really important things if I'm not around her 24/7. On the contrary, she's happy for any bit of actual alone time she gets.
And then I'm a single father, so I'm just fucked!
As a childless asocial workaholic with some degree of toxicity that LinkedIn bastard probably dream of, my performance heavily depended on the importance of the task. WFH let me be more passionate about some projects and papers that I used all benefits of cutting commute, was way less distracted and motivated. But bullshit paperwork, letters, chats and reports lagged even further behind than they did in the office, right up to the deadline. Sometimes because I did the work itself instead and no one looked over my shoulder.
For me RTOing into a nearly-empty building in the off-season when most take vacations was the most dumb idea, and since it was a typical rule-for-thee, I had almost none supervison, was arriving late, leaving early and put a shit ton of hours into various MMOs. The complete opposite to what I did in a brief moments of quarantine. Look, jerks, you paid me to level my chars, that's what you wanted?
I think like in a trust-based environment clocking in is unnecessary and various bosses over time did get it, I payed back by reporting stuff myself so they were sure I'm on it at any given time. Like we are actually a team of some sort, they do their stuff, I do mine, we pass things to each other etc. The others were completely disconnected from empoyees and to compensate their inability to trust, got high on controlling shit, were sending down teamworking events, talking about being a family or other sectarian career manager bullshit, relied on and encouraged snitching on each other. These were the positions I nailed down to me clocking out and stop giving a fuck, before eventually leaving.
And for coworkers: they either do their work, or leave it to others, and I rarely GAF about other characteristics. The high stress environment of labor is not where I prefer to socialise, nor I'm in the mood to. I crave work-related communications that makes all objectives clear and obvious, work-related stories I can learn from, you know, the stuff I came here for, and not a social club with gossips, drama and all that. If I'm given 2hrs+ from not riding to your building, I can have two socializations and a half if I want to. The exhaustion it causes not helps but prevents me from going out with friends, and I'm double pissed that some bosses make an act like that's better for their workers while not giving them any agency and doing it solely for themselves.
Rant: over.
