Teleworking increased due to the contagiousness of the virus. More importantly, teleworking gained in acceptance. Need created use. Use created adjustment, that adjustment yielded acceptance. Medicine is the perfect example. Doctor visits via Zoom or other teleconference tools mushroomed. Some doctors worked from their homes as well. Sitting at desk wearing a white lab coat, with a book case behind them, these “Virtual Office visits” became an accepted practice.
Other medical procedures could not be performed remotely. There is no way to draw blood, get it in those little vials and out to the lab through telemedicine. For a cold or a cough, or many other maladies, a telemedicine visit is efficient, saves time and hassle. There is no travel required, no looking for a parking space, no reading a germ-infested magazine in the waiting room.
The flip side of this is vocations unable to take advantage of virtual options. Construction workers can’t “phone it in.” Gardeners can’t “rake it in.” Auto repair servicemen and women can’t work on your car by remote. Delivery people are unable to get packages to your door virtually. The jobs and the people in them are numerous. Surgeons, anesthesiologists, dentists, nurses, orderlies, veterinarians, traffic cops, street cops, firemen and women, law enforcement professionals, lawyers and those working in the courts, EMTs, home health aides, ambulance drivers, carpenters, electricians and gas workers, public transportation workers, plumbers, barbers and hairdressers, cashiers, bank tellers, funeral and cemetery workers, meatpacking plant workers, all need to be at their place of work or business, to name a few.
Further on that flip side is a connected resource and its needs. Consider child care workers – all those essential workers and First Responders couldn’t just abandon their children. Think of farmers of various sorts – their animals and crops need tending, dairy needs constant attention. Their homes and their acreage also require the assistance of support workers. Child care became an issue of sudden importance as schools were closed.
Work and workers that had generally been unseen or taken for granted were suddenly elevated in public perception.
Security personnel. The pandemic brought about a ghost-town-like environment to many buildings, areas, complexes, and campuses, both day and night. This called for increased security measures. For the hardworking security personnel this regularly meant double shifts and added workdays as management sought to benefit from federal employee payroll assistance. And yet office buildings and corporate campuses had lowered needs for janitorial and cleaning services. The pendulum swung both ways, neither of which was good for individuals or the economy as the Covid-19 virus raged on.
A new appreciation of work arose during the pandemic. Appreciation of those performing essential work, so often behind the scenes. Work and workers that had generally been unseen or taken for granted were suddenly elevated in public perception. In some cases, this applies to jobholders who were looked down upon as lowly workers. The essential needs and services they provided, as perceived through the lens of living in times of lockdown during the health crisis, cast these workers up more than a few notches. What would lockdown life have been without them?