This Whole Job Could Have Been An Email

I'm about ready to add to my miscellaneous skills "understands CDC guidelines so knows in-person work in the current climate is little more than reckless endangerment in the name of capital" because Jesus How The Fuck Do You Expect Me To Live Christ. We are 8 months deep into a pandemic and there are still companies that just don't want to revert to remote work. Or, inexplicably, are pivoting away from remote back to in-person work environments. To that I can only ask:

Why?

For what reasons (please list them) do you believe this is the right thing to do? For what reasons (please list them) are you willing to risk the safety of your employees, their loved ones, their neighbors, and literally anyone they may come in contact with incidentally? For what reasons (please list them) are you willing to ignore the pleas of hospitals across the nation begging everyone to stay home as much as possible because they literally do not have room for more patients?

I am, surprise, surprise, looking for steady work. I specialize in marketing, copywriting and editing as well as media accessibility (closed captioning, transcription, audio description). Not one of those jobs require me to be in the same room as another human being. Heck, I don't even need to see another human face to do those jobs. Phone calls, emails, video calls and texting are all more than enough to do a good job. A great job, even! Yet the insistence on in-person... suspicious. The only reasons I can fathom an employer would have for that are, in no particular order, as follows:

1) You're insecure as a manager and need to stare your employees down every day to feel in charge.

2) The risk of actual, literal death is worth whatever number of zero's live on your paycheck.

3) You're lazy and don't want to figure out the myriad of applications, sites and programs that have been made readily available during the pandemic. I have no proof of this next statement, but if this is your reason I assume you also don't like watching foreign films because you think the subtitles are "distracting."

4) You think disabled people are fictional.

5) You think a pandemic that has slaughtered 258k people (and counting) in the United States alone is fictional.

If you agree with one or all of those listed reasons, fuck you. If you can see validity in one or all of the listed reasons, f u c k y o u.

Yes, fuck you.

I, much like many Americans, am stuck in a vicious and abusive late-stage capitalist cycle where I have to work to live. I need a job if I want to live and not even live comfortably! Just bare minimum shelter, clothing, and food live. It's only sometimes a job will provide health insurance (something I need very much). I could dive into a full-fledged essay about how genuinely fucked and devoid of humanity it is that in order to be deemed worthy of life, a human being has to prove their productivity within a machine. But unfortunately, I have no time for that because I need a job! I cannot, as one person, dismantle this system. I have to get groceries, I have to pay rent (PS that's something that should have been cancelled Day God Damned One of this pandemic), I need medicine.

I digress.

I would, however, like to touch on the ableism inherent in refusing to adapt to remote work. Simply put: not everyone can physically come in to work. Driving might not be possible (seeing impairments, epilepsy, muscular dystrophy and neuromuscular diseases, etc.), disabilities affecting mobility, and autoimmune diseases. To name only a few-- the disability community is diverse and numerous, yet the efforts to accommodate are..........nonexistent beyond maybe a ramp and a handrail in the toilet. Remote work allows employees who otherwise could not safely come to work to actually, wait for it, work. Employers only considered allowing remote work once it became unsafe for able-bodied employees to come to the office. Dear every company that insisted for years working from home was “impossible” but immediately began tripping all over themself to make working at home the new normal because employees quarantining slowed production: your ableism and capitalism is showing, cuties. And you know what? There are golden nuggets of classism and ableism buried in the bedrock of employers treating remote work as a temporary, pandemic-exclusive solution. I think you'll find if you keep an option for remote work open, you'll have more applicants with broader skillsets and experiences.

The majority of the professional world has moved online. There is no reasonable explanation for any of the jobs I have applied to or interviewed for to insist on in-person work environments. It is reckless, it is ableist, it is classist. That's all I have to say on that right now. I am, however, keeping track of every company that is not allowing remote work during this pandemic.

On a final note and slight pivot:

[ ] Male

[ ] Female

[ ] Prefer not to say

Is NOT inclusive! I can understand wanting to allow wiggle room for non-binary/agender/genderqueer applicants by not requiring a disclosure of pronouns, but the only option being "it's a secret, teehee" is incredibly invalidating. I have filled out so many EEO forms and frankly? Netflix is the only employer that provided a genuinely inclusive list. Disclosure is a very fuzzy grey area and difficult for an employer to navigate, but allowing for more options is a lot easier than being all cloak and dagger about it. In my cover letters I include my pronouns now because ticking "prefer not to say" has actually ground me down. It's a real death by a thousand paper cuts kind of deal. If you are an employer, that's something to consider! And thank you again, Netflix, for actually providing an "agender" option. I never expected to experience gender euphoria while job hunting, and yet ticking that option did just that.

Okay, that's it, I swear.