What Has Been Learned Through the Pandemic and Lockdowns?

[JackDaydream]

@stevie
I guess that I am being idealistic in trying to think that the pandemic would bring a shift in consciousness and lead people to think about the future of humanity. I just think that it has had such a profound impact on people, but it is likely that most of us are locked into our own private world of experiences ...

[LuckyR]

One of the seemingly permanent changes I've noticed is in working practices. I'm in the office today. That's quite rare now. I work from home most days. The office is almost empty. I'm almost the only person here. One of the lessons that seems to have been learnt by a lot of company managers is that you really don't need a whole load of people to spend a whole load of time and money, and emit a whole load of CO2, to just sit at a desk that they could sit at in their home. It should have been obvious before, of course. But there's a tendency to think that a successful company is one in which you can walk a customer around an office filled with busy-looking people. That silly idea has been shaken up. A few years ago, I used to spend over 4 hours per day commuting back and forth to/from an office in central London every day. That can now be seen for the madness that it always was.

Best post in the thread. Not only work practices, but a change in appreciation of work quality (vs compensation). That is folks are more willing to do more interesting work even if it is compensated less. Thus business is going to have to raise wages for unpleasant jobs because folks would rather be under- or un- employed than do meaningless work.

[Steve3007]

That is folks are more willing to do more interesting work even if it is compensated less.

Yes, like giving up the boring day job and finally writing that sitcom about a sassy robot.

(I looked this up on YouTube and was glad somebody else noticed that it was a Matt Groening in-joke reference to Futurama.)