6 Monday February 21 2022 | the timestimes2
M
y friend Max is
a back-bedroom
banker and he’s
had enough of
it. “It’s just
boring, isn’t it?
There is no fun
in working at
home whatsoever. The novelty has
long, long, long gone.”
During the pandemic he stopped
working full-time for an international
bank and became a financial
consultant. In normal times he’d be
busy lunching clients and slipping in
and out of company boardrooms. But
the restaurants of St James’s see very
little of his custom and the meetings
are still on Zoom.
His wife is back at work five days
a week and his children are off at
university or leave the house at
dawn for long hours in their first
postgraduate jobs. So every morning,
once the dog has been walked and
silence has descended, it is back to
another long day in front of the laptop.
“To me, the way successful business
is done is getting out and meeting
people. The fun is being with your
colleagues, unless you’re an artist or a
novelist. If you’re pushing bits of paper
around, which is, effectively what 90
per cent of people do, the enjoyment
comes from the gossip at the water
cooler. That’s what you miss.”
For Simon, a marketing director
who now works predominantly from
home while his wife, a teacher, is out
all day, the lack of physical interaction
has come at a particularly difficult
time. “After years of missing bedtimes
and being away on business trips when
I really wanted to be at home with my
family, my son is now off at university.
I really miss him, like all parents who
see their children fly the nest. But it’s
particularly hard when you’re finally
at home all the time, still working, but
with the family elsewhere and no one
to talk to until your partner comeshome. This would have been the ideal
working arrangement ten years ago,
but it’s actually quite tough now.”
He is by no means the only one. My
wife is out at work three days a week,
usually on the days when I’m at home,
and from my spare bedroom I stay in
touch with all the other WFH dads;
the daytime empty-nest males. Of
course, there are plenty of women still
working from home, but there is a new
cohort of men who once spent more
time in the office than they did at
home and now live very differently.
Two years ago, they rarely worked
a day that wasn’t office-based, and had
no intention of doing anything else.
Their jobs were what employment
analysts might call “high status”, and
they occupied plush offices, with
coffee-fetching assistants and teams of
junior colleagues on hand. Now they
are beached at home.
“I find it all rather depressing,” says
Richard, who works for a law firm. “I
miss the buzz. I miss the excitement of
going into a swanky office with great
views. It’s not the most important
thing in the world, of course, but
there is still something to be said for
working somewhere with a nice coffee
bar where you can talk to your work
friends who you don’t see sitting at
home on Zoom. The problem with
going in just once a week is that few of
those people are in when you are. And
the company is planning to lease less
space so it’s clear the way this is going.”
Catherine Sandler, a leading
executive coach who specialises in
helping senior leaders make decisions,
points out that women traditionally
have had more flexible working
patterns because of child-raising
duties. “For a lot of men the
adjustment has been greater. We were
all in it together during the lockdowns,
but now everything seems to be
calming down and a lot of senior men
are perhaps looking at a future in
which they’re primarily expected towork from home or at least that’s kind
of become the norm.
“There is a [feeling of] loss. People
miss the status, pride, sense of
belonging and identification with a
workplace, especially if it’s an iconic
building or a company that’s a bit
special. That’s a big part of your
professional identity. You might
have a certain frisson going in.”
Her clients include senior lawyers
working for big companies with smart
offices where they have a sense of
belonging. “And they’re working in
their son’s bedroom, or the spare room
in the attic or whatever.”
My banker friend describes office
life as a giant, fun dressing-up game
where we adopt alter egos and are
often treated with a seriousness that
isn’t always in evidence at home. “But
as soon as you get into the office, and
if you have a position of authority and
a position of status, my goodness, does
it feel good to suddenly be this very
important person. That doesn’t exist
if you’re sitting behind a computer.”
For gregarious colleagues WFH is
particularly dispiriting. “I have clients
and friends who have a very clear
preference for thinking out loud and
interacting with others and the social
side of work,” Sandler says. “They can
find home working very difficult.”
Hybrid working isn’t going very well
for some people, she says, because on
the days they’re in the office they
don’t see the people they had hoped to
because they are not in, or their days
are so packed with meetings that they
don’t enjoy any of the informal
conversations they were craving.
A particularly sociable PR
consultant is finding he is coming into
London much less than before the
pandemic. “There’s no one to talk to
just about work, football, what you
watch on the telly and that kind of
stuff. I do miss it. And I also think
that there is a kind of serendipity
about working alongside other people,It used to be women who dreaded
the silence of an empty house.
Now middle-aged men are feeling
isolated. By Damian Whitworth
My wife’s gone
back to work
and the kids
have left. Help,
I’m all alone!
Oh no, low
rise is back
Harriet Walker
J
ust when you thought
everything below your belly
button and above your knees
was your own business, along
comes London Fashion Week
intent on reviving the ultra-low-slung
Noughties waistband. At Conner Ives’s
show on Friday, models were in
millennium bug-era bootcut trousers
that hugged so far down their torsos,
their bare hipbones jutted well above
the button-fly.
Not since Britney’s first heyday has
so much upper pudendum been on
show. Women over 35 will not be
amused at this resurgence — and
not just because the high-waisted
jeans in vogue act as a helpful sort
of Wonderbra for what Insta-mums
call “the pooch”. They remember
what this sort of low-riding lower
half involves: constant vigilance at
the front and at the back for the
rogue whale tail of one’s thong
peeping out, not to mention the
sort of thorough wax that is only
judicious when your flies barely
cover your mons pubis.
Of course, for Gen Z — who are
the main drivers of the nostalgia for
what is known in TikTok hashtags
as “y2k fashion” — this is new and
exciting. They are watching
Christina Aguilera’s Genie in
a Bottle video on repeat in the
same way my friends and I
rewound Kate Bush doing
Wuthering Heights on Top of
the Pops 2. What they are
learning is just how far
the definition of the
word “torso” can be
stretched if your “top”
ends where a bra would
and your trousers
don’t begin until
your thighs start.
What does this mean
for the rest of us? I’d
tell you not to worry,
that it’s a flash in the
pan, except...
the high
waists we’ve
become so
comfortable
with have
been around
for some
time already.
An adjustment
is coming, and
I’m not talking
about dealing
with a wedgie.
Remember, it
took four years
for women to
properly embrace
skinny jeans
and a further
decade to get
us out of
them again.
I give it two
years until the
lure of the
low-rider strikes
home. See you
in the queue for
a Brazilian.Models for Conner Ives
at this year’s London
Fashion WeekChristina Aguilera in 2000