As big employers like the CBA and work from home pioneers Zoom start to attempt to get their staff back into the office, local Brisbane man Chad Yallop is having none of it – and is fast becoming his company’s Work From Home jerk.
Many Australians who did the right thing in 2020 and worked from home with minimal fuss and often with bonus hours for their employers when it suited are now questioning the great urgency of bringing people back into the office. And Chad Yallop is fiercely determined to keep his WFH stats.
He’s no slacker, he does the job that’s needed and more, not like that woman sacked from her job for having an equal amount of keystrokes per day as Fred Flintstone, he simply hates his company and people in general. Maybe not all people, but mostly all people.
The joy Yallop told us in an exclusive interview, was that in the office he had to deal with lots of people, and more than one at a time was too many. But working from home meant he could pick and choose when and which people to deal with. If any at all.
His effort as a work from home jerk started subtly, missing the odds meeting, turning up late for others, and screening the occasional call. He’d blame a non-existent IT glitch, or a strangely frequent home broadband issue (“bloody NBN” he would say constantly”) or even stranger local power supply issues. But since he’s got the sniff of a return the the office on more than a token once a month, he’s stopped giving a shit about the excuses and upped the ante in other areas.
All of a sudden he’s become very clumsy. By a quick count he’s had three sprained ankles, a swollen knee, six and a half bouts of gastro, migraines every third Thursday, locked himself out of the house twice, and had Covid an incredible 11 times in 12 months. None has stopped him from working, just working in the office. He is the work from home jerk after all.
His colleagues are so obsessed by his latest excuse for him to avoid coming into the office that they now bet on what reason Chad serves up this time.
On top of his various pieces of bad luck, Chad often needs to avoid coming in the office because of various kids activities and school and after school. The only strange thing is his colleagues had never heard Chad mention any kids before 2020 and working from home started.
But they must be very talented and busy kids. Because they seem to have a lot of ceremonies, band performances, assemblies, and award giving afternoons. His kids must be good readers too, and only last week he couldn’t make it into any office day because of three different Book Week parades.
Then there’s his working hours. The work from home jerks starts at 4am in the morning, so he can put in a four hour shift before most of his team log on, thereby avoiding a lot of potential for human contact for half his day. The early start also means an early finish, which is even ore grateful for, as nothing good happens after 3pm, and seems to be the peak time for panicked people around his business to ask for urgent favours.
He hates any high level meeting like Town Halls, Discussion Groups, Workshops and Blue Sky Sessions. Not only because there will be people involved, but it is usually a freight train load of corp-u-speak wanker bullsh!t, and a all-you-can-buffet of waffle, that seems almost like a live action episode of the ABC’s Utopia. He saves his very best excuses for these office days, in case his big boss actually realises the work from home jerk is at it again.
But he doesn’t always fail to comply. Chad does turn up to meetings, but refuses to put his camera on. He could to say it was an IT glitch but has since stop caring or feeling the need to give an excuse. And he does turn up to the office when he really has to, but is usually dressed at the lower end of the dress code, and defends his attire to the slightly disgusted wider colleagues by stating “this is my formal work outfit”.
He’s almost prepared to join the union to defend his working from home. But that requires parting with money and doing life admin. Both of which are a low priority for Chad.
For now Chad is holding onto his work from home jerk status, and will continue to fight for his right to avoid people and going anywhere. There’s a job to be done, always. Just from home, not the office. Says Chad.
Everyday News is a brand new general news/parody section of The Gurgler, and definitely not a lame rip-off of ‘The Betoota Advocate’. We swear.
