Found out on Independence Day: independence from the location can go both ways in business
picture found on google under “Independence Day”.
I sometimes take a while for things to register, plus things keep changing. I “know them subtly” because of much evidence and then something hits me, and I realize another dimension. So was it with me yesterday when another arena of independence hit me and a fuller picture of the fact that our society and our ethos is changing.
First of all, we know that corporations have been shifting people around for a long time. In my own experience, we went from an office in every area, to one in every state, to now there is one in the entire region of the southern Atlantic area of the country (9 states). My office in Nashville was described as being the permanent office, till they decided a couple or three years later to move it to Florida. Who knows since then, the office in Florida may have moved to California or somewhere, and the people in the office would be serving the entire part of the nation that that company serves. Note: companies no longer find it necessary to be in the area they are serving.
Then, over the last few years, innovation has brought us AIs and automatization. Who can forget the fact that at one time, at least, there was a “Sophia, the AI with a Saudi citizenship”? I remember in that same article, automation was discussed as being the go-to for even things like surgery, and other focused activities. 2. Note: with automation and AI’s businesses are moving away from people doing the work.
In addition to that, to reinforce note number 1, we have all had the experience of calling in to report something to repair and finding that the tech department is in India or some other foreign (to the United States) nation. Point re-inforced.
Then yesterday, I got the second part of that divide. Workers, or at least some, can declare independence from location and office as well. The below article references some young people in Europe who, during the Covid-19 pandemic got bored sitting at home doing their work. They decided, what be stuck at home, why not travel while still servicing their clients, since they are doing it remoting anyway? And the question is that there is not a reason. Not really.
And in my case, there are areas where I have declared my independence from the location. Books that I once might have bought at a local bookstore, with Covid went over to Amazon or the library. I prefer the library where I could run back and have them deliver my books to me at the curb. Not only safe by quick. The second favorite option was Amazon. You see, the local bookstore that I used for many of my Science Fiction Club reading made a mistake where I was concerned. They decided that they would only mail out book orders of 25.00 or more and most of the books we read in the club are not that much.
Since I wanted to limit out many I bought, I would only buy one at a time…getting the others from the library, to begin with. I certainly wasn’t going to commit to buying more books just to get free mail out. So, since I didn’t have to go to the library for the meeting, they lost my business. If they had told me that there was a 5.00 charge for mailing a book, I might have gone for that, but they didn’t. Of course, I was irritated about the 25.00 thing and didn’t ask, but they didn’t volunteer it either.
Now back to employee independence. I have some issues with the young people who did the travel during Covid. One of them actually got sick and could have died. In addition, any of them might have been responsible for spreading that horrific disease…not a good thing. But, the point is that now employees have ways to avoid the location rule and still do their job, so when it gets right down to it, why not?!!
Meanwhile, on the farmworker front, there are reports of people from 12 to 70 working all day harvesting cherries. They get paid 30 cents per pound in temperatures as how as 113 degrees Fahrenheit. So why some are finding freedom in the “new way of doing things”, some are treated even more as virtual slave labor than they were before. And of course, THOSE are the people that xenophobes fuss about “invading our country to take our jobs”. So, you on the right side of the aisle, when do YOU want to report to pick cherries?
Things need to change even more than they have…and everybody needs to benefit, not just some. Location is getting less important, not more. We are a world economy, whether we want to admit it or not.
