Ergonomics has been absent from my life for too long. I write it while I feel a shock in my index finger each time I press on my keyboard (I type with two fingers) and a stiff neck has made my head movements as fluid as those of Catherine Deneuve in her newest movies. That is to say not at all.
Posted yesterday at 11:00 a.m.
I finally decided to treat myself to a desk chair worthy of the name. I’m weighing the pros and cons of different models these days. Last week, I bought a screen compatible with my computer, which will be delivered in a month. Yes, my life is thrilling.
After nearly three decades of working anywhere and anyhow—mostly on a laptop at the dining room table—I’ve decided it’s time for some comfort. I chose myself, as Fred Savard would say.
Fifty is approaching slyly, slowly. I fear her like a sword of Damocles. I’m already pulling up, if nothing else, the average age of Quebecers (43). I feel, in my heart of hearts – and everything that surrounds it more and more – that I am paying the price for years of neglecting the elementary precepts of ergonomics.
It is a payment in several installments. This week, it’s torticollis. For a month, it is the index. For the first year of the pandemic, it was tendonitis.
It will have taken the pandemic for me to finally decide to equip myself with a teleworking office in good and due form, by “chasing” Sonny in the basement. More than a year after a sewer backup that I have already talked about too much here, the last works were finally carried out this week. Only the earthwork remains…
All that to say that for the first time in my life, I have a workspace at home where I don’t also eat my meals. A brand new library, a refurbished office. All that remains is to find an ergonomic chair and receive my computer screen – I had to return the ones I had borrowed from the newsroom of The Pressthis week – and I will finally be properly equipped for what is called hybrid working.
I was reading the reports by my colleagues Silvia Galipeau and Catherine Handfield on this increasingly widespread phenomenon, and I said to myself that I had been practicing hybrid work for almost 30 years. With the exception of the last two years, and five years, in my late twenties and early thirties, when my presence was required in the office every day (I was Head of the Arts Division), I have always worked half the week at home.
To answer Silvia’s question: yes, happiness is in the hybrid. I would even say that to try it is to adopt it. I believe this for both employees and employers, who have found in many cases, despite their apprehension, that productivity does not decrease with telework. Quite the contrary.
Hybrid work is so ingrained in my professional lifestyle that I couldn’t do otherwise. If only for the sake of efficiency. And I’m not just talking about the time lost in travel, even if I live less than 5 km from The Press and that I have promised myself for a long time to do active transportation.
In over 20 years of columns, I have written as many columns in the newsroom of The Press How many times have I come home from the office running. It can be counted on the fingers of your hands. It is not, however, for lack of trying.
I like the inspiring, unique rustle of a newsroom. The concert of fingers tapping on keyboards, the impromptu conversations, the mixing of ideas that feeds the chronicles. I’ve missed all that a lot for two years. But for writing, I need silence and dead calm. Fortunately, I have indulgent and understanding bosses.
For me, it’s not a question of decor. I attempted to write my first columns in the old newsroom on the third floor, the one with an old brown rug that saw the days of typewriters. Then I gave up on being efficient in the office, when our section was moved to the echo chamber on a middle floor with low ceilings.
This week, I will meet my colleagues for the first time in two years, in our modern newsroom, on the same floor as the journalists of the other sections of the newspaper, which had not happened for about ten years. In addition to chatting with Hugo, Chantal, Josée, Alex, Marc-André or Marissa, I will be able to more easily sound out Yves Boisvert (everyone, at The Presslikes to probe Yves Boisvert).
I will have the feeling of a family reunion, after a long covid break. A Christmas of the reporters, in a way. Then it will be back home… because you have to work hard!