A few days ago, as I was wrapping up the work day, I randomly wondered what time it was in London, England. Since it was around 6pm here, it was 2am (the next day) in London. I did some quick math and realize if I lived in London and wanted to match the work hours on the west coast exactly, my work day would be from 6pm to 2am locally. For someone who stays up pretty late anyways, that’s not a terrible work day. It’s not ideal either however. One of the drawbacks would be on Fridays. You wouldn’t start your Friday “work day” until 6pm, while locally, everyone in London is now enjoying the start to the weekend. I guess on the other end, on Monday morning and afternoon in London, I’d be still on my “weekend” as Mondays wouldn’t start until 6pm.
I suppose there could be some flexibility to the start and end times to the day. For example, some people start earlier in the day so they can leave earlier. Similarly, I could start the work day at 4pm London time and be done by midnight. Still, the biggest negative is that your evenings are gone. Forget about being social during the weekday. Then again, during a pandemic, this isn’t something you should be doing anyways. On the flipside, your late mornings and early afternoons are all free. You have all that time to run errands and get stuff done while regular local business hours are in effect.
Like I said, it’s not the worst working situation possible but it’s not perfect either. The reason this even popped into my head is because with the pandemic, the whole corporate world has been upended. People are working from home in all sorts of different places. Just on my team alone, I have had co-workers who worked from Dubai, the province of Ontario, and closer to home, on Salt Spring Island.
I am simplifying it a bit, but it seems like you’re no longer tied down to one place if you want to work somewhere specific now. It will be so interesting to see some data about where people are working from now in relation to where they used to reside for work.