There are some good things about working in an office. Constant supplies of tea and coffee (if you’re lucky), gossip with your co-workers, and paper clips in every colour. But one of the best things has to be that when something goes wrong with your computer, the in-house IT helpdesk will have it sorted out quicker than you can say ‘so which buttons do you want me to press?!’ However, home workers don’t have this luxury.
Working from home has been a whole different ball game; this time, we’re on our own. And that applies to the tech we use for work, too. Ezvid Wiki, a video wiki, software and media company, surveyed 4,020 workers and claims 34 percent of American employees working remotely during the pandemic say their work is regularly disrupted by technology problems.
These issues seem to affect some home workers more than others. It appears Mainers are most affected by things like endless buffering, jammed printers or having to squint at their screens, where 63 percent report having regular tech problems. Meanwhile, those lucky old Californians appear to be the best equipped in their home/office set up, with only 8 percent reporting problems.
Of course, when something goes wrong, you have to try and fix it. On average, workers in America spend 1.4 hours per week trying to figure out the problem (and probably just turning things off and back on again). Minnesotans came out unluckiest, as people in this state spend 2.9 hours per week screaming at their screens, while Alaskans, North Dakotans, Rhode Islanders and Vermonters equally must be positively zen-like, as they only have to devote 25 minutes a week to fixing these problems.
In addition, over 1 in 3 (37 percent) employees working remotely say they’ve had to cut video conference calls short because someone on the call had poor internet connection. Almost one in ten home workers with poor internet admit they have tried to guess a neighbour’s wifi password and piggyback on their service without asking! And, understandably, nearly two-thirds of all employees working remotely think their employer should be paying for their internet costs.