Home Engineer: Moms are robots

“I’m working from home” has become synonymous with most catch up to find out how your pal is doing calls these days. Armed with a laptop and a broadband connection whose lightning fast speeds are just but neverland promises from internet providers, we are slowly embracing these new norms. But, some of us have been ‘working from home’ even before the mask gained its infamy for hiding our thousand-shilling lipstick trends. For us Mom-bots, our office, let’s call it the kitchen, has ceremoniously been up and running, time immemorial. Marketing, production, packaging, branding and distribution processes, all taking place simultaneously and single-handedly under one roof.

Research and development

Oh, we also have an R&D (research and development) department too where sleepless nights of product experimentation take place with diligence and perseverance with the ‘scientist’ involved, needing no particular introduction. We even have our very own trial stage, which ensures any product emanating from development has undergone the necessary quality control and approval process. The lucky, or at times unlucky, chosen persons involved in the trial phase are none other than la familia. As a sole manufacturer, we are more often than not blessed by walk-in disturbances, let’s call them children. See the little ones always find a way to pay a visit to the office and leave trails of destruction if not anything else. While others worry about the naked kid walking in on that important zoom meeting, ours are constantly finding ways to test one’s patience in-person.

At the same time, it should be noted that our home-office with its dedicated production section also doubles up as a dual functional factory. Not only are we business owners, we also run a daycare centre which involves maintenance of all children in the house. Those that are womb-bred and those that are vow-based. The industry we run is on full steam from dusk till dawn like clockwork, day in day out, ensuring not just our ambitious production line but even the family line of care, is meticulously and dedicatedly functional and operational.

Manual labour

While the current work from home definition revolves mostly around personnel heavily involved in the web-based system processes that permit their physical absence from their places of work, the true at-home workers do not sit behind a computer all day with a cup of coffee in hand. True home-engineers are involved heavily in manual labour too. Theirs is a hands-on approach not just to a digitally transformed model of working but rather a comprehensive DIY (do it yourself) output productivity culture. Their hours of working are not predefined and overtime is every time. Most importantly, for you to be termed as a home-worker it is prudent to tick off a rather important criteria – be your own boss. With a self-actualised work ethic, it is one’s own dedication and motivation that constantly ensures the ‘work place’ is efficiently and optimally running throughout. These individuals don’t suit up for a 45minute team meeting, theirs is a daily attire sewn with the threads of hope, aspiration and ambition (which many at times is the same one they slept in too).

While the globe has been forced to shift policies and align work structures to accommodate this new form of productivity, it may be of significance to engage key stakeholders with enough experience to guide these newbies into the at-home work culture. Once again, the mums who have been doing this, since the stone age have come out to prove that theirs is a structured work culture from which the world is borrowing a leaf albeit a little too late. Mums let’s continue leading the way!