Working from “Hell”

Hugo Ferreira
4 min readMar 27, 2020

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After 15 days of confinement due to COVID-19, with 2 adults working and 3 children attending school remotely, “WFH” is standing more closely to “Working from Hell” than “Working from Home”. 😱

cubism painting about a person with red eyes, working with their laptop in hell, looking upset
DALL·E — “cubism painting about a person working with their laptop in hell”

Let me give you a sneak peak of my past 15 days in COVID-19 induced confinement, “working from home”. 👀

Yesterday I kept a pen and paper always by my side and noted the times of what happened during the day. ✍️

In summary, got some focused periods here and there 👨‍💻 but the interruptions ❌ are killing me slowly. Handling them can take anywhere from 2 to 20 mins.

To be honest, this was a pretty typical day, similar to most other lockdown days. Not exaggerating at all, unfortunately. 😩

Repeat after me: This has nothing to do with working remotely!

▶️ 🚦 Sit down to work

— 👨‍💻 11 min of work

❌ 🤔 Wife: “So how are we planning lunch and shopping today?”

— 👨‍💻 38 min of work

❌ 💡 Wife: “I’ve had another idea for lunch and shopping”

— 👨‍💻 41 min of work

— 📆 A few scheduled meetings

⏸️ 🛒 Local market shopping

⏸️ 🛍️ Pick up take away food

⏸️ 🚗 Deliver shopping to in-laws

⏸️ 🍽️ Family lunch

— 👨‍💻 15 min of work

❌ 💻 Daughter: “Daddy, the online lessons’ screen is frozen, I can’t type!”

— 👨‍💻 45 min of work

❌ 🗣️ Daughter: “Daddy, Z. wants to talk to you” [a relative who’s a teacher and is helping my daughter on occasion]

— 👨‍💻 19 min of work

❌ 😭 Daughter: “DAD, my brother R. is accusing me of farting. WITHOUT EVIDENCE! And I didn’t do it!”

— 👨‍💻 2 min of work

❌ 😱 Son R: “MOM, DAD, my sister is chewing with her mouth open!!!”

— 👨‍💻 6 min of work

❌ 😢 Daughter: “DAD, my brothers don’t make room for me to stay in front of the laptop camera” [while zoom calling with their cousins]

—👨‍💻 6 min of work

❌ 💻 Son R.: “Daddy, T. made the zoom window disappear and we can’t find it anymore”

— 👨‍💻 22 min of work

❌ ⚽️ Son R.: “Daddy, you promised yesterday to play football in the living room with us!” | Me: “Ok, let me just finish something here…”

— 👨‍💻 8 min of work

❌ ⚽️ Son T.: “Daddy, are you coming or not?!”

table flip

🥅 Me: “FINE. I’m the goalie!”

⏸️ 🍽️ Family dinner

⏸️ 🐑 Herding children to get them ready for bed

jumping sheep

— 👨‍💻 15 min of work

❌ 🗣️ Wife: “Are you putting the kids to bed?” | Me: “Finishing something here, can you do it please?”

— 👨‍💻 12 min of work

❌ 🗣️ Wife: “The kids are in bed” | Me: “Ok, coming soon”

— 👨‍💻 19 min of work

❌ 😱 Wife: “THE KIDS ARE IN BED!” | Me: “OK! FINE!!!” 🙄

⏸️ 🛌 Goodnight to kids

— 👨‍💻 5 min of work

❌ 💻 Wife: “Can you help me figure out something here with the computer!” | Me: “Ok, ok… Just a sec!”

— 👨‍💻 7 min of work

❌ 🗣️ Wife: “About that computer thing, never mind, I’ve sorted it”
Me: “Oh… hum… ok…”

sigh

— 👨‍💻 50 min of work

❌ 👁️ Wife: “Have you read that email from the kids teacher?”

— 👨‍💻 21 min of work

⏹️ 🫠 (enough for the day)

try not to cry: person rocking on the flow huging their knees

Originally published at https://hugo.ferreira.cc on March 27, 2020.

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Hugo Ferreira

Tech leader. Software engineering. Generalist. Treble dad.