‘When the Daily Commute Stops’: A Long-Distance Commuter’s Reflections on Commuting and Telecommuting across the COVID-19 Pandemic
通过一位英国知识工作者2019-2022年的访谈，揭示远程办公虽带来工作强度增加和家庭责任加重，但相比长途通勤更受青睐，并探讨其对工作自主性和性别平等的启示。
This article foregrounds the working experience of a knowledge worker in the United Kingdom across three years (2019–2022) that included periods of ‘lockdown’ and other social restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Across seven separate interview extracts, it offers a longitudinal narrative on the lived experience of substituting a workday comprising a long-distance commute by car to work ‘standard’ hours for an extended workday telecommuting from home. Over time the worker paradoxically recognises that telecommuting entails added pressures of work intensification, extensification and greater domestic responsibility but this is preferable to returning to a long-distance dissatisfying commute. The reflexive narrative reveals how he embraces the pressures of telecommuting through job crafting to re-identify as an autonomous professional and more engaged care-giving parent. The article contributes to the literature on hybrid/flexible forms of work organisation emerging from the pandemic by indicating the importance of micro-level considerations and implications for gender equality.