Doug Deeson's musings

  The pandemic took its toll on our office. Once a small but comfortable working space with 15 employees in on a daily basis, it dropped to a raucous one or two. The two consisted of my coworker Tony and myself. Tony and I are about the same height and he’s about 10 years younger than I am. He’s a dirty blond, cute as a button, doesn’t look like he’s sporting much in the way of body hair, at least nothing poking out of his open neck shirts. We’ve worked together almost 10 years now. When I started, he’d been there a year. He was thin, friendly, and very helpful to the newbie guy.   Over the years he and I have become the primary SME’s on our software and we often collab on complex problems. We are also the goto for the rest of the staff when they need help. Now Tony and I have been friendly, not super friendly, not hang out at each other’s homes friendly but work friendly, we’d joke, we’d kid, we’d tease, and funnily enough, I was not attracted to him at all – he’s straigh...

 Matt was a tour bus driver.  He would take tours all around the US and Canada.  That’s how we met.  I saw him online, or he saw me, I can’t recall.  We started chatting, exchanged a few pics, flirted a bit, discussed likes and fantasies, we were just having fun with no expectations.  After several weeks, he mentioned he’d be in Toronto for a trip, and wondered if we could meet.  I agreed to meet him at his hotel. They’d put the tour group up in a hotel on the outskirts of the city, cheaper I guess,   and I made my way there.   I didn’t find him at first and thought I’d been stood up, I didn’t see his bus though, so I waited for a bit and texted him to see where he was.   It turned out that I got there before his bus.   I saw it pull in and then a few minutes later, his text back to let me know he was here. He asked that I let him get the tour group signed in and get to his own room and he’d send me the room number. I waited in ...

  While Covid was raging, the company I work for quickly discovered that all employees (most anyway) could work, very effectively, remotely.   As the pandemic eased and offices re-opened, they offered a new hybrid scheme to most offices.   However, a lot of people were reluctant to return and in the case of my office only two of us took advantage of the hybrid scheme.   As a result, a very large office space, a very expensive office space, sat largely empty.   Rather than force the attendance issue, the company chose to close the office location and make all the local workers full-time remote workers.   I find myself working from home now, full time.   My home office space shares a desk with my personal computer.   Side by side.   I do not use my work computer for anything personal so it’s handy having my personal computer right there.   It’s also very tempting. Every day I sit at my desk, work on one screen (well two) and my personal ...