“My name is Garima, I work as an HR associate with an international company. Our office has been shut down for more than 3 months now, and working from home was a major culture change that we all had to digest overnight. 

Honestly, I was so happy that I was finally getting a chance to work from home, i.e. be with my family and work too but it was tougher than I imagined. Coordinating everything every day with all the different teams, that too remotely, took up most of my working hours. Initially, things seemed alright but after the 3rd week or so, I’ve experienced so many miscommunications that my own reports and emails started to get messed up. More than once people have changed the meeting timings at the  last minute and that has looked inefficient on my part if the others did  not receive the message in due time. 

So many people are not responsive and when I ask them about the delays they are so disrespectful to me as if I am some kind of a personal secretary. Earlier too maybe the employees didn’t like me enough, but no one was rude to me on the face, and now, I can feel the disdain and irritation in their voice on the call or video conferences too. 

My job profile included managing meetings, hiring people and looking after the appraisals. But now, I just have to send a few emails and coordinate with people about changes in policies, even though I know they don’t respond in time and people already have their meeting schedules with them, the rest of the things I am responsible for according to my job profile are not even happening. This sometimes just makes me worry and I don’t even know now whether my job has any relevance anymore and this makes me very insecure  about  my future. Also, I wonder if I studied and spent so much time to just be a messenger during the tough times? 

Maybe my company will realise this someday and ask me to give in my resignation, just the way I had asked a few of our employees to do when we had to cut costs. The  company will realise that in the current scenario my job is quite redundant. I am getting stressed nowadays about conducting my job every day, listening to the irritated and rude voices of colleagues, then being told off by my senior because these colleagues are not adhering to their deadlines. I don’t know if all this mental trauma is even worth it anymore. I was happy because I was working from home, but I wish I could just switch off my laptop, wifi and phone and sit peacefully with my family for a meal. I can’t even quit right now, because well, what else have I got? The coronavirus pandemic has got me into a Catch-22 situation where I am clueless where and how this will end for me….

All this insecurity, worry, disdain, is making me very stressed...I don’t know where I am headed too with this.