There was a crisis at a local office after a spouse of one of the staff showed up at work and made herself comfortable in one of the unoccupied desks occasioned by Covid-19 related retrenchments. The wife to the junior manager had followed the husband to work just to keep connected to the husband’s mobile hotspot that she had been accustomed to during the good old days of working from home.
The event that caused some management crisis started with Covid-19, when the husband started working from home and was provided with enough airtime allowance to enable him connect to online meetings seamlessly. This was after the local home Wi-Fi proved ineffective due to constant interruptions during meetings. It was agreed that the staff would be given airtime allowance to allow them buy ‘Safaricom bundles’ since they are more reliable.
This was the beginning of creating dependence because since then, they stopped paying for home WIFI and everyone at home was allowed to share the company provided data bundles that the man of the house was providing.
It was total bliss, while it lasted. There are few things as sweet as someone hotspoting their mobile phone and creating an instant WiFI to allow you to access the internet through your phone. It is one of those features that are bigger than the phone itself.
However, the return to normal and the start of the new year saw people getting back to work from the office, and the hotspot effectively disappeared. The owner of the mobile hotspot would leave the house at 7 am and would only be back earliest at 7 pm. This was a big problem because there is nothing much one can do a night when they are asleep, and the mobile hotspot was not available during the day.
It was due to this frustration that the wife made a radical but logical decision to follow the husband to work so that she can be near the mobile hotspot during the day.
Asked whether this was a temporarily intervention or the new normal, the wife did not bat an eyelid. “I am here for the hotspot. Wherever it goes, I will go. Wherever it lives, I will live. Its office shall be my office and its location shall be my location.”
The office management is still trying to figure out how to proceed.
