‘Ruin it for everyone’: Video of airport Zoom act ignites WFH debate
The silly season is in full swing and one viral clip has exposed how far workers are willing to push WFH boundaries.
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The silly season is in full swing, and one work from home employee is going viral for a wild act that is prompting the question: Is this kind of rogue behaviour going to ruin it for everyone?
There’s a clip of a US man’s cheeky remote work act at the airport making the rounds on TikTok, and it encapsulates just how emboldened some workers have become.
The video shows the anonymous man’s phone going through airport security while on a Zoom call.
Co-workers are still yapping away and visible on the screen as it is placed onto the conveyor belt for screening.
Presumably, the worker’s camera is turned off, so they don’t realise that not only is he not listening, but he is also checking in at the airport.
Coco Schiffer saw the act, filmed it, and then posted it on TikTok, adding, “I aspire to be this level of unbothered”.
The clip now has over two million views.
“Honestly, sir respect,” she captioned the clip.
The man’s rogue act wasn’t met with much shock online, although some joked his boss must have “denied” his annual leave, and others shared that it made them “laugh”.
The clip actually prompted other workers to share their own work from home stories.
“I was on a team call during boarding, and the lady had to scan my boarding pass QR from my phone. She saw the call going and was like, ‘Oh, hi everyone, I’ll scan you now’,” one person shared.
“This is very common for people who travel for work,” another claimed.
Someone else revealed they worked in airport security and said, “You wouldn’t believe how many people are on calls going through security.”
“I’ve absolutely done that and put the camera on so they can have a little show,” someone else shared.
“Tis the season to take remote work to the max,” another joked.
Others claimed that remoter workers have “all done that”, while another admitted that just seeing the act “stressed” them out.
However, what became abundantly clear from the comments was that this act wasn’t that shocking to most WFH employees.
This shouldn’t be that surprising, considering that in October, a clip of two women typing away on laptops from an Aussie beach in their bikinis ignited a debate about remote working.
News.com.au conducted a poll in response to the photo, and 13,000 people weighed in.
Of the respondents, 46 per cent claimed that it was only acceptable to work remotely from home, 43 per cent said it depends on the job, and only 11 per cent said you should be able to get your job done from wherever you feel comfortable.
The footage of the young women typing away at the beach also ignited debate, with someone telling them to “grow up” and others just perplexed at how they could work from the beach surrounded by sand and without their laptops overheating.
Workplace expert Roxanne Calder said that both the airport act and the working from the beach “ruins it for everyone” who wants to work from home.
“This happens all the time and it is why bosses are pushing back,” she told news.com.au.
Ms Calder said that she’s seen people appear on work Zoom calls in “inappropriate” places, such as cafes, beaches, and airports.
The workplace expert argued that, often, people working from anywhere and not home is not only a “health and safety issue” but also a privacy one.
“There’s a safety issue and a confidentially issue and not to mention if something happens to your laptop,” she said.
Ms Calder said she’d heard of an employee who was working from the pool when they weren’t meant to be, and then they accidentally dropped their laptop in the pool.
“I’ve had someone drop it in the pool and then was like ‘it has gone missing’, and they even filed a police report to pretend it had been stolen,” she said.
“It was nuts!”
Ms Calder said she’s becoming increasingly concerned about people “blurring the lines” between their work and home lives.
She explained that while she thinks remote and hybrid work can be a “wonderful” thing for employees and is even something she does herself, it doesn’t mean you should just work from anywhere, like “you’re kid’s graduation”.
“Squeezing work in at the airport or the beach when you know that isn’t in policy or it is just the wrong, it ruins everything,” she said.
Ms Calder said when WFH is done with “discipline” and forward planning it is such a useful tool for employees.
“There’s a few people that I know that have gone to Europe to work but also to be home with their families,” she said.
“I think in that context that is a wonderful thing if companies can do that for people, and instead of squeezing two weeks in, instead you get four weeks, and two of those are working remotely. That is wonderful.”
But Ms Calder warned if people keep refusing to follow the rules and essentially take the piss in 2025, bosses will start to push back even more against working from home policies.
Originally published as ‘Ruin it for everyone’: Video of airport Zoom act ignites WFH debate
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