… so why am I not entirely comfortable with it?

I have a job which doesn’t require me to go into the office. I can get my work done in the quiet and privacy of my own home – where there’s no threat of being drawn into chit-chat, no water cooler conversations going on in the background to distract me, no boss breathing down my neck. 

This should be my ideal work situation. So why am I not entirely comfortable with it?  

Social anxiety

Just because I work remotely doesn’t mean I get to avoid all social contact. I still need to communicate with colleagues and work-as-part-of-a-team. Furthermore, I’m still expected to be sociable with my colleagues, just as I was when I worked in an office. There’s still the same pressure to be pally and chatty with my co-workers, to engage in conversations that aren’t just ‘shop talk’, and to take part in ‘team building’ exercises. 

As a shy, schizoid-y, socially distant person, I always struggled to meet the social demands and expectations of office life. But what I’m finding is that it’s even harder to do so in the virtual workplace. 

Although office life can be hell-on-earth for shy, schizoid-y, and other introverted types, being based in an office does at least make it easier to meet the social demands it places on you. In the office, small talk is unavoidable, the team gets to go to lunch together, and just being sat next to each other five days a week makes establishing relationships with those you work with,  no matter how superficial, more likely. 

Compare this to the virtual workplace – where interaction with your colleagues is confined to a few pre-arranged Teams calls each week all of which are centred around work. There are far fewer opportunities to engage in the sort of informal, spontaneous social interactions so characteristic of office life. 

Far from being a relief, I find this set-up only exacerbates the anxieties I have around talking to my colleagues. Like I said, I’m still expected to be sociable at work.

Take for example the fact my boss messaged me the day after we returned from a long holiday weekend with, ‘I hope you had a good weekend’. This ‘check in’ was clearly meant to serve the same social function it would in the office – to help foster friendly, positive relations amongst the members of the team. If this interaction had gone down in the office, I still would have found it painful and annoying and awkward; but online, it presented new difficulties. I was uncertain as to how to respond – would a ‘yes, thank you’ be sufficient? Or was I expected to say a bit more? I even wondered whether I could get away with not responding at all.

IRL, I wouldn’t have had time to ruminate on any of this. But online, these sorts of interactions become a lot more difficult to navigate. They also come across more contrived, more forced, more false.

Essentially, I’m finding working remotely makes it harder to tick those social boxes that still very much exist. Because I’m not sitting next to my colleagues all day, it’s taking longer – and a lot more effort – to ‘break myself in’ with them. 

Social connection

I also wonder whether I’m not-entirely-at-home with remote work because – contrary to what I tell myself – I do actually need some social connection. 

When I’m on a Teams call with colleagues, if the conversation veers off work, then my usual social anxieties kick in. And yet, I also find the ‘pure work’ calls somewhat jarring. It feels like there’s something ‘missing’ when your colleague calls you to check something, you answer, and then that’s it, you both hang up, and each of you goes back to working in your own silent isolation. There’s a coldness to it, an abruptness, which I never really experienced during similar interactions in the office. 

As a result, I feel this need to be a bit more, dare I say it, chatty, to generally make more of an effort socially, in order to ameliorate the yes, – alienation – I experience on such calls, because they tend to be more perfunctory, more awkward, more limiting than face-to-face interactions, limiting in that they provide less of an opportunity to establish a genuine rapport / relationships with those you’re speaking with. 

I thought I’d be ok only having to deal with a handful of short-and-to-the-point video calls during the average work week. And yet here I am experiencing this absence, this need for something ‘more’, as if, perhaps, some part of me (i.e. the human = social part) is left unfulfilled, by what would seem in theory, an ideal level of workplace interaction for a socially distant sort such as moi. 

Social conditioning

On the other hand, could I be experiencing this discomfort, not because of some intrinsic need for social connection, but because of social conditioning?

All throughout my life, starting from a young age, I’ve been led to believe that my shy, socially reserved self was ‘wrong’; I’ve always been deemed ‘too quiet’ and told I ought to talk more, to be more social. I’ve always been made to feel weird for not having any interest in doing ‘normal’ social things, for preferring my own company.

As a result, I go through life super self-conscious about how I’m always, inevitably going to fail to fit in, because I don’t like socialising, I don’t particularly want to make friends with people; and how this is always, inevitably going to be commented upon – in a negative way – and I’ll be made to feel like a freak.

And this is especially the case when it comes to work. I always feel this pressure to be more sociable than I actually am because that’s what’s expected. But rather than navigating that with a ‘fuck it’ attitude, and ‘owning’ my shyness, my not-very-social-ness, by just allowing myself to be, I instead end up capitulating; I try to pass, to come across more social than I actually am, or am interested in being, all to avoid the negative repercussions that come from being deemed ‘too quiet’.  

And so I wonder whether the feelings of alienation, of wanting ‘more’ in my virtual interactions with colleagues, are also a product of the messages that have been drilled into me from a young age – that I ‘should’ make an effort to be friends with people, that it’s weird to just say the bare minimum in an interaction. 

If I could dial down my preoccupation with what people might think about me for being quiet/shy/schizoid-y, might I experience less of a need to inject more chit-chat, more warmth, into my virtual conversations with colleagues, because then I’d be more in tune with what I actually want, with who I really am? 

Solitary-but-social?

But who am I? And what do I want? When it comes to social connection, I find it hard to gauge what it is I genuinely want vs what I think I ‘should’ want based on the social norms of our extrovert-dominant society. 

I do feel most ‘at home’ when I’m silent, and when I’m alone. And I wish I could lean into that more, be more confident in my self-containment. 

A part of  me wishes I could be more of that so-called ‘pure schizoid’ type who isn’t plagued with social anxiety, who doesn’t give a fuck about meeting social expectations, who is more comfortable (outwardly at least), with working alone all day, remaining largely anonymous amongst those they work with, not caring one iota about ‘checking in’, or making video calls feel more ‘human’. 

However, I’m not wholly convinced this is the sort of solitary I really am, the person who I ‘ought’ to be. I am also aware I have some need for social connection deep-down-inside. 

The question is: how much? And what would that look like? Given that I also know my quiet, shy, socially distant self also runs deep.