Blogs / 15 JUN 2021
cartus team members celebrate father’s day with work from home joys
With Father’s Day (U.S.) just around the corner, our team at Cartus is excited to celebrate the father figures in our lives. In this piece, we’ll explore the ups and downs of the pandemic and how our team members navigated this difficult time to find connection with their loved ones.
“I went from being an empty nester—who traveled for business most weeks or spent very long days in the office when in town—to overnight working from home alongside an adult son (working in investment banking), his girlfriend (working as a consultant), my younger son (a virtual college student), a very happy dog (that loved to take part in Teams meetings), and my wife (who loved chatting with all her newfound company).
At times, it felt like a ‘WeWork’ office—sharing space with a multitude of personalities working on various, unrelated jobs and projects who you ran into at the coffee station between meetings. But what made this WeWork truly special was that it was made up of a group of people that you would want to be stranded with on a desert island. Some of our favorite memories include:
Daily shared meals where we were able to sit and really talk, which hadn’t happened for years
Knowing that, at the end of the day, nobody quickly ran off, but instead the core squad was there for a cocktail and conversation about the day’s events, a board game (that needed to be dusted off), or to binge-watch the latest guilty pleasure together
Trying things that we had put off, like finally assembling the pizza oven received as a gift so long ago and starting a weekly pizza-making tradition
As things are getting back to ‘normal’—and this WeWork is less crowded these days (only the dog and my wife are still here)—I will be forever grateful for the sense of community and the return to simple pleasures that this period of time rekindled.”
Rob Moore, SVP, Global Sales & Marketing
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“I have three beautiful girls in elementary school (my twins are in second grade, and my youngest is in kindergarten), and I have the complete joy of bringing them to the bus stop, as well as getting them off the bus daily. You cannot put a price tag on all the chatter I hear when they get off the bus and tell me about their day… truly priceless.”
Kevin Jordan, Manager, Finance
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“Work from home meant I could temporarily move and live with my parents in Norfolk for a few months last year. I had breakfast every day with my dad for the first time ever. He was in the Royal Navy when I was growing up, and away at sea a lot. Those few months last year, we spent more time together than we ever have, and it was fabulous. Sadly, I lost my dad to COVID this February, but I think positively about how WFH gave us that time together and how countless other fathers were able to spend more time with their families.”
Helen Gamblin, Executive Assistant
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“When the pandemic started, my daughter was three, and we pulled her out of daycare to be safe. One of our daily activities became me taking her out for a bicycle ride in our bike carrier trailer each afternoon. I enjoyed the exercise, and she enjoyed the chance to get out of the house—even at age three, she picked up on the ‘weirdness’ of suddenly not leaving the house every day once lockdown started. As we would bike around, if we saw another person, she would make me stop so she could say hello (from afar).”
Christopher Kusy, Account Management Director
“Prior to the pandemic, I had worked from home 1-3 days a week for nearly a decade. Those were idyllic days, full of elastic-waist lounge pants, gourmet snack breaks, and frequent communes with nature. Then I was locked in a house for three months with a 3-year-old, a 6-year-old, and a wife who, as a teacher, had never worked from home but who, like me, was now required to do so full time. Suffice it to say, our shared Google calendar and collective sanity quickly degenerated into a certain type of “show” that would not be polite to describe in mixed company.
There is no denying the feelings of stress and helplessness that periodically invaded each of us—even the three-year-old, in his own destructive way—those first few months. Yet through all the Zoom-bombings, binge-watching, and grocery disinfecting (yes, we were those people), the time with family was also a revelation. Getting to know my son, my daughter, my wife better than I ever had thanks to a global disaster was a paradox I could barely reconcile yet a gift I never lost sight of.
But let’s be clear: I am an upper-middleclass white knowledge worker living an upper-middleclass white knowledge worker existence, and thus one of the 5% of humans on planet Earth for whom the pandemic was, by most metrics, a best-life-enabling boon. And yes, that’s an uncomfortable statement to write, but it’s also the reality of privilege.
Another reality of privilege is that, while my house may have aged 10 years in 10 months (our new favorite pastime: count all the new holes!), and my beard game has moved from on fleek to off (literally), I can’t say that I would change anything—at least in terms of my lived experience. As logistically and emotionally impossible as these past 15 months have felt at times, without the COVID Crucible and the personal and professional growth it forged, I know that I would not be the father, son, husband, brother, friend, boss, or human being that I am today. And that person is, nearly universally, a better person than he was in early March 2020. (The only side effect: he sometimes writes in the third person now.)"
Trevor Macomber, Director, Global Marketing & Communications
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"For the first seven years of my daughter's life, I was commuting two hours each way with one remote day a week. Dinner and storytime before bed were generally our only time together. My daughter turned 14 this past December. She started remote school on the same day I started remote work last year. Meanwhile, my wife saw her business grow and she found herself working away from home more than ever before, so our roles have pretty much reversed.
During the past year, my daughter and I were able to have lunch together nearly every day and watched some of our favorite shows together while eating: Parks & Rec, Brooklyn 99, and (then started) The Office.
My daughter's school announced the last quarter of the year would offer a return to full, in-person learning. As my mom and father-in-law were fully vaccinated by then, we made the decision to let her re-enter society. My wife and I subsequently received our vaccinations, and my daughter is about to exceed 2 weeks after her second dose, meaning we'll all be fully vaccinated. I now get to drop her off and pick her up from school, but I try to take a late lunch when possible in order to continue The Office together."
Vincent Raskopf, IT Senior Developer
We hope you enjoyed these snippets from our team life at Cartus.
We wish you all a happy Father’s Day!
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Cartus Communications
