Autonomy is seductive. Roll out of bed, skip the commute, wear sweatpants and work when the inspiration strikes, answering only to your conscience.
For many, it seems like corporate liberation. It is the dream, until the mask slips and reality bites.
Well, the mask of remote work has slipped, and the reality is far less romantic: it has become the perfect incubator — the Petri dish — for deception.
What began as an emergency lifeline during COVID — a mark of resilience, ingenuity — quickly turned into a shell game for many employees (though not all, of course).
Some secretly collected multiple paycheques, working two or three “full-time” jobs simultaneously. Others ran side hustles during business hours. And many simply vanished, surfacing briefly for Zoom calls like reluctant extras in a play they no longer wished to star in.
When the pandemic first forced employers’ hands, they had little choice but to surrender control, telling employees: “work when you want, where you want, how you want.” And for a while, productivity didn’t collapse. Slack pings replaced watercooler chatter. Executives congratulated themselves on “reinventing the workplace.”
But utopias rarely survive contact with reality. And reality was this: remote work quickly became a camouflage for dishonesty.
Employees double-dipped. They pocketed full-time salaries for part-time effort. And when managers needed them? They got radio silence — or the familiar “frozen screen” gambit.
Consider the case of Soham...
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