AMANDA PLATELL: WFH Snowflakes may protest, but I’ve slept in the office – it’s the key to success

When Elon Musk took over Twitter, he laid off half of his 7,500 employees and told the survivors they had to adopt a “tough” regimen that worked “long hours at high intensity.” Esther Crawford, director of product management and one of her few remaining executives, took her at her word.

She posted a photo on Twitter of herself wrapped in a sleeping bag, dozing through the night on the office floor, with the caption: “When your team is working day and night to meet deadlines, sometimes you #SleepWhereYouWork.” . Went viral.

Long live Esther, I thought. Here’s a high-flying businesswoman who’s not too proud to sleep over and get the job done. Surely with such dedication to Musk’s edict, a promotion was in store. No. She just got fired from her.

Point out the outrage of snowflakes online who have never had a major job or (many of them) no job in their lives. Her hastily worded tweets expressed outrage not that she had been fired from her, but that she felt forced to sleep in the office. The work-from-home brigade, which thinks it a capital offense to even set foot in a communal workspace, was equally surprised. Sleep in the office? They won’t even work from theirs.

But sometimes, often indeed, accepting the realities of a working culture is simply the only way to move on. It is not an outrage, but a step on the ladder.

I stayed at work regularly in the late 1990s and early 2000s when I was head of media for William Hague, who was then leader of the Conservative Party. Quickly realizing that politics was the most demanding job I had ever had, I responded to the pressure of him working 24 hours a day.

They say a week is a long time in politics, but sometimes a day is too, which means I had to be there to put out fires 24/7.

I loved.

After just a few weeks on the job, it became apparent that she often wouldn’t have the time to travel an hour back home to North London, get some kip, and then return the next day.

So I found an unused medical treatment office in the bowels of the former Conservative Central Office in Westminster where I worked, a one-room bunker with a bare flat bed, sink and toilet, and snuck into a sleeping bag and a pillow. . On many nights, that was my home for the night.

Fortunately, this was before the advent of social media, so there was no chance of slackers embarrassing me with a viral photo of me in a sleeping bag.

But why the hell should I be ashamed? Why should Esther Crawford have been the target of so much anger and outrage? It was our choice to do what we did. Back then, I wasn’t responsible for any other living creature except my elderly three-legged cat, Ronnie, and a quick call to a neighbor ensured he was fed and let out. There was no point in dragging myself home.

Snowflakes say that a 24/7 office culture discriminates against those with dependents, mainly mothers. Parents can’t compete, they say, with those who don’t have to run home to put the kids to bed. But having children is a choice in itself. If I had ever been a mother, my career may well have taken a different route. These are the forks in the road we all negotiate, after all. Esther and I decided to put all our energy into our work; Others don’t.

For me, that little room was a life saver. I stowed underwear and socks in there and a clean shirt, plus makeup and my hair dryer so I could look fresh and professional the next day. As expected, he was always the first to arrive at the office. In fact, ‘getting some sleep’, as I call it, is essential for many truly demanding jobs. Working for Hague, I developed the ability to doze in the cab between meetings.

Before that, as a deputy editor for a national newspaper that required a ten or twelve hour shift six days a week, I often slept ‘on the job’. With the luxury of my own office, I would lie on the floor for half an hour. My secretary knew how to tell callers that I was ‘in a meeting’.

I did the same at my next job, working as marketing manager for the Mirror group of newspapers in the 1990s, but by then I had a very comfortable sofa in my office. The first face I saw in the morning was my secretary, handing me a double espresso and a clean change of clothes. At least there was a shower there.

And no one would even think to comment when the executives from our advertising firm Saatchi & Saatchi arrived wearing the same suits they had worn the day before. Back then, we considered sleeping under our desks, as those women had, a badge of honor.

Have I ever felt abused during those long nights at the office, taken advantage of by my employers? Hell no; He was elated, doing jobs he loved even if it was 24 hours a day.

The men did the same, of course, turning up at the office the next day unshaven and in wrinkled shirts. If they were young, they might have slept in their car. If he was a senior, most likely it would have been at the office, and then a secretary would be sent to buy a new shirt.

Amid outrage over Esther Crawford’s dream tweet from people who have clearly never had a difficult job in their lives, Twitter has been inundated with messages of support from her colleagues. People who know how hard you have to work to keep a well paying job in the 21st century.

Post Covid, our society has become anesthetized to the culture of hard work. Calling out a woman who is doing what so many of us do, working like hell for a living and paying her taxes, is shameful. Especially when those taxes are spent to subsidize workers.

If Twitter boss Elon Musk has an ounce of integrity, he’ll not only reinstate Esther Crawford, he’ll also promote her. If he doesn’t, I’d like to add to his ‘#SleepwhereYouWork’ the hashtag ‘#ShameOnElonMusk’.