When I lived in Calgary to study industrial design, I rented a basement room. The landlord and his family are nice, I had good housemates, and enjoyed living there. But I did not have enough sunlight in the basement room. For this reason, I preferred spending day time at school; the industrial design studio was filled with sunlight.
Now I work night shift. Working night shift is not bad because I have more private time under the sun. But, in last couple of days, I spent nine hours straight in each day alone in a small room without window for a reason that I don’t want to describe here. I strongly believe that humans have not evolved to adapt to this environment. A few months ago, I wrote about human evolution and technology development, without imagining I would experience this. This in an exceptional situation and does not last long, but I’m sure there are similar or even worse situations in many other workplaces to retain today’s technology and to further improve it. People have developed technologies for better quality of life, and there are undesirable situations as a consequence. Now, where do humans go? What do we sacrifice for the better quality of life?
One good thing to experience something like this is that I can imagine other people’s pain. If someone complains about bad work environment, I will listen. In the future, I may work in a position to affect how other people work. If it happens, I will imagine what they feel at work, and listen to them.