FDX FedEx Corp

By Jennifer Levitz 

Greg Baker has worked from home in Kansas City, Mo., for about six years, taking inbound calls for a FedEx call center. He tackled every distraction. He unplugged the doorbell. He shut the door to the room where his teenage son's two pet birds live. He told friendly neighbors to avoiding stopping by during work hours.

Then came the day last month when his wife, Cindy Baker, said, "OK, Greg, I'm coming home."

She is the chief external affairs officer for the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, which told staff to work from home due to the pandemic.

"It's my domain," says Mr. Baker, who is 59. "She is coming into my space."

Much has been made of the travails of the work-from-home rookies as they strained to adjust over the last month. That has obscured a more frustrating adjustment unfolding in parallel: the work-from-home veterans grappling with the interlopers.

Mr. Baker had to lay down some rules, including requesting that Ms. Baker wait until his breaks to use the ice machine.

"You would be amazed how loud it is to put ice in a cup," he says.

Plenty of U.S. workers toil occasionally from their sofas. But only 5.3% of Americans mostly worked from home in 2018, according to the most recent census data. Then, the pandemic sent the masses home to disrupt the regulars.

Staci Hegarty has worked from home for four years and is a pro. Ms. Hegarty, who is 48 years old and a curriculum designer, knows, for instance, how to "set up an appropriate videoconference so the laundry is not hanging up behind you." She works in the dining room, finding the home office space claustrophobic.

That spot worked well until Denver schools closed due to the coronavirus, sending home her husband, John Hegarty, a teacher.

"It's the random loud singing that happens," Ms. Hegarty says of his habits. She told him: "You can't just stand in the living room and sing 'Scooby-Doo.' I'm on the phone."

He recently started doing online teaching and one of them -- meaning Mr. Hegarty -- needed to move into the office space. "I was here first," Ms. Hegarty says.

Dave Wakeman has perfected the art of staying on task while working at home in Washington, D.C., for more than a decade. The 45-year-old business-strategy consultant charts every call and daily priority in his Moleskine calendar.

His partner Kathryn, an attorney who is now working from home due to the pandemic, is used to office chitchat.

"She'll just come stand right behind me and just start talking to me," Mr. Wakeman says. "I'm like, 'Hold on a sec, this is sacred space.'"

Social-distancing directives also sent Julie Overton's husband home from work, and her three teens home from school. Ms. Overton, who does professional training for a university, has worked from home for 15 years. She enjoyed an oasis of calm from the morning until the after-school hours.

She says she is now trying to keep her house in Carlsbad, Calif., from falling into a "Lord of the Flies" situation. She can't help but pop out of her office when she hears yelling or barking dogs.

To her amazement, her husband just tunes it out. "He's at the dining room table on a conference call with the kids running up and down the stairs," she says.

During a videoconference call, she saw two of her kids and the family dog in the camera shot, playing on the bed behind her. She stuck a stamp over the camera, and told colleagues, "Oh, my video is not working today." She says online school work has started to keep the teens busier.

Shannon and Russ Sweetser had a well-oiled system. Russ, 41, left their small San Francisco apartment daily to go to his job as a product manager for a financial company. Shannon, 36, headed to her desk in a back bedroom. She has worked remotely since 2017 as an account director for Timeshare CMO, a digital marketing consulting firm.

Then last month, Russ's employer told staffers to work from home.

"It's strange," Shannon says. "It's super strange."

The couple decided they would share the apartment's one monitor and desk, each getting half a day there. The desk had been her province, covered with "all my little desk things," she says, including her furry llama figurine and her favorite pens.

As a sign of welcoming, she added Russ's collection of "Star Trek" Pez dispensers.

"It almost feels weird," she says. "Is this my desk anymore?"

He starts his days at the desk, while she decamps to the couch with her laptop. Around lunchtime, they switch. She sits down and finds herself dipped back, because the chair's backrest is askew, when she likes it upright. The height is off, too.

"He changes the chair on me," she says.. "You know instantly, 'Somebody messed this up.'"

The household thermostat is a sticking point for Chris Villani, a 35-year-old journalist, home-based in Watertown, Mass.

His fiancée LeeAnn Parker, who is 34 and employed by a teacher-placement firm, recently came home to work. "She will come out and turn the heat up," Mr. Villani says. "A half-hour later, I'm melting at my desk, so I go turn it down. It's been a little bit of a negotiation."

Zac Overbay, the 50-year-old chief operating officer of Woodruff-Sawyer & Co., a San Francisco insurance brokerage, worried he would "hijack" his wife's environment when he recently started working from home. She has worked remotely for more than 13 years. He makes himself scarce at points in the day.

"I've hopped in a walk-in closet," he says.

In Kansas City, Greg and Cindy Baker are adjusting to her now working from home. She's had to train him to pipe down during his frequent shoptalk with a FedEx colleague.

"He's carrying on with his FedEx 'wife,' and I'm sitting there looking at him to be quiet," she says.

And as soon as she hears Greg push his keyboard in just so, she knows he is on break, and she runs to the kitchen to the ice machine.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 15, 2020 10:26 ET (14:26 GMT)

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