Brick Buddies Blog
Welcome to Brick Buddies!
A blog where our LEGO® colleagues share their passions, insights, and discoveries.
Work-from-home confidentiality and positive surprises
Not having a workplace to go to every morning blurs the boundaries between private and professional life in ways that many of us haven’t experienced before. It enforces new forms of multi-task attempts and it adds a layer of complexity on everyday tasks and habits that we might not truly have appreciated before.
One of the biggest challenges these days for my husband and I is work-from-home confidentiality. As a big part of my job is about future product assortment, and my husband also works with confidential projects at another company, we end up in the funny situation of hiding our computer screens, notes and calls from one another.
Getting the boss spot and navigating confidentiality
Yet we try to share our home-office space: each at one end of the table. The one who has most meetings gets the best chair and the big screen for the day – one day we even counted the amount of meeting hours to decide who got the best (boss) spot! When the “boss” of the day decides it’s time to raise the table the other one must follow. It’s become a funny type of stay-at-home competition.
We each have our own set of headphones with noise cancellation, but when one of us need to speak about something confidential, the other will be kicked out and find another spot to take their meeting – usually at the kitchen counter surrounded by dirty dishes from breakfast or lunch. (Speaking of lunch - I always felt that going to the canteen took too much time, but now having to prepare my own lunch, makes me see the life in the office is so much simpler!)
Positive surprises
But this situation is not all bad: we are having fun unlearning old habits and learning new ones, expanding our horizons: from making LEGO® DOTS patterns to represent specific meetings (I can actually recall the meetings I was having by looking at the patterns I created) to fun online gin & tonic happy hours after work.
There are some positive surprises too. My husband and I, who used to travel a lot for work, are finally spending great quality time together: cooking, doing lots of gardening work, having lunch side by side. Our fluffy dog Lumi is also happier to have both of us home and being able to say ‘hi’ to all the neighbors that come by the hedge to cuddle her. Her number of followers on Instagram has even increased over the last couple of weeks!
So, adapting to a new routine might bring positive surprises and new learning opportunities. Just remember to have fun and be kind – kindness spreads fast too.
Patricia Lima
In my current position as Marketing Manager at the LEGO Group, I drive Business Monitoring, Portfolio Development & Management and Communications activities related to the LEGO® Friends portfolio. My goal is to make even more kids fall in love with LEGO Play.
The Scandinavian approach to design and innovation, through user participation, has always inspired me – and is actually what brought me to Denmark in the first place. I’m passionate about participatory paths towards innovation and engaging in all forms of inclusion. At the LEGO Group I found, without a doubt, the collaborative culture I’ve always admired and searched for.
But my journey hasn’t been straightforward: I’ve collected multiple cultural treasures and reinvented myself by living and working in Brazil, Portugal, Australia and Sweden before falling in love in Denmark. Today, I live my own version of happiness in Vejle with my fantastic husband, Stefan, and our fluffy dog, Lumi. Happiness doesn’t mean a lack of challenges though: after almost 7 years in Denmark, I still fight against my Brazilian instincts of hibernating during the dark months each winter.