by Madison Ratcliff
While many couples are experiencing the highs and lows of working from home with their partners for the first time, Michael and Melissa Ratcliff have already gotten the hang of it.
Since the quarantine went into effect in March due to coronavirus, employees have transitioned to online work from their homes. For many, it means sharing a workspace with their significant others, an arrangement many were not used to. However, the Ratcliffs have been working together from home since June.
Michael began working for himself as a creative director after leaving his job at Sysco Foods in June 2019. Melissa also began a small business in their home that April painting and selling silk scarves.
The couple has been married for 28 years as of April 25. Although it wasn’t always smooth sailing, they were able to work out a system of working. Michael said that some of the benefits of working in the same house as his wife were that he saved a lot of money and got to be around her.
“It’s nice that we get to kind of bounce ideas off of each other,” Michael said. “Sometimes when she’s working on something, she’ll as my opinion on some stuff, and other timmes when I’m working on stuff, I’ll ask her about things.”
Although the quarantine has made working from home a struggle for some couples, the Ratcliffs haven’t changed much in their regular schedules. Melissa said that now that she’s gotten used to her husband working from home, she doesn’t want him to go back to working in an office because she enjoys being around him so much.
“I think the adjustment period was because we had to learn to communicate better, and we had to learn to communicate in a different way,” Melissa said. “Being patient with each other is vitally important and being self-aware enoguh to be considerate of the other person and knowing that your actions affect that person.”
