Enlarge / Artist's impression of how little your cat cares about your video call. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) The Friday "beer-thirty" Zoom conferences began for me not too long into the lockdown. A co-worker scheduled them as a form of stress release and socialization as we all prepared for what we already knew was going to be at least a year of not seeing each other in person—and for someone who had just started with the company a few weeks prior, I needed it. Working from home has always been isolating, but it has become even more so in 2020.