"Hey guys, I've a great idea for the project! Let's put GOD in charge!"

I don’t mind keeping quiet during prayers at the start of each scrum meeting, but I draw a line at having to join in with the singing.

"We give thanks for this morning’s remote stand-up session (You are all standing up, yes? And it is good.) May we share enlightenment through the reports that each team member will bring. Amen. Namaste. Make it so Mr Worf. Now let us click on ticket 743 and join together in the hymn Agile With Me…"

No matter, I can always fein a mic problem; no-one will question this as we’re using Skype. I tilt my webcam so that my face is visible only from the nose upwards and drop the audio-out volume to 1.

These morning meetings were annoying enough in the old days but since Scrum Master Tina engaged the services of a ‘spiritual consultant’ on the project during lockdown, the god-bothering has been getting on my tits. The idea is that team-bonding through ritual and er, soul-centeredness will compensate for the emotional grief (it says here) created by the physical distancing inherent in remote working.

Until now, I hadn’t realised my soul had been off-centre. After all, I have been remote working for much of my working life, increasingly so as internet connections gradually improved over the years. And here’s me, hacking away at various jobs and never knew I had been grieving all this time with a wonky soul.

What I can’t work out is why I hadn’t noticed my abject despair until now; or indeed even now. I happen to enjoy working remotely, in a team or on my own, in a co-working space or at home. I get more work done. Interactions with colleagues via email, Slack, Jira or whatever are more focused. Virtual meetings are briefer, dramatically so. And best of all, I feel relaxed enough in my personal space to make better contributions to the conversation.

I’m rubbish at in-person physical meetings: for some reason they suck all inspiration, creativity and connected thinking right out of me. I’ll end up saying anything (or nothing) just to get out of there as soon as possible. Someone will say something really stupid and I’ll just nod and sneak a glance at the door. Only later, sitting in front of my keyboard, will I conceive a brilliantly improvised, off-the-cuff riposte.

How I wish I could dismiss fools immediately and in-person with smart one-liners, like Private First Class Jenette Vasquez in Aliens.

It’s the souls of those people who are not able to work remotely that I feel sorry for. There are plenty of those, and not just in the alimentary and distribution industries. While plans for international travel remain on hold for most of us for a while yet, I still don’t fancy being a passenger on a plane piloted remotely by a home-worker sitting in front of MS Flight Sim and whose cat has just sat down on the numeric keypad.

And therein lies an existential question: what if the only real work in the world is achieved by those whose jobs can’t be done remotely? As for the rest of us keyboard jockeys, are we just fooling ourselves into thinking we have any tangible economic or societal value to the economy whatsoever? Are we merely the Golgafrinchan telephone sanitisers in the great B Ark of the New Normal?

Nope. Sorry to disappoint. I do not suffer from imposter syndrome on this project.

If anything, I have the opposite problem. While I may occasionally harbour cautious doubts about the limits of my intellectual capabilities, I am in absolutely no doubt that everyone else on the team is a cretin.

I just wish I could tell them this to their faces, retorting to poor directives with really clever comebacks. Just like Private Vasquez!

Vasquez rocks!

Ah, I think the hymn-singing is over and Scrum Master Tina is once again addressing the congregation, er I mean meeting room. I turn the volume back up.

"…and encourage you to bring your moral concerns into the business conversation."

A dozen on-screen faces stare blankly into space. For a moment, I wonder if my connection has frozen but no, I detect slight breathing movement among my colleagues as they awkwardly – and charmingly – play statues for fear of attracting Tina’s attention. Bless. That’s another great thing about virtual meetings: you don’t have to avoid eye contact because nobody looks into the lens anyway.

"Does anyone have a thoughtful interruption to blend into our common experience?" insists Tina without betraying even a hint of self-awareness in her voice that she might be talking bollocks.

The video and audio feed of one of the team members suddenly mutes, replaced on-screen by a muted selfie she took some years ago in front of the Parthenon. How appropriate: a religious temple. Her live feed returns after about 30 seconds. It looks as if she has been crying. Well, getting the giggles does that to you sometimes.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m OK with those who surround themselves with transcendental belief and ritual. I just don’t want them to surround me with theirs. Besides, I have my own out-moded polytheistic ideas around this subject that are not generally welcomed in polite society and so I keep them to myself.

That said, when our team’s spiritual consultant told us back in April to "transform everyday practices such as dog-walking and yoga into sacred rituals" I could see the game was up. Look, if your yoga exercise is not already a sacred ritual, you’re not really doing yoga at all; you’re just having a bit of a stretch. And what’s so wrong with that, eh? Go take some yoga classes and forget about the mystical trappings. Who needs a spiritual consultant to spoil it just because your stiff back trumps achieving nirvana this morning?

On-screen, I think the extended silence has finally prompted Tina to wind up the session. But no, she has started talking in tongues again. I glance down at the agenda she circulated earlier. The final item is entitled ‘Inspirational Meditations’ and comprises a seemingly random series of corny Confucius-style quotes that she cut and pasted from her Evangelical Project Managers private group on Goddit.

The problem with constantly trying to squeeze religious fervour into everyday discussions and practices is that in most cases it simply won’t fit. But the person doing it is in denial and feels obliged to keep hammering away at that square peg anyway. The result is a diatribe of pseudo-spiritual brand marketing blah that nobody can make sense of – like a bad sermon.

Still, I can see the way things are going so I’d better bend like a reed in the wind if I want to keep working in the new (para)normal. I have already trained myself not to snigger during scrum meetings; my team colleagues would do well to follow suit.

I have also been studying religious expressions to acclimatise my ears, and made some extraordinary discoveries. I realise now that being asked to "put your hands together" is an invitation to pray in silence, not to break into a round of applause. That was an embarrassing meeting, I can tell you.

I have been knocking on bedroom doors at home and offering to talk about Jesus. I have deliberately bored myself shitless for an hour before queuing in the kitchen to snack on crispbread and wine. After drinking a 2€ bottle of supermarket rosé, I talk in tongues. I have updated my LinkedIn profile to include my Circumcision Status.

Look, I’m doing my best here to get into the holy spirit at work but I wonder if I lack the aptitude. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, when the curtain falls… who’d have guessed that "Drop to your knees and say ‘Hallelujah’ three times" is not a playful request for oral sex?

That was another embarrassing meeting.

No doubt Vasquez would have had something to say.

ALISTAIR DABBS is a freelance technology tart, juggling tech journalism, training and digital publishing. For all his pretence, he spends an alarming amount of his free weekends visiting churches, and the Dabbs finances almost single-handedly prop up the entire French Catholic votive candle industry. Should you wish to hear the dulcet (i.e. hoarse, whiny) tones of the man himself, talking about his favourite subject (i.e. himself), he was recently interviewed on the Foodie Flashback podcast.