Here we go again
Dec. 9th, 2021 07:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
white_hartWhen I left the house this morning, I didn't think that this was going to be my last day in the office until sometime in 2022.
Honestly, when I went for a walk this lunchtime, having spent the morning cancelling our festive lunch and telling the team that anyone who wanted to work from home for the rest of the time until the break was welcome to do so, I still didn't think that I would be back to working from home full time after today.
It wasn't until I got the VC's all-staff email, which was possibly an even more shocking departure from her normal cheery we-got-through-the-Black-Death-and-the-Civil-War tone than the one she sent on 13 March 2020 and said, very emphatically, that anyone who could work from home should do, followed shortly after by a more detailed email which said that people should only work on-site if there were operational requirements to do so or they couldn't work effectively from home, that I realised it probably was going to be my last day in the office for quite some time.
(Apparently the university is a hotspot right now. They are offering asymptomatic PCR tests to staff and students, and maybe I should have gone for one, because I'm a bit worried about the department we share our building with having a social event for students in a shared foyer area on Tuesday and then emailing us yesterday to say that two of the attendees had tested positive, but I couldn't face trekking into town in the rain while lugging two extra bags with my office plant and the "extra" gifts I'd bought in case anyone had to self-isolate and couldn't make our secret Santa on Monday and which T and I will now eat.)
I think we all felt very down this afternoon. While pretty much everyone has been doing some form of hybrid working, it's been nice to be in the office again and be able to catch up in person, and after being back for a whole term it felt like we had just got to the point where all the creases were ironed out and the new people were much more integrated into the team and we could even plan fun things like the lunch and the secret Santa, and now it's back to working in isolation and only communicating electronically again. And I certainly haven't forgotten how much more exhausting and less rewarding managing a team remotely is to doing it in person. And, more than anything, none of us really have much hope that we'll be back together any time soon.
Honestly, when I went for a walk this lunchtime, having spent the morning cancelling our festive lunch and telling the team that anyone who wanted to work from home for the rest of the time until the break was welcome to do so, I still didn't think that I would be back to working from home full time after today.
It wasn't until I got the VC's all-staff email, which was possibly an even more shocking departure from her normal cheery we-got-through-the-Black-Death-and-the-Civil-War tone than the one she sent on 13 March 2020 and said, very emphatically, that anyone who could work from home should do, followed shortly after by a more detailed email which said that people should only work on-site if there were operational requirements to do so or they couldn't work effectively from home, that I realised it probably was going to be my last day in the office for quite some time.
(Apparently the university is a hotspot right now. They are offering asymptomatic PCR tests to staff and students, and maybe I should have gone for one, because I'm a bit worried about the department we share our building with having a social event for students in a shared foyer area on Tuesday and then emailing us yesterday to say that two of the attendees had tested positive, but I couldn't face trekking into town in the rain while lugging two extra bags with my office plant and the "extra" gifts I'd bought in case anyone had to self-isolate and couldn't make our secret Santa on Monday and which T and I will now eat.)
I think we all felt very down this afternoon. While pretty much everyone has been doing some form of hybrid working, it's been nice to be in the office again and be able to catch up in person, and after being back for a whole term it felt like we had just got to the point where all the creases were ironed out and the new people were much more integrated into the team and we could even plan fun things like the lunch and the secret Santa, and now it's back to working in isolation and only communicating electronically again. And I certainly haven't forgotten how much more exhausting and less rewarding managing a team remotely is to doing it in person. And, more than anything, none of us really have much hope that we'll be back together any time soon.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-10 06:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-10 06:52 pm (UTC)