Almost like normal (166/365)

[white_hart]

I'm quite enjoying my days in the office. Today, being there enabled me to support my newest and most junior member of staff, who was in by herself as both of the other members of her team were ill; pop my head round my head of department's door to discuss something we both forgot at our last scheduled Teams catchup; have a lunchtime walk and chat with a colleague in the same role in a different department; and look something up in one of my paper files when someone asked about it. None of these things would have been half as easy from home, and some would have been impossible. And I wouldn't have been able to have the iced latte I treated myself too when I got back from the walk (though I would have saved myself £3.20).

I'm half-tempted to increase my time on-site even though the government have extended restrictions, including the advice to work from home where possible, for another four weeks. There's a lot to be said for having work and home in separate places...

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

I found that I really enjoyed going into the office today since there were actually people there. Every time I've been in so far it has been an absolute ghost town, and I've just done things with files and left. But there were people! I said hello to them and talked and felt connected and realised how much I haven't done so over the past year, because I've not had energy/time to engage like that at work when I would have had to seek it out rather than someone just be in the same place as me. I'm not going to be back much for some time, as it is also rather tiring, but it did make me think that yes, come autumn I expect I'll enjoy spending at least some of the time in the office.

[white_hart]

Yes, it does need a critical mass of people. (I don't think I had quite enough people in in Michaelmas Term, or maybe it was just that because I was trying to spread people out more they weren't people who would normally communicate that much.)

[anna_wing]

The number of jobs that turn out to actually need an office and personal human interaction is much higher than people think.

[white_hart]

It is indeed.

[antisoppist]

I met up with the Exeter translators for lunch on Friday and we recalled how last time we met, in early 2020, we were planning to agree a day every couple of weeks where we would book one of those shared workspace places for freelancers and go and work there together so we could have breaks and talk about what we were doing and drink coffee like normal people in offices do because working from home on our own for years had slowly driven all of us a bit nuts.

Yeah, well that was early 2020... It is still an aim because all that has happened is that the whole world now agrees with us.

[white_hart]

Surprising numbers of formerly office-based people are currently insisting that they would prefer to continue working from home! I think a lot of it is that they've forgotten the benefits of being around colleagues and are liking the convenience of being at home. (I am surprised by how much I've missed being in the office, because I thought I was enjoying working from home, but having been back a day a week for a few weeks I've now remembered the joys of having two big monitors and not having to make do with a desk that is fine for a sewing machine but almost too small for a laptop and external monitor and keyboard, and also not having someone assume that whenever I'm not in a meeting I'm free to discuss what we might want for dinner.)