Companies are starting to return from what can best be described as a workspace coma. Workers are being asked to return to buildings which have been mostly empty for some time, but not all of the former occupants want to. While offices shut down, childcare facilities went out of business and, with schools also in remote learning for over a year, parents had to improvise. Some of them never want to go back to “pre-improvising.”
For generations, we accepted that the requirements of work amounted to being away from home, then suddenly we were forced to deal with being cooped up at home. We adapted, set up home work spaces, drove our IT staff crazy, and put on a few pounds. Now that financial assistance seems to also be drying up for the laid off workforce, people will begin going back to the office whether they want to or have to.
The CEO at my company sent an announcement that we would be reopening next month, and I was elated. After fifteen months of being away from people I had grown accustomed to seeing in a workplace environment, finally I would be seeing them again. It has never mattered that my commute was nearly 100 miles daily to get there, or that I had to drive on the freeway with maniacs and pay bridge tolls to cross state lines, or that my jobs have always seemed to demand my presence in the most horrid weather imaginable (including blizzards and major hurricanes). I went to work and I enjoyed it. It has always been a part of who I became as a person.
Then word came, a day later, announced by our divisional vice president, that our particular efforts to work from home had been successful enough that our buildings would not be reopening.
Two times in my adult life, I have experienced going from a one hundred percent high to a zero percent low, and this was one of them. The feeling was like a psychological punch to the stomach. Even though I’m a senior citizen and just a few years from retirement age, I never anticipated being isolated so suddenly and so soon.
For my generation, the workplace is the connection to life outside the family. The office serves as an entity separating our personalities as individuals with home lives and work lives, and enables us to vary our daily existence and perform services to others for a common goal.
The key, however, lies in the actual office. It may appear to be corridors, cubicles and designated rooms like stock, cafeteria, mail and copier; its often cheesy wall art, confidence boosting posters and signage quickly become background noise in daily exposure. The point is it is there, and we go to it to be workers. Over a year’s time, we have lost some of the separation of parent or spouse, while kids bored with schooling interrupt the conference video. The home has suddenly become a multi-functional and multiple personality place with additional burdens to bear. It’s too early to determine if our home life, or we, will be able to hold up over longer periods.
Without an office to report to, how will the upcoming generations understand the true process of corporate integration through a Zoom screen or a phone conference? Will nobody wear proper office attire anymore, or take a train or bus into the office, grab a coffee, sit in their assigned chair and become the office worker for eight hours? It’s bad enough that, before we abandoned ship, we had new employees show up for interviews who have never had to develop a personal signature; now they won’t even have a personal desk.
I took the trip to the building to begin clearing out not only my personal space, but the surrounding area where supplies, equipment and supplies will need attention before the space if closed and/or sold to another purpose. It’s a ghost town on the weekends, with a security guard on duty and lights out everywhere. I retrieved some things and left others for the next trip, such as the name plate I received over 30 years ago that will serve no purpose without an office space to place it where people can pass by and associate the letters on its face with an actual person.
I don’t know what to make of having to permanently accept what was supposed to be a temporary normal. Is this the beginning of a new massive increase in agoraphobic employees never leaving their homes (possibly even me)? Will office building complexes become ghost towns or piles of demolished rubble? What of the cities in which corporations operate out of high rises and view the vista from on high behind massive glass windows? Does this mean the world outside the home will cease to exist?
What happens when you go home and stay put?
Susan's Scribblings the Blog 
Work Away
Posted at 5:13 pm by kayewer, on June 5, 2021
Companies are starting to return from what can best be described as a workspace coma. Workers are being asked to return to buildings which have been mostly empty for some time, but not all of the former occupants want to. While offices shut down, childcare facilities went out of business and, with schools also in remote learning for over a year, parents had to improvise. Some of them never want to go back to “pre-improvising.”
For generations, we accepted that the requirements of work amounted to being away from home, then suddenly we were forced to deal with being cooped up at home. We adapted, set up home work spaces, drove our IT staff crazy, and put on a few pounds. Now that financial assistance seems to also be drying up for the laid off workforce, people will begin going back to the office whether they want to or have to.
The CEO at my company sent an announcement that we would be reopening next month, and I was elated. After fifteen months of being away from people I had grown accustomed to seeing in a workplace environment, finally I would be seeing them again. It has never mattered that my commute was nearly 100 miles daily to get there, or that I had to drive on the freeway with maniacs and pay bridge tolls to cross state lines, or that my jobs have always seemed to demand my presence in the most horrid weather imaginable (including blizzards and major hurricanes). I went to work and I enjoyed it. It has always been a part of who I became as a person.
Then word came, a day later, announced by our divisional vice president, that our particular efforts to work from home had been successful enough that our buildings would not be reopening.
Two times in my adult life, I have experienced going from a one hundred percent high to a zero percent low, and this was one of them. The feeling was like a psychological punch to the stomach. Even though I’m a senior citizen and just a few years from retirement age, I never anticipated being isolated so suddenly and so soon.
For my generation, the workplace is the connection to life outside the family. The office serves as an entity separating our personalities as individuals with home lives and work lives, and enables us to vary our daily existence and perform services to others for a common goal.
The key, however, lies in the actual office. It may appear to be corridors, cubicles and designated rooms like stock, cafeteria, mail and copier; its often cheesy wall art, confidence boosting posters and signage quickly become background noise in daily exposure. The point is it is there, and we go to it to be workers. Over a year’s time, we have lost some of the separation of parent or spouse, while kids bored with schooling interrupt the conference video. The home has suddenly become a multi-functional and multiple personality place with additional burdens to bear. It’s too early to determine if our home life, or we, will be able to hold up over longer periods.
Without an office to report to, how will the upcoming generations understand the true process of corporate integration through a Zoom screen or a phone conference? Will nobody wear proper office attire anymore, or take a train or bus into the office, grab a coffee, sit in their assigned chair and become the office worker for eight hours? It’s bad enough that, before we abandoned ship, we had new employees show up for interviews who have never had to develop a personal signature; now they won’t even have a personal desk.
I took the trip to the building to begin clearing out not only my personal space, but the surrounding area where supplies, equipment and supplies will need attention before the space if closed and/or sold to another purpose. It’s a ghost town on the weekends, with a security guard on duty and lights out everywhere. I retrieved some things and left others for the next trip, such as the name plate I received over 30 years ago that will serve no purpose without an office space to place it where people can pass by and associate the letters on its face with an actual person.
I don’t know what to make of having to permanently accept what was supposed to be a temporary normal. Is this the beginning of a new massive increase in agoraphobic employees never leaving their homes (possibly even me)? Will office building complexes become ghost towns or piles of demolished rubble? What of the cities in which corporations operate out of high rises and view the vista from on high behind massive glass windows? Does this mean the world outside the home will cease to exist?
What happens when you go home and stay put?
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Author: kayewer