4 minute read
BARTLEBY
Back to reality?
Are you heading back to the office? Now that lockdown is (we hope) over and normality is returning, will you be popping on the old cycle clips and pedalling off to work the way you used to? Will you be catching a post-breakfast bus, or picking up a scooter and whooshing back to the land of photocopiers and water coolers, sandwich bars and conversations about football or films?
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I was talking about this the other day with a friend who used to be a big fan of office life. In those long-off days before Covid he used to quiz me about my working practices because they were so different from his. He took the bus every morning to a location somewhere up there in busy north Bristol, returning to our tranquil, if impoverished, neighbourhood in the evening. His day was filled with meetings and impromptu conversations with dozens of colleagues. There were lunchtime sandwiches and post-work drinks. The pre-Christmas party season started around Bonfire Night, and by the second week in December he sometimes had two or three work-related events in a single evening.
Life for yours truly was rather different. Being a self-employed scribbler, and jack of various related trades, I had a desk that moved between sitting room, dining room and bedroom, depending on temperature and wind direction. My commute was about fifty feet. My sandwich was genuinely home-made. My meetings were few but exciting, as they got me out of the house.
My friend found this lifestyle baffling. How, he wondered, did I resist domestic temptations (biscuits, television, gazing out of the window)? I had to admit that I didn’t, but at least I had no office-related distractions (coveting other people’s snacks, birthdays, chat). Still, I did sometimes feel – particularly around Christmas-time – that I was missing something. Occasionally I’d have a meeting in one of those office-y corners of the city and marvel at all the people walking purposefully this way and that, lanyards flapping. On a gloomy afternoon I’d look up at the brightly-lit windows, each framing a pair of women in earnest conversation, or a solemn group round a table, or a man tapping intently away at a keyboard.
As property prices in London grew ever more preposterous, more and more companies moved into the new office blocks sprouting from the fertile land around Temple Meads. Some people did battle for the right to work partly from home as they strove to balance corporate life and childcare, but most didn’t. Work was a place you went to. You didn’t bring it home.
I saw my friend the other day. Like many of us he was furloughed for a while last year then started in on the old WFH. He has a sort of cubby hole on the landing where an airing cupboard used to be, and at 9am every day of lockdown he conscientiously ensconced himself in front of his computer, slid his helicopter-pilot-style headset on and got down to work. How pleased he must be, I said when I saw him, that he’ll soon be able to escape this cloistered existence and rediscover the cut and thrust of office life. To enjoy once again the daily commute, the latte-to-go and the conversations about City’s latest triumph or tragedy.
Well, he said. I’m not sure, he said. So far only a handful of people had gone back but most were in no hurry. Far from applying pressure to return, his company were happy with the new status quo. Their overheads were lower and their staff were getting more done. We’ll probably end up back there a couple of days a week, he concluded. To tell the truth, it’s a lot less stressful.
Our conversation was interrupted at this point, leaving me feeling strangely unsettled. I found myself wanting to tell my friend, ‘You should go back – you must! Otherwise how can anything be normal?!’ Then I thought, hang on, maybe now we can meet for lunch… ■
THE BRISTOL
MAGAZINE
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