“So work from home if you can, but you should go to work if you can’t work from home.” The words of Boris Johnson on the 10th May 2020.
Great, if you have office space in your home with a proper desk, chair and stable WI-FI connection. Difficult if you’re hunched over a laptop, in the living room with kids running about and a dodgy zoom connection.
Three months ago I was waking up to the alarm at 6.30am, groggy from the usual 6-7 hours’ sleep, wishing I’d booked the day off just so I could laze about and do absolutely nothing – BLISS!. But, it seems be careful what you wish for. 11 weeks on since I last stepped foot in the office and genuinely I CANNOT WAIT to get back! Everything that I took for granted, the social chit chat with colleagues, the boring daily routine, the office when it used to erupt with laughter are all now sorely missed as I’m stuck in my flat by myself. Now I find myself yearning a ‘discussion’ about the temperature of the office or the drama when all milk ran out. It’s quite comical listening to Recruitment Consultants deprived of their morning caffeine fix.
I’m sure I’m not the only one itching to get back to the normality of the office. Except it won’t be like it was. As soon as Boris gives us the ok to get back to the office – even if you can work from home – we’ll be returning to a ‘new normal’.
One thing is for sure, certainly for the time being, Covid-19 is going nowhere. Offices around the country will look very different. Desks positioned two meters apart, plastic screen dividers, one-way systems, the aroma of hand sanitiser and dettol throughout the room. It’ll be different, there’ll be challenges, but dare I say – it could actually improve things ?
It’ll be nice going in to the office at 8am each day and it being spotlessly clean and tidy. Making time for colleagues, asking how they are and genuinely meaning it (not that I didn’t mean it before but it feels like it’ll have extra meaning now). Getting to use my own mug and not searching the desks for who has ‘appropriated’ my special one – if you know you know!
So whilst I’ll await for the day when social distancing becomes a distant memory and I can go for a working lunch to pizza express, have beers after work or even give one of my colleagues a hug on their birthday, for now, I’ll settle for the alarm going off at 6.30am and looking forward to my working day.