A year ago I left the office, and not going back has left me strangely bereft. Meet me at the coffee machine and I’ll tell you why…
When I last left the office, I didn’t know I might never go back. Out I breezed a year ago, like nothing, bye, half-finished tube of hand cream on the desk, aspirational water bottle tucked behind the computer screen, locker of assorted Eva Wiseman ephemera (tampon, hate mail, eye liner, Daily Mail spread about how women’s knees reveal their age) abandoned, so sure was I that I’d return to claim these treasures. The following week, lockdown happened, followed by 12 months of assorted traumas, biscuits, births and bollocks, and quietly, while we were all working from bed, offices withered like the hopeful succulents huddled on their desks.
The Financial Times reports that 20 major British office employers are planning to move towards hybrid working. HSBC plans to cut its office space by 40%. British Telecom, which currently has 300 offices, is cutting them down to 30. This news, it chills me. For I, a person who loves a bit of a pre-lunch chat about telly or death, a macabre in-joke about the coffee machine, a supermarket cake cut with ceremony at 4pm, am a great admirer of the British office. It might even be my longest love affair – . Since graduating from shop tills I have worked in a series of offices, each with its own internal politics regarding temperature and birthdays, each one a place of fragrant joy, an air-conditioned holiday from the necrotic wound that is real life.
Continue reading...from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3tdXAzV
