Reply All: It’s been great not seeing you
Life is tough when you never really lost the “class clown” title. Especially when everyone at work seemed to catch on and coined “office joker” for you. Sitting in an office was always an undeniable invitation for me to walk around at every opportune moment and gossip. My productivity was about an A- at best and, more often than I’d like to admit, performance review conversations veered far from the Disneyland experience.
I refuse to believe that my assumptions were entirely my fault (I also claim that for the shock I receive when I check my bank balance, so take this lightly). Offices seem to be structured in a way that we stare blankly at a screen or at the same four walls for 10 hours a day, and no matter how exciting the work occasionally is, it’s ridiculously easy for it to become mind-numbing. This fact, combined with a nutty idea that “food can be eaten while working”, leads me to believe that the whole environment is designed for robots. The inclination to walk around to check in with my colleague about how their Tinder date went so I can seethe with jealousy is completely human.
Working from home has been deceptively great. Gone is my attitude that work is constantly interrupting my coffee breaks. This is in spite of the fact that my trusty Keurig machine has robbed me the usual 10 minutes it would take to get a cup of coffee (speaking of, should my hands be shaking this much as I type?!). I get so much time in between avoiding emails to, in fact, think more about work. The idea is to think outside the box right? Well if I’m squished in a tiny box office all day then I don’t see how I can possibly think outside the metaphorical box.
I realize that this is not a realistic long-term situation. There are so many things that I am missing out on, such as social interaction. It’s a little weird now if I start a Zoom video chat with my buddy to see how that date went. Virtual Happy Hours are by far the most uncomfortable things to endure, right below those performance review chats of course. I think I’ve found something sadder than drinking alone, and it’s drinking in front of a laptop camera pretending to not watch The Office on the side while keeping myself on mute. My boss probably thinks I find him hilarious. It’s significantly harder to make an impression on colleagues virtually than in person. Unfortunately, the years of practice that I put into a just-the-right-amount-firm handshake seem like they will be zero-return for a while.
