Is the office era actually over? (From 2021)
I enjoy the rituals of visiting. First, there is security: How long will I wait? Who will greet me in the lobby, should I ever gain access—a human whose job is to handle ingress and egress, or is each person expected to greet their own visitors? Will I get a VISITOR sticker, and will the sticker change color in a day, for security purposes? Is the coffee brought to me or may I get it myself? Sometimes you learn that people have had sex in a given office, which is hard to forget.
I have a friend who worked at the White House, back in calmer times, and he told me about some of his workplace battles. I said to him one of the dumbest things I’ve ever said in my life: “The White House seems like a really political place to work.” I still cringe to think of it. Yet it’s a place where power is absolutely explicit and geography means everything. And “place,” as Tuan points out, is really a proxy for time.
Home is supposed to be a constant, steady place, a shelter for a family. It shouldn’t change very much. But an office is basically a big clock with humans for hands. And I find that the people who don’t want to go back to pre-pandemic office culture are the people who are the most concerned about their time. Sometimes this is their personality; they are engineers who look at travel as a waste, who seek efficiencies in their work and health.
Now make a map of your “digital office.” It will be a bunch of squares and a screenshot of a web browser. I like working at home. It’s efficient and I’m glad for the time I get back. But digital work has a lousy clock. Hours blur. Meetings all look the same. My map of our company’s office is filled with pathways, memories, art, people who came and went. It’s got a history. Some nights I stayed late, ordered takeout, and sang loudly while getting some terrible presentation done.
I like existing in that continuum of memories. Someone will move in after we move out. Screens hang all over the office so that our remote employees can be present. We spend a lot of time and money making sure that they can share in office events. It doesn’t have to be all or none. But the office doesn’t so much give meaning to my work as it is the meaning of my work. It’d be hard to give that up.
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