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Working from home may have been something you used to dream about. It’s common as a professional who goes into an office to have thoughts like, “Well couldn’t I have just accomplished that from my kitchen?” Or “Did we really have to meet to have this meeting? Seems like it could have been three emails.” With so much of our work happening on computers today, is there really a point to companies taking on expensive and lengthy commercial space leases, all so that the computers can all be in one place? These are questions many companies may be asking themselves now that most have had to send their employees home for the COVID-19 quarantine.
You, however, may have found that working from home isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Maybe it was fun for the first week or two, because you got to see your family all of the time. But that might be the very reason it ceased to be fun after that. Not that you don’t love your family—they just may fail to understand that, just because you’re home, doesn’t mean they can bother you with a hundred silly questions and tasks throughout the day.
By now you might find yourself missing things you never thought you’d miss about the office. You may yearn for elements of the office space that you used to run from. Like these.
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That annoying coworker
That coworker who talked your ear off about her personal life, or wouldn’t stop trying to tell you all about how fit he was getting, or told cheesy jokes. You miss that annoying coworker right now because he was a part of the diverse fabric that made up office life. And you miss the whole thing.
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All the memos
Remember all of the silly memos that would come across your desk? Memos about filling the printer ink cartridges if you found them empty and memos about remembering to wipe crumbs off the break room table when you finished eating. You hated those little slips and now you’d give anything to see them again.
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The office birthday parties
It felt like every day, your work was interrupted for an office birthday. Everybody had to stop what they were doing to meet in the break room and sing someone happy birthday and eat cake. Now, you’ve learned that interruption was nothing compared to the interruptions you face at home. Also you miss cake because the store has been out of it.
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A place away from kids
You love your kids! You love them! You live for them. You can’t stress that enough. But, kids, even yours, are, by nature…how do we put this? ANNOYING! Oh my gosh they never stop. Yelling, playing, inquiring, jumping, breaking, spilling. It never stops. And you used to have a natural eight to 10 hour break from them a day, that made you miss their lunacy. Now you are not given the space to miss them.
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A computer nobody touched
People won’t stop f*#king with your computer. Somebody always moved it or borrowed it or got something sticky on it or downloaded something on it that is slowing it down. Grrr! At the office, nobody messed with your computer.
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The drive to and from
You didn’t realize how much you cherished the simple commute. It was a nice time to rev up for the day, distancing yourself from home and getting in the zone for work. And on the way home, it was a time to decompress. Now you don’t get any of that. You wake up and are launched into work.
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Getting a quick answer
In the office, if you needed someone to show you how to do something, you could just walk to the person’s desk. It could be over and done with within minutes. Now you have to send an email you hope they get to sometime in the next 24 hours. Until then, you sit and wait.
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A reason to get dressed up
You didn’t realize how nice it was to have a reason to put yourself together. You used to resent your pantsuit and look forward to casual Friday’s. Now, with every day being casual, you almost want to institute a…Formal Friday’s thing in your house.
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A forced regular schedule
It was understood that between the hours of, say, 9 to 5 or 10 to 6, you were working. That’s it. Nothing could stop you. Nobody could ask you to quickly remove a stain from a sweater or fix a Barbie doll. You couldn’t interrupt yourself either. You stuck to the set hours. Now, you start work at 10:30, 11, 11:30…something always slows you down. You’re still working at 9pm. How did this happen?
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Possibly useless meetings
Everyone in the office used to resent the many, many meetings that lasted 45 minutes and could have been a five-minute email exchange. But now you miss those: at least you got to hang out and joke around with your coworkers at those meetings.
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The kids’ school solicitations
You remember. Every day it was something. Your coworker’s kid’s school was selling wrapping paper or raffle tickets or getting pledges for some marathon. You dreaded these solicitations. Now you miss them because it meant that schools were open and life was normal.
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The work solidarity
There is something good about having everyone else around you working. It motivates you. Now you’re the only one working at home. Or maybe your partner is too. But there is a lot of dilly dallying and shenanigans going on.
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A reason to turn your phone off
It was kind of nice how, when you went into the office, you could ignore those calls from your mom asking how to work her iPad for the tenth time, or that call from that needy friend who broke up with her boyfriend for the 15th time. You could ignore and just say “Sorry at the office! No personal calls!” Now you don’t have that excuse. You have to constantly remind people that working from home doesn’t mean not working.
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Office food
The home baked cookies and muffins one coworker would bring that you complained made you fat. The forced weekly office lunch with takeout. The break room snacks; always the same. Now you miss all of that because you’ve been staring down a lot of canned and frozen foods.
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The banter
You just miss the banter. It was about everything and nothing. Dating lives. New diets. The bad toilet paper in the bathroom. Whatever. Everyone brought different personalities and stories to the banter. Now your conversations at home that are all about wiping down counters and wearing masks make you miss the office banter.
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