Blog: Back to the Office?

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Back to the Office? - Tuesday, June 16, 2020
As mentioned in last Friday's post, yesterday was the first day back to the office for a couple hundred Pure employees. Every other desk is now unassigned, meaning that many people were moved, though I still have the same desk by the window. On my floor where there are normally around 200 people, I'd estimate that there were only 10 people in. I was the only one on my team who came in (the only other person on the team who elected to come back was still working from home yesterday). The next nearest person on my floor was sitting 100 feet away.

Lunch is currently not provided. And in our microkitchens, there's about 1/3 of the previous amount of snacks. There are individual-sized cups of cereal, Cup Noodles, popcorn, chips, beef jerky, granola bars, cookies, and a couple types of energy bars. Plus a couple types of soda, energy drinks, tea, and sparkling water. And one type of beer - Corona (ironically?). All the perishable stuff like eggs, hummus, carrots, yogurt, cheese, almond and soy milk has been removed. So have the bulk bin snacks, oatmeal, and peanut and almond butter. Unfortunately, there's not that much that I can eat on my limited diet.

Before work, I visited my dentist for a cleaning that was 2 months overdue. They reopened their office at the beginning of the month, and there are naturally more protective measures in place: a health questionnaire and temperature screening up front, patients having to rinse their mouth with hydrogen peroxide, masks and face shields for the dentist and her assistant, and the dentist chair and other equipment covered in disposable plastic to be changed in between patients. The assistant told me that they used to have 2 or 3 patients per hour, but now they have 1 every hour back to back. The dentist asked me to pay a $20 charge for the PPE that they have to use, since insurance doesn't cover that yet. A small price to pay given that the office is bringing in much less revenue now but can't suddenly start billing higher rates to insurance. I don't know how they'll be able to keep the lights on like this.

Being back in the office yesterday was difficult for me. Part of it is probably that I still need to adjust (it was an adjustment going from working in the office to working from home), but the lack of food that I could eat was a significant hindrance to productivity. Also, wearing a mask for long periods was uncomfortable, so half the time when I was at my desk, I either wasn't wearing it or had it resting lower on my face, not covering my nose. I don't know how cashiers, dentists and other people can stand wearing a mask for long stretches at a time. Compared to them, I have it good.

Today I'll be bringing a lot of food to work to help get me through the day. But that defeats the purpose - why don't I just stay home where I already have things I can eat, which also has the benefit of eliminating a commute (however great my commute to/from the office currently is) and not necessitating a mask. I don't have much incentive to go into the office at the current time, especially since our renter is no longer here and I can work quietly at home (see previous post). I'm planning to stick with it for a couple more days and then make the request to switch back. Everybody else on the team is already there.

With the shelter-in-place shakeup, it seems like people are embracing the benefits of working from home - having more schedule flexibility and ditching the commute - and companies are becoming more amenable to the practice. Last month, Twitter gave its employees the option of working from home permanently, even after the shelter-in-place is lifted. Many other companies will probably do the same. We'll probably see companies downsizing and consolidating their office space, which will cause office rents to fall. Fewer workers in the office may also negatively impact businesses, particularly restaurants, that are nearby. The same businesses that have already been hit hard by the economic crisis. In turn, perhaps we'll start seeing an exodus of people - those working remotely as well as those in the service industry - away from areas with a high cost of living in favor of more affordable places that still offer a high quality of life. We've seen the ability of this crisis to shake things up, and we probably haven't seen the end by a long shot.