Return to office

After over two years where our personal and working lives have been turned upside down because of the covid pandemic, we finally returned, part-time, to the office last week. We’ll be working 6 days in every 20, in the office, and the rest of the days, we’ll continue to work from home.

The desks allocated to our section does not provide a desk for everyone every day, so we’re working on a rota basis. This means that the days we’re in the office that almost all desks will be used, meaning the office is very busy.

For me, the office being busy, and being surrounded by people all day, raises my anxiety levels, as for the last 2 years plus, I’ve not been ‘out and about’ much, so I am concerned about the possibility of catching covid, particularly as there’s not an awful lot of space between us all. Unfortunately despite concerns, we are all required to go into the office.

Despite not being required to wear a mask in the office except when moving around the office, I have been keeping my mask on even while sitting at my desk. The majority of everyone else has not been wearing a mask while seated at their desk.

One thing I did notice last week in the office was the noise! Having been working from home for 2 years, in a room myself, what a contrast from the peace and quiet of working from home, to the noise of the office – The noise in the office is not helped by many people being on Teams calls a lot of the time, as we’re still having to have meetings/conversations with people who are working from home, while we’re in the office, and vice versa…ironic isn’t it!

So I’m back in the office one day again this week – it should have been two days, but one of my allocated office days is actually a bank holiday, so it means I’m just in the office one day this week – I’d rather just continue to work from home, but I guess it could have been worse, we could have had to return to the office full-time!