I’ve been working in the office for the past few months. This morning it just struck me how weird it is to inhabit a space that was designed for so many more people than use it. I counted - we have 25 offices and 31 cubicles. Today there were 3 of us in the office. I’m not sure there have been more than 5 at any one time since covid. Our office is had of a floor in a 3-story building, and all the other spaces appear similarly unoccupied.
Just wondering if any others of you worked in similarly empty spaces? Or if you worked or recreated in empty spaces. I wonder if/when it will change. But I’m sure glad I don’t own suburban office space…
It seems weird, but I definitely like the feeling of emptiness. Didn’t derive any positives from in-person interactions at work.
I’ve worked in several places that were mostly deserted. In most cases it was a company that had once been larger, and was on its way to disappearing, and I found myself out of a job. Depressing.
There were a couple, though, hat survived. They seemed to go through cycles, and I just happened to be there during a lull.
Not quite the same, but my work has often involved occasional tasks that required working at night in places where there was no regular night-shift; I think that has a similar feel. If the work itself is routine, there’s definitely a peaceful feeling to it. No one’s watching, no one’s going to interrupt what you’re doing, and you’re free to get on with it.
On a long-ago cruise, I learned that, as a thorough night-owl, I often had the decks and passages of the ship almost to myself late at night. The night crew were all doing their work in places I didn’t go, so it almost felt abandoned, as if the crowds and commotions of the day belonged to another ship entirely. I could walk, and watch moonlight on the waves, and dream until I was ready to sleep.
I am working in one now, or at least I was until the Christmas break. I purposely have not gone back to my row of empty desk after the first of the year to see if anyone noticed. They finally did today and sent me emails asking me to come back because management starting asking people where I was and then got around to asking them why they weren’t there.
It’s basically like I’ve been covering for people. Managers don’t come in and less experienced people come up to me and ask me for advice because they don’t want to email their manager since I’ve been right there. I’m bringing this up come review time.
In 2020 I did. I work IT so a lot of what I do absolutely requires me to be in the office; anything involved hardware really. There were days when I’d go in and I was just about the only person in a 5 story office building. And the streets were empty around. Eerie.
I loved the commute at the time, though.
It’s still to this day only about a quarter of the people I saw before 2020 around. But it’s never totally empty anymore.
Not so much as a true ghost town, but the appearance of a ghost town, I had an opportunity to occasionally work here (yes the building has it’s own wikipedia page) when I was with IBM. My first visit was about 6 years after it opened, and my last visit about 2 years before they closed it.
First visit, the place was a zoo. An absolute hive of activity, gazillions of people all over the place, you knew this was the place to be, the central point of this part of the business.
Last visit, they roped off 3/4 of the parking lots, I was in an office training someone the whole day and about 3 people walked past the door. The whole day. It was depressing to be there.
During the first few months of the pandemic I only saw my co-workers. No guests arrived or left on my shift. The restaurant was closed, so there was no other reason to be in the lobby. It was eerie.
Pre-COVID, I went into the office 3 to 4 days a week; the office space where my ad agency is located (part of one floor of a larger building, where several sister agencies are also located) was usually pretty full.
I’ve been back into the office a number of times in the last year, and it’s always been pretty danged empty. The last time I was in, last month, there were maybe a half-dozen of us, compared to 50 to 70 in the office on any given day, pre-COVID.
We signed a lease on office space just a couple months before COVID hit. (Long story short, another company bought a large chunk of our business a year or so earlier, and took over the building. So those of us not part of the takeover had to find new digs.) Once we were finally allowed to return to the office, very few did. I come in 2-3 times a week and I am the only person in my wing of the building. There’s enough room for probably 100 or so in the building and I’m guessing only 10-12 come in regularly.
The lease is up in about 6 months and they are looking for smaller office space, so hopefully the new place won’t be so ghost-town-y.
I have not worked from an office since March, 2020, and I am still doing the same job. I did go back to pick-up a new laptop and drop-off my old one, and decided to go upstairs to check out my old cubby. The floor was deserted - I did not see a soul in a place that has probably 200 work spaces. My old cube has been re-imaged as a flexible work space, with one of those hovering desktops with a couple of monitors. I guess I no longer belong to that cubicle. Happy that: I hated working in that space, with a passion, and was cursing every time I had to sit there, and by the time the pandemic hit, I was only going in 1-2 days a week.
It was strange seeing the office buildings deserted like that. I remember when they were built in the early 2000s, and a number of smaller offices were consolidated to this nice, new campus. Parking was a premium, and the massive lots were pretty full. At that time I was working there 5 days a week, as my company had not yet embraced remote working, nor had the technology to support it. There was a decent cafe and I got to know the chefs there. Very good soups. Occasionally they would bring in a sushi chef. There was also a gym and showers, which I used when bike commuting. The campus was a busy place then, but now just a few huge and empty buildings with nothing much happening. Altho I hear this week with the storms, many have gone back to the office since their home wifi has been out, or they are dealing with power outages.
It’s hard for me to imagine working in a cubicle farm again.
I once worked in a company that had a reduction in corporate staff of over 90% due to an acquisition that resulted in a huge amount of automation and outsourcing. There was a floor with 200+ low wall cubicles and the only people there were two executives in the opposite corner offices, and 3-5 people in offices near them.
Basically 3 people in the US people in Poland doing the work that was done by over 100 people six months earlier.
But man, I was it depressing to walk past all those empty cubes for the better part of a year before we moved into a smaller space.
Same here. IT guy. Couldn’t work from home, as no matter how hard you try, there’s no way to press a button remotely :). For two years, it was usually me and my manager, then in the afternoon one person from accounting on a rotating basis would come in to collect physical checks in the mail and electronically deposit them.
The thing that annoyed me the most? The floor is on automatic lights. Since there wasn’t the usual stream of people, I had to stand up and wave my arm every 20 minutes or so when the lights went off
Oh I have had to do that so many times. That happens when I have to work after-hours too, because some projects have to wait until the regular business hours are over.
I worked for a company that downsized their office space a few years before Covid because most of us were contractors who either worked in client space or worked at home and we only came in to use resources or for meetings. There were 4 rooms total with the largest one being both the meeting space and housing six cubes for flex-work. The marketing office was also our voiceover recording space and resource room for books. I’ve often wondered if they downsized again even though the company was growing.
My first white-collar job was in a smallsih yet successful tech company that boomed in the 80s. But the company failed to grasp the fact that personal computers were here to stay and had to declare bankruptcy in 1993. We kept our customer-support group and one IT guy (me) to keep the systems going. We went from 110 employees on Friday to 15 employees on Monday. Very strange to go from working in a bustling two-story building to basically one corner of the ground floor. Fortunately I was able to find another job within the next month.
Starting in March 2020 we had 100% telecommuting, but a little over a year ago the powers that be decided for whatever reason that they wanted their employees to show up to work occasionally so we have to be in the office at least two days per 2-week pay period. I picked to show up on Friday’s which seems to be the least popular day. I see the security guards when I come in, but otherwise rarely see anyone else. Occasionally I can hear the faint murmur of someone on a conference call in some other office off in the distance like the call mournful coyote as the tumble weeds roll by.
I once had a meeting scheduled on a Friday afternoon, when everyone else was working from home. I found it to be an ideal day to work from the office. I got so much done because there was no one stopping by my office space to ask questions or spread rumors.
I work four ten-hour days, and take Wednesday off each week. Most of my peers take off Friday if they are taking a day off, and I’m always available to cover for them. But it’s usually a slow day when I do. (Or it’s insanely hectic because there’s an emergency and nobody available to assist, but that’s rare.)
Meanwhile, nobody ever takes off Wednesday, so I have lots of coverage.
I was always a believer in taking the days off that nobody else wanted. I’ve got the world to myself when at work, and I’ve got the world to myself when I’m off. That’s a win-win. For me.
