I used to parrrtay with my coworkers. Then that stopped which was fine by me. COVID sent us home. I stayed and worked from home. Best thing ever.
Now retired, and also busy.
Sure I love it now. I have a wife and kids and a summer house with a pool. Normally I’m supposed to go in a few days a week but I was so excited at the beginning of the summer when the facilities guys came over and were all surprised and apologetic like “Uh…you’re not supposed to be here. We need your space for the interns…Do you have someplace you can work until September…did you not get the email?” I did not, but you know what? I think I can find a place to work for the next 3 months!
The thing is, I didn’t like it as much in my 20s when I sometimes found myself working from home. It was ok for a day to two or on a Friday maybe. But it felt a lot more isolating, particularly at a time when I felt I needed to be around other people to learn my job.
Now the caveat is many of the places I worked at actually had an office culture. I don’t mean in a corporate bullshit made up sort of way. I mean like I would actually meet with and interact with my coworkers and we would go to lunch, sometimes happy hours together. If I’m just going to sit in a mostly empty floor interacting remotely with people in other offices, surrounded by a handful of strangers all working on unrelated shit, well, fuck that. I can do that from home with the TV on for background noise.
But I guess what I’m trying to figure out is at what point the entire “working world” just because this laptop people are forced to interact with all day.
Of course, at least part of that is that when you were in your 20s, a lot of the work-from-home infrastructure just didn’t exist.
In my 20s i enjoyed hanging out with co-workers, mostly at lunch.
In my 30s i had small children and needed time with adults (and away from kids.) Also, having small children, i had no social life outside of work and the occasional children’s birthday party.
That was before it was possible to do my job remotely, though, so i never thought much about that.
When working from home became possible, in my 40s, i valued being able to stay home when i had to go to school for an assembly or something. Also, I’d moved to a smaller office that wasn’t very social. People mostly worked and went home. We rarely even had lunch together. But i mostly had to go into the office because that was the norm. I actually was working remotely then, even when i was in the office, because my boss and most of my work was in Wisconsin, and i was in Massachusetts. That was before we had good tools for remote working. (like Teams. Not only does it allow teleconferences and screen sharing, it also tells you when your boss is available. That little green light is super useful.) I would call my boss, and we’d both look at the same spreadsheet, and I’d say, “look at cell b52. It’s adding these things, but i think it ought to also check this other thing.” It was feasible, but there were good reasons to prefer being in the office.
Also in my 40s, i acquired a social life separate from work. That was huge.
I find it hard to even imagine what it’s like for new employees today. Teams not only makes work easier, it makes a kind of remote social life possible. I did a lot of zoom lunches with coworkers over the pandemic. And did some chit chat over chat. But it’s much harder, you have to intentionally set up every meeting.
When i decided i didn’t want to go back to the office, it wasn’t just the commute. Mostly it was that my company had moved us all to “flex space”, where we had to book a cube every time we went in. Not having designated space was emotionally draining for me. I’m territorial. i like to nest. I never felt comfortable in a borrowed cube-for-today. And it meant you didn’t have regular neighbors. I’m very social, and always had friends at work, but it became really unpleasant to go to the office. It didn’t help that many of the cubes were set up so your back was to a corridor, and i had people walking behind me all day long.
I see the advantages of being physically together in an office. And i was always happy to show up for an in-person meeting, or a social event. But most of my job involves working alone with a computer. Going into the office to feel emotionally uncomfortable all day to do work that was easier to do at home felt like a really bad deal.
I retired 16 months ago and am still not adjusted to not working. I really feel “over the hill” but trying to keep active by ride my bike 3 times a week and keep the yard and house going/ It is a HUGE adjustment. I lack the sense of where I “fit” into anything
I worked mostly remotely for ten years and then our asshole new HR director told me I had to start coming in “effective immediately” literally the day I asked him for FMLA because I was so overwhelmed. He was then fired the next week.
I guess I could go re-state my case for working from home, but I really think I prefer the office. It’s a half-cube kinda deal which sucks for my ADHD, but I have some great noise cancelling headphones. People kinda drift in and out and I like collaborating in person. My work is highly collaborative at times.
For me, a person overwhelmed with the burdens of work, house and motherhood, it has helped draw a clear line between work life and home life so I don’t have to carry it all at once.
At the same time, I can work from home whenever I really need to. I work from home every Friday. Next week is the limbo between my son’s summer program ending and his school starting, and I had no problem getting the okay to work from home the entire week. And three weeks ago I worked from home for another entire week when my son had surgery. Nobody really cares as long as I’m getting it done. And I am.
I have found that for most work, the office is best. When I’m in a period of lower activity OR I have a major project that requires my full concentration, I prefer to be home.
Find a club you like, maybe on Meetup, maybe by web searches, and join it and volunteer. I’m the president of a writer’s club, part of a network of writer’s clubs in California, and our biggest problem is getting volunteers. One club with lots of members and money just folded because they couldn’t get anyone to volunteer for the board.
It is also a way of socializing. We mostly meet on Zoom, but we have monthly lunches. We had 14 people come to lunch yesterday, which was awesome.
A lot of people join nonprofit boards when they retire. If you have a local cause you really believe in, that might be a good fit for you. Or even just a regular volunteer gig.
Hmm. Agree about some volunteer thing. My wife is probably going to volunteer at a horse rescue ranch. She was on the equestrian team in college. I might do that too as I also know my way around horses.
But we are too busy still.
Hey, that in itself is great! I love riding my bike.
Garden, or community garden.
I’ve got a garden now, first time in my life. Just made a great salsa. It’s a start. Next spring we will put in two more beds. One for vegies, one for flowers.
Re: garden The last 3 years my tomatoes failed. This year with plenty of time on my hands I built a raised bed, filled it with good soil, water when needed, and have plenty of fresh fruit! Very gratifying!
Cool. We are gonna end up with too many tomatoes. And they are gonna ripen when we are on a long vacation.
I’m just gonna tell our neighbors to help themselves.
I may call on y’all for garden advice. I inherited a pair of garden beds with the new condo and I have to figure out what to do with them. After conferring with my Aunt I have determined the best course of action is to rip everything out, lay out some mulch, and start new in the Spring.
That’s good advice. The only additional thing you might consider is growing a cover crop to help fix nitrogen in your soil in early spring when you dig it all under. Buckwheat and alfalfa are good choices for that.
See? This is the wisdom I need.
I’m gonna start a garden thread soon.
Good idea – we’ve got some great gardeners here!
Oh! the flavor of a ripe tomato on white bread with a slice of cheddar cheese ana little hellmans wow! Summer
Oh yeah. I like splitting an English muffin, and making a bacon tomato cheese sandwich. I usually do two half sandwiches.
I agree, though I’m a total newbie.
Though I did set up drip irrigation for it. There is a couple of ways to do that (I’ve got a lawn sprinkler background. It’s from decades ago but it hasn’t changed much)
I decided to measure my standing broad jump distance this morning: 12". At one time, I was a world-class jumper at over 13 ft. That made me feel old.
FWIW, US English has that phrase exactly.
Good for you! German, strangely, seems not to have this phrase. At least I don’t know of any usual wording that comes close.