The pandemic gave us a valuable opportunity to change our ways, yet many workplaces have rebuffed the lesson When I work in the office (the canal flashing down to my left, to my right a desk of conversations that veer between fascinating and deadly, it being part of my job to lean in to catch the former before they dissolve) a piece that might take a morning to finish at home will here be stretched long into the evening. It’s 3pm and the sky is the colour of an infected eye, and the fluorescent lights are more noise than lamp, their hum a soundtrack to the soundtrack – the wet coughs, booming meetings, clickering keyboards, a deep existential drone. Phones don’t ring any more, instead desks vibrate with neighbours’ texts, and our large water bottles teeter on piles of books, and Post-it notes uncurl themselves from computer screens, and I love it. I do, I love it – the ways we cobble ourselves into unlikely families, the moaning, the tea. I used to love it because I felt legitimised by coming to work, a real person. I liked the ceremony of putting on a little outfit and swishing into town, swiping my office card, checking my pigeonhole. I got older. The novelty wore off, but still, I liked my colleagues and the work and felt increasingly grateful to be doing something I enjoyed. The headaches weren’t great. The lights, the commute. One doctor suggested I wear “a visor” at my computer, which is not a possibility as unfortunately I have a reputation to protect. A visor! I would cluck back painkillers at my desk, and return home vaguely sunken, but still it was almost a whole life. Continue reading...

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