Culture
2020-05-07
Things I Hope Continue When We Eventually Get Back To The Office
Well, it’s finally happening. Seven weeks into working from home and I’m starting to maybe, just slightly miss being in the actual office. The novelty of going to meetings in pyjama bottoms is wearing off a little and I’m finding myself craving a bit of the noise and madness that soundtracks the Waste studio.
Assuming we all get to head back into the office soon, things are probably not going to be exactly the same as before. And while that might sound like a bit of a bummer, I think in a few ways it could be for the better. Here are some things I’ve noticed us doing more of while working from home, that I hope will continue when we’re all reunited at last.
Letting each other speak!
Talking over each other in meetings was never ideal, but now thanks to Zoom it’s more difficult than ever. And I LOVE it. I can’t speak for everyone, but in my experience, people are now better at talking when they need to, and muting when they don’t. What a dream.
Being honest about how we are!
Turns out you can’t expect people to notice how stressed/busy you are when you’re sitting in a living room on your own. So your only choice is to speak up about it. For people like me who struggle to say no to stuff, this can only be a good thing.
Bonding with each other!
We were pretty good at this anyway, but since lockdown it feels like we’ve all been making more of an effort to have fun and make each other laugh. We’re sending more memes and pet pics to each other, doing all-agency quizzes every couple of weeks, and the Women of Waste Slack channel is talking about more than the state of the second floor toilets. Love. To. See. It.
Making time for side projects!
There’s loads of extra ideas that float around the office that we say we’d like to work on but then we sit down, catch up on emails, go to meetings and suddenly it’s 6pm. Lately though, it seems like quite a few of us are spending more time making cool shit and I hope that’s something we carry on with when the pubs reopen.
Baking for days!
Banana bread, sourdough, cupcakes… TBH my biggest hope for our return to the office is that everyone keeps baking delicious snacks and bringing them in for us all to enjoy.