Whatever you've been doing during lockdown, you better stop it right now [View all]

[Klaralven]

Smile! We're all going back to the office!

Not if you work for Twitter, mind. Or, of course, if you have a real job such as construction, transport, shit-shovelling or – oh, I dunno – server maintenance. In which case… smile! You're already back at the office! Because you never left it!

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There will be some changes, such as distancing measures, sanitary hand wash dispensers at every pod and free disposable masks for all, but this won't last for long. If you thought the risk of a third wave would put an end to the misery of hotdesking, prepare to be disappointed. The sudden availability of vast areas of office space at plummeting short-term rents promises an unlikely new boom in the co-working sector as hibernating economies re-emerge, blinking and staggering into the sunlight.

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To coincide with the looming return to the world of carpet tiles and RFID entry cards, desperate marketing departments have been churning out survey results about workers' attitudes to this return to physical spaces for communal labour. While they all focus on most people's natural distaste for rush-hour commuting, some of them have uncovered a few brilliant examples of interpersonal intolerance in the workplace.

My favourite is this survey from Cartridge People (I know, I know) which says it found that nearly a quarter of all Welsh office workers are dreading having to talk to each other on their return. In Northern Ireland, only 3 per cent said they were bothered by this.

Make of that what you will.

The survey also reckons that 8 per cent of British office workers are not looking forward to the odour of their old workplaces, or indeed that of their colleagues. Now this flies in the face of what I'd been hearing during second lockdown, during which office-scented candles were all the rage, apparently.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/something_for_the_weekend/