Everyone loved Curious George. He went everywhere. George went to the zoo, the fire station, the post office, the aquarium, the farm, the airport, and lots of other places. But Curious George never went to the office. Any ideas why? I think it’s because not enough people want to go to the office. And monkeys are almost as smart as humans, so there’s probably a connection.
I went to one of the offices I work for today for the first time in 3 years. I was dreading the commute. It’s just over an hour for me each way. I did live closer pre-covid, but we downsized and moved a little closer to the kids. My commute was about 50 minutes before, but it was more backroads. So for what I was used to, compared to now where it’s almost all highway, it was not that much worse. An hour catching up on podcasts or listening to a book on Audible and I’m good to go.
The building was built in the 50s or 60s and has space on each floor for about 150 people. It’s your typical open floorplan with the occasional corner offices broken up with conference rooms. I came in for a retirement party in a different part of the building and expected to see lots of people based on the parking situation. I later learned that most of the parking downtown had been consolidated so the reality inside wasn’t quite what I expected.
Meet New People
It was nice to see people face to face. Several people said it was nice to finally meet me. It didn’t register since I see them every week – just on a Teams call. I had to think about it but they started during Covid, so this was the first time we had seen each other in person. In my brain, there was no difference.
And for the people I did know pre-Covid, I think we just picked up where we left off. I’ve seen a few of them outside of the office and it didn’t feel any different than if I had seen them yesterday. Which I had, because we do Teams calls all the time.
I had a regularly scheduled meeting, that preceded the scheduling of the party, so I figured being in the office was a good reason to do the meeting in person. Guess what I ended up doing? I did a Teams call in the office because almost everyone was at home. I often use that as sort of an analogy about how offices are being used incorrectly. Sort of ironic.
Let There Be Light
I did plan on using a conference room for the meeting so two of us went back to the other side of the building where everyone’s desks were. The whole floor was dark. The person I was with raised their hands and said “Behold” and the lights came on as we walked down the rows of empty desks. It sounds a little silly and dramatic, but when I worked in the building I was frequently there after 5 o’clock and the lights were all on motion sensors. Unfortunately, the office furniture is tall and blocks the sensors so unless there’s regular movement, you have to stand up and wave your hands about every 20 minutes. All the lights went out before we were done with our call so that was another bit of fun.
356 BTUs/hour
If you find yourself on Jeopardy or have simply ever wondered how much heat the human body generates – now you know. It’s not exactly a useful piece of information unless you are calculating the heating costs for buildings or how to keep them regulated. As I write this, Winter is right around the corner and we’ve already had several instances of snow. When I worked in the building full time, the heating and cooling was a little unpredictable even with 500 portable heaters walking around.
On my visit, other than the people at the retirement party, I saw less than 5 people including two security guards. You can’t simply turn the heat off, or even low. People do come into the office. But when you have unpredictably low levels of people from day to do, you can’t regulate the building temperature. It’s not like you can turn up the thermostat in your house when you are cold and it’s nice and toasty a few minutes later. Older office buildings take hours to make a few degrees change in temperature. People get in the habit of wearing layers – just in case. Meanwhile, the boiler in the basement is struggling to meet its usual quota because there are no humans in the building to share the heating load.
Lets Redecorate
Most offices were never Architectural Digest worthy even before Covid. Still, even a cubical nation needs a facelift once and a while. I think the furniture and carpeting was last replaced about 10 years ago so I guess it is as good a time as any for a face lift. The logic makes perfect sense – newer cubicles and furniture may be anti-microbial, more modern, etc. And if you want people back to the office, you want a fresh welcoming look. One problem is timing.
The project started about a year ago. And I know these things take time. But they decided to do all the prep work at the beginning rather than as they went through the building. Pre-covid, everyone was pretty creative with personalizing their little cubicle. I had some construction signs, and family pictures, the usual. Others had games, figurines, etc. All of which people were told to remove to get ready for the redecorating.
Instead of being a fairly lively path of cubicles, it may as well have been a warehouse of spare furniture. Every cube looked just like the other. No papers, or personal items, just a computer, a chair, and a phone. It was surprisingly depressing to see.
Time to Go
While I wouldn’t have missed the retirement party, I was a little surprised that I didn’t see any other reason for being there. I had hoped for signs of activity, or at least life and there wasn’t any. I’m not anti-office, but it does need to make sense for the business it supports. It’s not just a matter of keeping the building because that’s what we have always done.
It’s sort of sad and ironic that you have a heated building (actually several) with practically no one utilizing it, in the same city where over 140 people (estimated) will go without access to a shelter during the winter months. It sort of puts things in perspective. We need to rethink our space needs and what is possible for the space we have. It might even be so innovative that Curious George may want to visit.
