Hybrid Working?

 

So the last two weeks have seen me finally return to the office "proper" for a couple of days a week after spending 2 years solidly working from home due to the pandemic.

Now I'm sure some out there who have pretty much worked through, or who returned much earlier are wondering what all the fuss is about, but I have to say that for someone like me who has felt safe here at home and managed to continue to deliver on my job with no issues whatsoever, once they got the IT sorted, it's been a huge challenge.

To say we're being coerced into returning is perhaps a tad overstated but definitely there's an edge of steel in the request. And yeah I get that hybrid working means being on site some of the time, but with little real notice to start lugging my crap back in via my wheelie rucksack, it's been a pain in the rear. I'm beginning to feel like a professional bag lady keep wheeling my life around in my large black bag 🤣 

The only upshot is that I still have a desk to return to, and it has literally just moved bays and so I can now avoid the constant glare on my keyboard from the overhead lighting - hooray! Yes there are perks to being able to socialise, especially with me being such a chatterbox, but I can happily do that over the phone. I get distracted when I'm trying to concentrate by background noise and generally it's all feeling a bit weird at the moment. So much so that now my WFH days seem too overtly quiet - there's just no happy medium.

And with folks catching onto the idea of hybrid working and expecting a flexibility that at the moment seems to be lacking we're already seeing people voting with their feet and leaving for pastures new. It also means that trying to get new people in the door is even less easy with a raft of choice out there they can afford to pick and choose their next employer of choice. I also have concerns that their inane worry over the whole concept of WFH will resurface and we'll suddenly be issued with an "everyone back on site" edict. Something that is likely to go down like the proverbial lead balloon.

I'm sure that with each passing week it will start to feel more normal, if I can remember what normal is, but for now it's still tinged with a degree of worry about catching something I'd rather not have 🤧 I'm armed with a pack of anti-bac wipes and hand sanitiser plus a stack of napkins so I don't end up placing any food items on the desk. Fortunately the volume of people in the office seems relatively low compared to the pre-Covid19 days and I can always hunker down behind my partition but I worry that it is only a matter of time before I catch it - as the Queen pointed out about herself 😱

Let's hope those 3 jabs give me enough of a Ready Brek glow to fend it off ;-)