Well yeah they did.
On Wednesday morning, I meandered through city streets to go to the office. I was in no rush to get to work. You can snake your way through Melbourne’s laneways, walk through corridors of buildings and out them again, without ever having to walk on one of the city’s main roads.
Like a little mouse, you can traverse the entire city like this.
I like the freedom of unexplored places and that morning, I had come across old buildings I had never been in to. One in particular, had an Art Deco feel to it. The corridors lined with dark hardwood and wooden doors with gold leaf signage. One door was even titled “Secret”. Why would anyone put a sign on a door like this? To be doubly sure, I rattled on the brass handle a few times, looked up to the camera above my head and gave a smile and a wave then continued my walk.
I love learning about how people in the past used to work. I remember my early days of work when being in the Navy, the “old salts” would regale us with stories of life onboard the River Class destroyers or the Destroyer Escorts. Some of them even slept in “racks”.
I remember standing outside the building during the breaks being fascinated with those stories as they flicked the ash from their “durries” during their “warries” (stories) and then stubbed out their cigarettes under foot before picking up the butt and putting it in the bin.
So it wasn’t surprising when I read this post in the Guardian “Do People Actually Work In Offices Like This?” where they’re taking young students into offices to show them how their parents would have worked.
It’s come to this!
Over the last few days, I was invited to go back to the office and attend a workshop where my colleagues were in one room for the entire day over three days. Of course, I could have stayed home and joined online. However my colleagues had travelled from interstate and I put this pressure on myself that in order to “be seen”, you need to have “a presence” in person like everyone else was there on the day.
So I attended and resorted to wearing a mask in the room and feeling slightly odd about it being the only person in the room to do so. My colleagues are pretty laid back so no one made comment on it nor cared.
In the corridor, one of the guys came up to me and sheepishly said that it felt icky that he was in the room and that it’s at the back of his mind about catching covid. When you’re in a room with 25 others all day, packed in tightly around the table, I’m sure it’s not far from your mind.
It made me think of this article I had read and also of my own reflections of how much my own perception of the workplace has changed through the years.
In some ways, I’m glad I worked in an office during my formative years.
The office was the place where my friendships were formed – many of which I still have today. It was a place where I met so many different people across all walks of life, people whom I shared the ups and downs of my life. The in-person, real life experiences which at times, are good, at times are bad, but in all cases are unpredictable because you never knew how your day would play out in the end, was in hindsight, the best experience I could have been through at that age.
I think younger people will miss some parts of what I experienced but who knows, maybe they’ll go through the same – but in a different way?
I know youngsters in their first jobs who haven’t been in to the office yet. I think the biggest challenge is learning, or establishing, corporate culture. Whether that is a good or a bad thing I’m not sure.
Yeah I’m not sure either. I have parents telling me that their kids love to be at home learning in front of the screen; I’ve worked with a graduate who has never worked in an office. I think the way I think eg “how do we know that they’re getting experience with others in the same room? How do they speak with people and see them in their place of work? How do they offer constructive feedback in person?” Etc. I think that’s all missing, a “hands off” approach to human workplace relations.