Today I went back to work for the first time in five weeks. Except that, I didn’t really “go” anywhere, other than the dining room. I didn’t see any of my colleagues except over cameras and I didn’t speak to anyone face-to-face, it was all phone calls, Google Meets and emails or instant messages.
Whilst I’m used to working with people remotely and not seeing them on a day-to-day basis – for the last few years I’ve usually been able to see colleagues based in other countries every 6-8 weeks at a minimum and often more regularly than that. On top of that, I’m normally working in an open plan office surrounded by the local team I’m part of. I’ve never worked in an individual office.
I know that many people see the open plan office as something akin to a battery farm or a Borg cube – a hive of workers with their individuality stamped out, sitting in identical cubicles, attempting to defy the social order by having more than the regulation number of personal items on their desks…
Yet I have to confess I miss it. I miss my morning and evening cycle, that separates the day between times spent at work and time spent at home. I miss buying my morning coffee from the lady that works in the second floor coffee shop who always has The Breeze FM radio station playing. I miss chatting to people from the other teams in the office kitchen. I miss the fire alarm getting tested every Monday morning for a variable length of time, so that there’s always a split second of uncertainty where you think maybe this time, you’ll actually have to leave the building….
I miss eating cakes to celebrate people’s birthdays and engagements and weddings and new babies. I miss signing the big cards and struggling to think of something more inventive than “Best wishes” or “Congratulations”. I miss having to write down in a little book in the stationery cupboard that I’ve taken a blue biro and a packet of post-it notes. I miss the guy who complains about the temperature all the time, the competitive cyclists and runners, the model aircraft enthusiasts, the people who wander around in their socks.
I miss the grumpy internal bus drivers and the bored security guards. I miss the cleaners and the maintenance people. I miss the smell of machine coolant near the Integrated Machine Facility. I miss the sound of the wind tunnel running when you walk past it. I miss seeing the rabbits that live on site, hopping off into the bushes. I miss seeing lorries manoeuvring on site, picking up new aircraft components to be delivered to Broughton.
I miss going to Toulouse and seeing the flight test aircraft huddled like roosting birds on the aprons and the engineering offices in M01 – a mad concrete beehive that everyone gets lost in and walks in circles around the first time they visit.
Yet most of all I miss my colleagues and friends.