Caltrops - Still Life





	[quote name="Fullofkittens"]So, like a lot of offices, my office went fully remote at the beginning of the pandemic. We were leasing offices in an office park, and we stopped leasing them because we were going to build a beautiful new building across the street from our local university, which is supposed to be nice for recruiting, for them and for us. Then we all worked from home for two years. And of course we all like working from home and we don't want to stop. I can sit here in my pajamas and test in peace with my synth nerd music blasting and not have to ignore the two other teams talking super loud in my giant open-plan office room. When meetings get boring I can surreptitiously play with my keyboards that are just out of view of my webcam. My team was mostly remote before COVID so it has no downside for me. But soon, of course, that beautiful new building will be done. Management knows we don't want to come back but they also just spent all this money on a nice building for us (totally true) and they're also worried that we are all going crazy in isolation (probably also true), so they are moving to a "20% Hybrid" which means that 20% of the time you're supposed to be in the office. If you commit to 60%+ then you get your own office, otherwise we're going to have a system for booking hoteling stations. Has anybody had experiences where they felt this went well? I am down to try stuff. I don't really see a lot of utility in going in once a week but I would like to see some old coworkers and catch up now and again. The office is near different lunch destinations, so there's that. We keep hinting that "we're going to maximize the usefulness of the days when teams can be together," does that mean that teams just get together to plan and then go home? I guess that sounds ok? Driving across town to hotel next to a random person from another team while I zoom with people that aren't there sounds...well it sounds stupid and it also sounds very much like what I was doing in 2019. I dunno: I feel like 20% Hybrid was invented by, like, the Office Real Estate Advisory Board as a way to keep all of those buildings from just being empty.[/quote]