Returning to the office after two years is like being a tourist in my own life
A lot of people likened this to the first day of school, and while the middle school analogy was apt, I think it felt more like the chance to be a tourist in my own life. I had to look at maps, because I had forgotten once-rote routes. Familiar things suddenly required conscious thought, such as which intersections delay their walk signals for cars getting a green arrow for left turns or which way to go when the elevator reaches our floor. There were little stutter steps, reminiscent of getting on an escalator you thought was moving. Oh right.
Things in the office were switched up just enough to mix up the learning part of my brain and the memory part. The hand sanitizer is there for before you use the printer’s touch screen. And maybe after. You wave at the sink a couple of different ways before the water comes out.
One co-worker described the weirdness of overhearing entire conversations between two live people as you concentrate on something else. He was not, at that moment, talking to me.
The best overheard conversations so far were about copy editing a George F. Will baseball column, which must be fanatically accurate yet also too obscure for Google to be any help. There were intricacies such as whether “series” is capitalized if it’s referring to the World Series but it’s the second mention. This conversation has never happened in my house.
Talking to someone whose face is in the room with you is so much more complicated than I remembered. You must respond right after the other person talks, not like in Slack. You must move your own face, too. How much smiling is acceptable? What do the hands do? How does the successful conversation conclude?
And there’s meeting people you’ve worked with for more than a year but less than three. Zoom-tile friends now exist in three dimensions — people are taller than you thought, have tattoos, pocket squares, feet. People who know me from Zoom have to be disappointed that here in the office I am not constantly harassed by a dog.
Then there are reminders of things I’d been happy to forget. The safety measures installed for active-shooter situations are sometimes right next to a set of safety measures installed for a killer virus.
Did we really use to wear little pictures of our own faces around our necks all the time?
Some of it was just me: The water in my water bottle tasted stale until I discovered the tea bag at the bottom from tea I brewed two years ago. Luckily it didn’t seem to have mold on it. That would have been gross.
Calls from the public used to be a big part of my day, and I haven’t spoken to the public in two years. It took a second to remember how to answer the phone. The first time I did, one lady reported a news tip that she said might interest us: She had received a gift — potatoes — from her neighbor, she said, and did not appreciate the gift. I assured her I would pass this along to a more senior editor. And I just have.
Oh, public, there is nothing like you. I just remembered I have missed you so much.
Some things remain unresolved. What lunch places still exist? Where is my other pair of non-stretchy dress pants? When do I stop ending emails with “and please stay safe”? If my job can be done remotely, when there isn’t free food, how do we know when to go home?
I learned Tuesday that if you don’t time it right, you can find yourself walking home wearing your backpack behind actual middle schoolers walking home wearing their backpacks, leaving me terrified that, after two or 25 years, nothing has changed at all.
