First day back to the office (Return to Office RTO)

After another six months’ respite of working from home, a return to work in the office looks long overdue. Today, March 7^th, marks my first day back to the office. Life has been good working from home, when I woke up to the natural light, logged in to the computer in my robe before I went downstairs to prepare the breakfast. Life has been good without getting up hastily, dressed and rushing to the busy traffic. Life has been good when I ate freshly cooked lunch instead of microwaved leftover, taking a short nap on a cozy bed whenever possible. Life has been good when I worked at my own pace without the little boss breathing down my neck. On top of that, time to commute is saved. So is gasoline and car usage.

But the comfort of working from home is not without a cost. Many a night, I was found sitting in front of the computer finishing up the lingering work that could have accomplished at daytime. The line between work and off-work hours is so blurred that overtime becomes almost a routine.

As I entered the new parking structure, the gate bar automatically lifted to allow my registered car in. With heavy handbags filled with a laptop, a water bottle and some office supplies, I plodded to an unfinished elevator to take me to the fourth floor, where I am going to spend my whole day there.

A modern, clean and bright high-ceiling office welcomed me, but to walk through symmetrically and uniformly assembled cubicles without a seat chart is akin to a mouse scuttling through a zigzagged maze. After a detour and an inquiry, I found a hotel cubicle assigned to our department.

Hoteling workstation, as the name says all, is said to be a new popular cost-effective office model. Seating myself under a steel-plate-strung roof, beneath which crisscrossed with large aluminum ventilations, vertical or horizontal lighting tubes, cables, wires and fashionable decorative hanging lamps, I felt like working at a warehouse.

The office was quiet, except for a continuous humming noise in the background, as if a huge fan were whirring non-stopped. When the sun broke out in the afternoon, its ray glaringly sailed down through the unfiltered floor-to-ceiling windows. The long narrow lighting above the cubicles only adds to the dazzle.

I walked around and stopped by a corner window overlooking a main street. Shut off by the window is a hustling noisy world where cars are running among concrete jungles. A broad skyline of the city is visible under a half-overcast sky.

Drowsiness crept upon around 2 o’clock in the afternoon. I had to go to the kitchen and fetch a cup of coffee to freshen up myself. Other than that, a workday at office is no doubt more effective and productive. And amicable face-to-face greetings and exchanges between co-workers are a cherry on top.