Return to The Office

Welcome, stationery-obsessed reader, as this week I remind you of that amazingly old-fashioned institution, the office. Yes, this week I took my life in my hands and went to the office - not once not twice, but three times.

A typical office worker contemplating the end of work-from-home.

Going back to the office was tremendously weird. Firstly, there's this thing called commuting. It's an activity where we all get into tin boxes of varying sizes, shapes and colours, then attempt to race each other to the office, without crashing too often. I say "without crashing too often" because crashing here on the Californian roads is a fact of life: you won't drive from here in Palo Alto to my place of work in Sunnyvale as part of a morning commute without seeing a crash. Not only that, but this is of course an activity that is not-so-slowly destroying the planet.

The road from here to Sunnyvale is of course the infamous Highway 101. 101 is wide - at least 4 lanes in each direction, with 5 and even 6 in places - and maintained to roughly the standard of a farm track. Don't expect the lanes to go in straight lines; this is fine, the other drivers don't stick to them anyway. Definitely don't expect holes in the road to be filled in, or for this to otherwise look like a road on which it's safe to do the speed limit of 65mph. Fortunately it's generally busy enough during the morning commute that you won't attain that speed.

Once in the office, things are surprisingly normal: all the facilities are open, and there appear to be quite a few people around, although I'd guess it's perhaps 10% of the overall workforce in total. In some ways it's quite nice to go to a building which isn't the one I live in, and makes it feel more like real work than just sitting in my study doing things. But it also feels somewhat unnecessary when I can do anything from home anyway.

Of course, one thing that's unique about the office is other people. It was odd to see colleagues in 3D again, although it made me realise how different those in-person meetings still are compared to any sort of conferencing solution.

We've also been revisiting classic UK sitcom The Office this week (US readers: this is like the better, significantly more subtle and multi-layered version of the thing that is constantly repeated here). As I sat in my place of work I couldn't help thinking for a minute that I was part of a Slough paper merchants; somehow a campus that is built in what's basically a car park in Sunnyvale makes the Slough Trading Estate look like a place of great character. Just to get political for a second, it's difficult to imagine how we're going to solve global warming until the Americans work out that there are modes of transport other than cars and planes: Sunnyvale has two international airports and one military airport within a 25 minute drive, is trisected by three different motorways of three lanes or more, and consists mostly of industrial "parks" which really are car parks with office blocks in the middle of them. This, dear reader, is why we live in the slightly more pleasant environs of Palo Alto.

Anyway, having had some fun back in the office, including reacquainting myself with the baristas (awkward: I remembered their names, they didn't remember mine), the news broke that we're not necessarily going back in January after all. I'm probably going to pop in from time to time anyway (the fridges and cafes are stocked, after all), but it looks like we're working from home for a bit longer yet.