Earbuds in, or earbuds out? This is my biggest dilemma at the moment. If I still worked from home, I’d have them in, quieting my environment and delivering my favorite playlists directly to my ears. But that was then. What do people in offices do now?
This is just one of many crippling decisions I’ve faced today. The first confronted me before I’d even walked into the building: do I wear a mask or not?
Although masks haven’t been required anywhere for quite some time, I still tend to wear one when I’m around large groups of people. I do it mostly because I help take care of my aging grandmother, but no one who sees me wearing a mask knows my reason, which leaves me feeling like a bit of a freak. Local customs vary on mask use too. When I go grocery shopping at the market near my apartment, I see other masked shoppers, but when I leave Naperville and go into Chicago for dinner with friends, no one wears one, not even while waiting for a table.
I have no idea what the custom is inside a suburban office building these days, and none of the dozen or so emails I received about returning this week mentioned any sort of mask protocol.
To aid my masking decision, I needed more data. So, as others walked into the building for the first time in years, I sat in my car, covertly observing the behaviors of my coworkers.
Shielded by the hull of my trusty Toyota, I sat low in the seat, hoping to go undiscovered. My hair pulled into a ponytail so it wouldn’t interfere with my vision, I secretly observed these strange mammals—like an anthropologist on a remote island occupied by a mysterious tribe that’s never had contact with the Western world. This particular office-dwelling species of human seemed to approach the mask situation much as other humans I’d observed at bookshops and cafes. Some wore them; others didn’t.
After several minutes of observation, evidence supported my hypothesis that the decision to wear a mask was a personal choice, and since I’d been playing it safe to keep myself and my grandmother healthy, I decided I’d keep playing it safe and wear a mask into the building. So, I gathered my things, slipped my mask on, and walked toward the entrance.
This clearly wasn’t considered normal behavior by the office-humans.
Some of the maskless ones stared at me, making me feel like my picture had been on the evening news—that I’d been accused of some terrible crime and now everyone was trying to determine how to handle me.
Brian from marketing stared at me particularly oddly. His eyes squinted and he said, “Oh, hey, Emily. Sorry. I wasn’t sure it was you.”
My face warmed, but thankfully—and ironically—the mask concealed my embarrassment. “Sorry. I guess I don’t really need my mask on outside.”
He responded with a forced chuckling sound and then joked about not being able to recognize anyone in a mask. I said something trite about how we all should have pictures of us wearing masks printed on our ID badges. He pretended to laugh and then said something equally trite about how it’s going to take some time to get used to seeing everyone in person and not as a bunch of heads inside little squares on a computer monitor.
Once in the lobby, we parted. He went toward the stairs; I went through the door on the left, into the large room where my desk awaited me.
Inside that room, I encountered another problem. While my scientific study of the office-humans indicated that face coverings were a personal choice, my research had one flaw: I hadn’t yet observed this species in their natural environment.
New research suggested that none of the humans that moiled in my department wore masks while in the space they’d occupy for the next eight or nine hours. It took me far too long to realize this local custom and I wore my mask all the way to my desk. All eyes were upon me again. No longer was I the anthropologist hidden in the jungle. Instead, I’d become the lone freak wearing a mask inside an office building several months after a pandemic had been declared officially over.
It shouldn’t matter. It should be my choice, but somehow, a small layer of cloth applied to one’s face greatly angers a select group of humans. I felt that anger in some of those who stared at me, but moreover, in drawing so much attention to myself, I’d belied my mission of covertly observing the office-humans. I needed to fit in, to integrate.
Once seated, I casually removed my mask and placed it beside my desk phone in a slow, nonthreatening motion that I hoped wouldn’t draw too much attention. In a similar nonthreatening motion, I turned on my monitors and scanned my eyes across the room.
Looking beyond the office-humans, I focused instead on the space the humans occupied. It was like nothing I’d imagined. As I lay sleepless in bed last night worrying about my return to this edifice, I imagined the place as a post-apocalyptic hellscape—like a scene from one of those movies where a group of people return to a long-abandoned city. Weeds and trees grew up through the building’s foundation, overtaking desks and the copy machine. Computers sat untouched and obsolete, like ancient artifacts left by a civilization chased away by forces beyond its control.
But the place looked nothing like that. It looked exactly how we’d left it—when we were chased away by forces beyond our control. In fact, everything was so unscathed that it felt a bit like viewing a diorama in a museum. An expertly curated display of the modern American workplace, circa March 2020. A snapshot frozen in time of a communal space that was never modified for social distancing, never fitted with plexiglass dividers. A workspace that never required a temperature check or proof of vaccination for entry.
As untouched as the space was, certain aspects were different. The company had adopted new technologies over the past few months, like software that required us to constantly log into our computers with a thumbprint. The company claimed it was a measure aimed at protecting sensitive data from being accessed by unauthorized users, but to me it felt more like a way for supervisors to spy on us—to know when we’re working, and when we’re not.
The office population changed too. The desk across from me now sat unoccupied because, at the beginning of the shutdown, Jerry took an early retirement package and moved to Connecticut to be closer to his grandkids.
Kayla’s old desk was empty too. She’d worked here since before I started and sat next to Jerry the entire time. Soon after the start of the pandemic, she returned to school through some online courses, completed her master’s degree, and landed a work-from-home job. With the newfound freedom to work from anywhere, she and her partner moved away too. The Pacific Northwest, I believe.
Glancing out the nearest window, another gray Midwestern day confronted me, which perhaps could allow me to pretend to be in Seattle or Portland. I was, however, definitely not working from home.
I put my earbuds in my ears and tried to get in the right headspace to do some work, but instead on my monitor, I stared across the room at Carolyn’s office. It wasn’t empty, but it wasn’t occupied by Carolyn. She didn’t make it, taken by the virus days before vaccines became available to people in her age group. Someone named Adriana recently assumed Carolyn’s duties and claimed her office. Outside of an email notifying us of Carolyn’s death, and another announcing that there wouldn’t be a funeral due to restrictions on public gatherings, no one here ever acknowledged her passing in any significant way. And ever since, company communications haven’t mentioned the name of the virus that killed her—and millions of others.
Even with all these changes, people still said things like “Back during Covid…” like it ever went away, like it hasn’t persisted, like it hadn’t caused irrevocable damage to those who survived.
Some of us did survive though. We made it to that thing called “the new normal,” that abstruse yet coveted vision of the near future that we spent the entire pandemic hoping we’d achieve, believing that once it arrived, the chaos in our lives would reset.
But if this really is the new normal, so far, it looks indistinguishable from the old normal.
“Emily?” The high-pitched voice shatters my reverie. “It’s so good to see you!”
I turn to find Hannah from bookkeeping standing beside my desk. “Oh, hi. It’s good to see you too.” And it is. Hannah and I used to chat at lunch, but our departments have little to do with each other, so we haven’t had many Zoom meetings together recently.
I stand and hug her, but I’m struck with worry, wondering if that’s allowed in the new normal. Should we instead exchange elbow bumps? Does anyone still do that?
She accepts my embrace without hesitation, then compliments my skirt. I thank her and avoid mentioning that it’s new because I don’t want to discuss how I had to purchase all new clothes just to return to the office—how I spent an entire weekend shopping for this inevitable and unsettling event.
I say to Hannah, “You cut your hair. I like it!”
“Oh my god, thank you! I thought about it for so long, and then one day, I just did it. I figure, it grows back, right?”
A smile forms on my face, not because of Hannah’s haircut, but because this feels normal. Regular office banter, something I didn’t miss during the work-from-home phase of this experience, something I now realize is an important part of office interactions, anthropologically speaking.
***
I glance at the clock to find that it’s after nine already. My muscles are stiff, and my coffee mug has dried up, so I head to the break room—a chance to stretch and refill my mug.
One advantage to working in an office is never having to make coffee. It only took a few days of working from home to realize that I’d taken the convenient availability of break room coffee for granted.
But then Jennifer moved in with me, and she made us coffee every day. Her constant presence was another change brought on by the lockdown. We’d met through a mutual friend and had only been dating a few months when the governor issued a stay-at-home order. Perhaps that order wasn’t a major deal for couples who already lived together, but it was quite a blow to the sex lives of those of us who weren’t attached full time.
Looking back, I can’t remember how the decision to live together came about. Did I ask her to move in? Did she suggest it? Not that it mattered—we obviously weren’t suited for each other—but somehow living together made sense at the time, back then, during that nebulous period that started the clock on what I call the Era of Lost Years. That unprecedented time when people weren’t supposed to go anywhere, and with bars, clubs, theaters, and restaurants closed, we had nowhere to go anyway.
At the start of the Lost Years, people were discouraged from gathering with anyone outside of their household, which again, might have been fine for those whose households were larger than one. Jennifer and me living together was a convenience, one that allowed us to see each other while operating within the rules. We weren’t traveling. We weren’t visiting people outside our household because we were a household. Our own quaranteam, as we were fond of saying for a while.
Lost in contemplation, watching sugar swirl into my coffee, I realize Derek from IT is standing beside me, pouring himself a cup. He’s said something to me and is awaiting an answer.
I smile and say, “Sorry. I think I was daydreaming.”
He reciprocates with a smile. “I said it’s weird being back, isn’t it?”
A small chuckle slides out of my mouth. I’m no longer used to chatting with others during the workday and my lack of practice shows. I nod and say, “It’s super weird being back. I’m not settling in well at all.”
“I hear that.” He nods in agreement. “When everything got shut down, all I wanted was for normal to return, you know? Like, I really wanted to come back to this place. But now, I’ve been away so long that I don’t know how to function here anymore.”
“It’s a tough re-entry for sure,” I say before taking a sip of coffee. I want to say more—I want to tell Derek he’s spot on with everything he’s saying, that I’ve felt the exact same way—but deep office banter still feels too odd, too new. A voice in my head reminds me that I’m not here to interact with the office-humans, not yet. I’m an anthropologist here to study them. I’m here to learn their behaviors so that, eventually, I can interact, fit in, and maybe even live amongst them.
Derek dips his head into the refrigerator and returns with a carton of creamer. Opening the spout, he splashes some into his mug, then says, “At least there’s coffee.”
“Thankfully.” I resist the urge to say more. Observe the office-humans; interact only when necessary.
He returns the carton to the fridge and says, “Well, I’m off to another Zoom meeting.” He chuckles. “Nice to know some things haven’t changed, right?”
I smile. I nod. No words come to mind. This anthropologist thing has moved from being a coping mechanism to a crutch, one that’s rendered me unable to communicate with anyone.
Derek smiles, “Welp, here I go. Wish me luck. This will probably be an insufferably long meeting.”
“Good luck,” I say as I give him an odd little wave goodbye.
I’m watching my hand as it waves. I know that wave. It’s the pointless, involuntary wave that I’ve given at the end of countless Zoom calls—a physical motion intended to make the digital world seem more realistic—proof that a sentient being is sitting on the other side of the webcam.
It’s the same wave I offered my gramps whenever I got to chat with him via Facetime. The wave I used when we said goodbye for the last time.
Gramps lived out his final years in a long-term care facility about an hour away, which meant that I got to see him often, and in-person. Until the Lost Years, that is.
Mom got him an iPhone so he could contact family, and so we could see him. We still visited him occasionally, but we weren’t allowed in the building. No one was. Instead, we’d go to his facility with lawn chairs, plop them right in front of the window to his room, then talk to him on Facetime so that we didn’t have to shout through the glass.
All of it was upsetting to me, especially not being able to hug him. I think he was upset by the situation as well, but I think he was more upset that the entire baseball season was on the verge of cancellation.
***
Earbuds in, my head bobs to the music in my ears as my eyes stare at the monitor in front of me. To the casual observer, it probably seems I’m deeply enthralled in the spreadsheet in front of me, but I’m not. Instead, I’m thinking about the French novelist Marcel Proust.
At the start of the Lost Years, I finally got around to reading “Swann’s Way,” part one of the seven-volume novel, “In Search of Lost Time,” which Proust penned from his bed.
It was in my bed that I read it.
I adopted the custom of reading at the end of the day because Jennifer was a news junkie and constantly watched the cable news channels as cases of the virus soared and deaths exponentially rose. Night and day, stories of death and devastation invaded the apartment. Mass graves in India. Mobile morgues in this country. And then, video of George Floyd being murdered streamed straight to our living room. All of it quickly became too depressing, and so when I’d ingested all the misery I could handle for one day, I’d leave Jennifer in the living room with the TV and I’d go to bed to read until I fell asleep.
I read dozens of books during that period, and so I hadn’t reflected much on Proust’s prodigious work, but as I contemplate it now, one thing stands out to me: a key moment where the narrator experiences a rush of childhood memories that unexpectedly return following one taste of a madeleine, a small French pastry.
This building is my madeleine, except instead of revealing memories of my childhood, it’s unleashed years of trauma bestowed upon me by a virus. A virus that upended the lives of nearly every person on Earth, even the ones who’ve somehow never become ill from it. A virus that changed how and where we work, and even forced some to stop working altogether.
Well before the stay-at-home order, the governor closed all the bars and restaurants in the state. At the time, Jennifer worked in a small Irish pub near Naperville’s Historic District. With a stroke of the governor’s pen, Jennifer—and millions of other people—were effectively unemployed. This was a factor in our decision to live together, in retrospect. Her lease was about up and she wasn’t sure when she’d earn another dollar. In that regard, I’d been lucky. I’d been given a laptop, remote login credentials, and a vague assurance that a paycheck would keep landing in my bank account every couple weeks.
Ours was a tale of two employees: one who wasn’t allowed to work and one who was expected to keep working under the cloud of extraordinary uncertainties.
Of course, not everyone lost their job or had to shift to working from home. Tons of people—from nurses to firefighters and construction workers to grocery clerks—still had to go to work every day, often at the risk of contracting a virus that, at the time, had no treatment, no cure.
The first time someone on the news referred to these people as “essential workers” I turned to Jennifer and quipped how good it was to be unessential. But before long, and despite calling these people heroes, it became obvious that, to their employers, “essential” simply meant they were expendable, replaceable.
This didn’t go unnoticed by the proletariat. For a brief moment, it felt like bosses everywhere understood that workers were paramount to the economy and that, going forward, workers would be treated with respect. It felt like change was coming. A revolution rising. This transformation was swift and visible. Fast food workers were suddenly making twenty dollars an hour. Baristas were forming unions. The American worker’s day had finally come! Going forward, we called the shots! We demanded better wages and safer working conditions. We’d taken a stand and declared that we wouldn’t return to schools or office buildings until they were fitted with new air filtration systems, and we’d only accept filters that were MERV 13 or higher!
But here, today, I don’t have a clue what kind of filter is in this building’s HVAC system. The fast food joints around here are no longer adorned with banners touting high pay, and the Starbucks down the street closed more than a year ago. Someone in my department said it was shuttered by the company after the workers started a unionizing campaign.
***
Lunch came and went quickly. I sat at my desk and ate the salad I’d brought. In the old normal, lunch was a big deal around here. Many people went to nearby restaurants, breaking off into small cliques like we were in high school. For me, the Lost Years deemphasized lunchtime. At home, I simply ate when hungry. Restaurants were closed for so long that, at some point, I forgot about going to them. The items in my fridge sufficed, and I got more work done without the big midday meal and the distractions that came with it.
Though, by skipping lunch in the break room today, I didn’t get to chat with Hannah, or anyone. I was essentially self-isolating at my desk, acting like I did when I worked from home because I’d been trained by the time tracking software installed on my company issued laptop to take only quick breaks.
The software, we were told, was essentially a virtual time clock. It seemed reasonable that our bosses should have a way of knowing what time we started working, and when we stopped. In the real world, they could walk around the office and see that we were there, but in the virtual world, software was proxy for their eyes.
After it’d been installed, we learned about other “features” of the software that included keystroke logging and internet usage monitoring. Once the sting of that wore off, and we’d gotten used to being spied on all day—even in the comfort of our homes—we started receiving invites to one-on-one Zoom meetings with supervisors where we were confronted with charts and graphs detailing how long we were away from our computers during each workday. That data was used to pit us against each other, ranking each worker in terms of productivity and shaming those who were near the bottom of the list.
I assumed that a return to the physical office would mean the end of this virtual intrusion, but last week, the company sent out an email informing all of us that the software, which they called a “productivity tool designed to help team members perform at their best,” would be installed on our desk computers as well. The reason, they said, was that a handful of employees still worked from home a couple days per week, and by having everyone on the same system the company could “better assign tasks to those who have the time to tackle them.” But if you ask me, I’m pretty sure our bosses fell in love with being able to keep tabs on us at all times and weren’t willing to give that up.
Fuming over this invasion of my privacy was one way to pass the workday, but it was also getting in the way of my mission to observe this species of humans and eventually integrate into their world. I needed to visit the break room again now that several office-humans had gathered there for a late afternoon respite.
During the Lost Years, I became afraid of other humans, always mindful of who wore a mask, always wondering if those around me had gotten vaccinated. For a long time, the idea of entering a break room filled with other people gave me literal nightmares. Some of those fears are still present in my mind, but here in the new normal, I guess I’m supposed to push them aside and reconnect with others.
I enter as Khalil finishes saying something. I’d missed what he said, but it was funny, apparently, because everyone in the room is laughing.
Hannah sits at a table, her hands wrapped around a mug, the string of a tea bag dangling over the side. She spots me, welcomes me to the gathering. “Take a seat! I wondered what happened to you. I didn’t see you at lunch.”
With the eyes of everyone in the room upon me, I explain how I ate a salad at my desk. Everyone nods, like they understand.
James says, “I can’t remember the last time I actually took a break for lunch before today. I mean, I’ve been working from my dining room table, and it always felt like the next Zoom call was just seconds away. I really didn’t have time to drive over to Wendy’s or whatever.”
The heads in the room nod in unison, mine included. It seems that, while the Lost Years changed many things in our individual lives, they also created some commonality. We may have been spread out across the city, but all of us were still doing this job, and we felt tethered to that work. In that way, this job has been the one constant. Jennifer came and went. My gramps eventually went to his eternal reward, as they say. But through everything that’s changed, we continued to do our work, and this goddamned building sat here unchanged, awaiting our return.
***
It took several minutes of digging through my deleted emails, but I located the letter I started to write weeks ago. The one that I’d drafted in response to the company’s email informing us that we were to return to the office so we could be spied on in person and through technology.
That email enraged me. It reminded me that they didn’t see us as people. They wanted robots, wanted us to maximize productivity at the risk of our own health. I’d had enough. I wasn’t going to take any more abuse, so I sat down and composed a response to tell them to go fuck themselves.
Please accept this letter as my formal resignation…
I remember typing those words, my fingers guided by a surge of energy left over from the Proletarian Revolution of 2020-2021. As I typed, my mind filled with images of what I would do with all my newfound free time. I’d read more, that was for sure, maybe even write a novel. I’d travel a lot more too, maybe finally see some of Europe. Or perhaps Australia. Maybe I’d fly out to San Diego to visit my college roommate who settled there weeks before all hell broke loose in the world. My options were plentiful and all of them more fulfilling than sitting in an office building, constantly watching the clock, constantly wishing time would move faster. As if you could kill time without injuring eternity, to quote Henry David Thoreau.
One problem persisted though: what would I do for money?
I put the question out of my mind as I typed. It didn’t matter. Surely humans weren’t meant to sit in tiny boxes for a third of their lives, nor were we meant to relax for a total of two measly weeks each year—a short break mercifully granted to us by our corporate overlords.
No! That was not the purpose of life. All humans should be freed from the constraints of time, freed from time-monitoring software. We should be allowed to create and appreciate art, travel the world, follow our hearts.
With a wholehearted belief in all those things, I plowed ahead typing that letter as my mind filled with images of the new life I’d soon start—one filled with art and culture instead of mindless tasks assigned to me each week under the watchful eye of spyware. I wasn’t going to hold back—not one damn bit! I’d press send, slap my bosses right in the face with all these truths, then start my new life while, somewhere in my head, Johnny Paycheck’s “Take This Job and Shove It” played on repeat.
Obviously I didn’t press send.
Why didn’t I though? The loss of income was on my mind, sure. I have a savings account, but there’s not a lot in it. I could’ve borrowed against my retirement account, or even cashed it out altogether, but how long would that have lasted? Months? A year maybe?
I’d seemingly missed the window—that golden moment in recent human history where workers were in demand, and I could’ve landed a job anywhere I wanted.
If that moment ever actually existed.
Either way, I’m still here, trapped, like I’ve always been. My corporate overlords know that I’m trapped as well as I do, and that’s why they sent their email. That’s why they felt empowered to demand our presence in this building this week, and it’s why they knew they could do it without offering us any sort of raise or work-from-home option. They need office-humans in this building to complete the tasks that make them money, and so we can be studied, not by anthropologists, but by computer-based technologies that can learn our habits, mimic them, and eventually replace us altogether.
The ambient noise in the workspace grows. Glancing across the room, I observe my fellow office-humans standing, gathering their things, heading for the exits. It’s five o’clock.
I stand, gather the few personal belongings I brought with me today, return them to my bag, then hoist its straps onto my shoulder.
Again I pause to look across the room. Although I’d convinced myself I was here to observe the others in this building—to see how they function in a post-pandemic world—what I came to understand today is that we’re all in this together, a mantra from the start of the pandemic. Somewhere along the line, it became every person for themselves, and most people found a way to reintegrate into a daily routine. The same thing will happen here.
Today was a bit of a victory though. Today I re-entered society. I returned to this post-apocalyptic hellscape—this long-abandoned city—and as unfamiliar as some of it seemed, many familiarities welcomed me back as well. In the coming days, I’ll settle in more, become more comfortable. I’ll remember what I like about being here, and my coworkers and I will unify under the banner of all the things we hate about it too. Just as we did before the Lost Years changed everything.