unspoken rules

we've worked at home a lot over the past two and a half years. it's been both good and bad. we're mostly back in the office these days, but i do still work some days at home when i really have to concentrate. or because my back is hurting, which it has been lately. i'm having flashbacks to the back surgery in 2015 and hoping to avoid it happening again. though working at home probably contributes to it, as i tend to sit much more when i'm home - forgetting to take breaks or eat lunch. 

but it can also be weird being back in the office. a whole new set of rules came about while we worked at home. and many are unspoken and just understood. or not understood. and it's weird, since they're unspoken, to feel disappointed or annoyed when the rules are broken, but the fact remains that i find myself feeling disappointed and annoyed of late.

a couple of examples: 

1) calling on teams: when you call someone on teams, you send a message first to ask them if they have time. so it's super annoying and jarring when when someone just calls out of the blue. often when you're in the middle of a meeting, so they don't even pay attention to the little red bubble that shows that you're busy. 

2) meetings in an open office environment: during corona, we all sat at home and could therefore hold meetings out loud and not bother anyone but the cat. back in the office, it's an open environment and there are some phone booths for meetings where you're the only one, or there are plenty of meeting rooms if you're several people meeting with others on teams. however, i've noticed that some of my colleagues continue to hold their teams meetings in the open environment. they put on headphones and don't realize that they're shouting. one colleague actually had a meeting on teams with the person sitting directly across from him. hello? go to a meeting room, or just go around to the other side and talk to one another! by the end of the day, i was utterly exhausted from listening to his shouting during all his meetings and i was too mad to say anything about it. but seriously, has two years of working from home rendered him so unaware of other humans that he doesn't realize he's being utterly rude to his colleagues?

how is company culture formed? who decides the etiquette? and how does everyone agree on it without talking about it out loud? and when someone utterly violates it, how do you talk to that person about it nicely? i know for sure that you don't let yourself steam about it all day and get so angry that you know you won't be able to be nice about it. but then the moment passes and maybe now his way of just holding meetings with headphones and shouting has moved everyone towards establishing a different company culture than the one you thought was there. and it's all unspoken. and it makes being back in the office less fun than it should be, because it truly is nice to be around your colleagues again.

but i still think a combination will be best. i need a couple of days of being able to concentrate at home and a few days of being with my colleagues in the office. they're two completely different ways of working. and i like the variety, but i do just wish we all agreed on the culture.

making the best of life in a global pandemic

everyone is talking these days about how covid has changed our lives and about how heavy that burden seems. in fact, reply all's latest episode talks about how this year is scientifically proven to be the saddest, most unhappy year. probably ever, or at least since these scientists started measuring happy/unhappy words on twitter. as if twitter is a happy place. 

but, i get it. it's hard with limited social contact, not much going out to eat or get drinks, not visiting family and friends and feeling awkward when you do, no halloween party, no concerts or movies and no yoga classes. we work a lot more from home and it can feel at times like the workday is just one endless long teams meeting. 

but i also find that there are good things about it. for one, the coffee is way better here at home. i order the beans from a little roaster in trieste, grind it myself and make two cups of espresso in a little mokka pot that i bought in venice (thinking consciously about that every single time), then pour that into plenty of warmed, frothed milk that i get from an organic dairy farmer nearby. 

and while i find myself sitting too long at the computer without getting up and sometimes forgetting to eat lunch, when i do eat lunch, i feel consciously grateful for the plates i had made by a local ceramics artist and to myself for making a really good omelette for dinner the other night and for there being leftovers. i don't feel that way about lunch at the office. at the office, i usually find myself thinking that they would being going into elimination if it were master chef. 

the past few days, i've been happy to be working at home, because on tuesday when i got home, husband said there was a kitten yowling out in the big barn and i needed to rescue it. the poor little thing had its eyes all stuck shut and it was very distressed, cold and hungry. i brought it in, gently washed its eyes with warm water, put some aquaphor on them to soothe them and ran to the grocery store for cat milk until i could get to the vet the next day to get proper kitten milk replacer. i concluded that the kitten was a little older than i thought, as it has pretty good teeth and within about 36 hours, it was a different, lively, lovely little kitten that was ready for his first photoshoot. he does need to eat every few hours and i have to mix milk replacer for him and give him some soft food, which i also got at the vet. he's doing very well. i think his mama is a young wild thing that comes for food and i tried to give him back to her, but she wasn't having it. it's late in the season and i think she doesn't really know what to do. but anyway, thanks to corona, i'm here for him.

i've had a really sore throat for a few days and i'm coughing. i haven't gotten tested, but i don't have a fever and i can still taste things, so i think it's just an ordinary cold. though how, with all the hand washing and hand sanitizer, one can still get a cold is beyond me. one part of me just wants to get the damn virus and get it over with.  

another positive is that this damn virus makes my work life really exciting. we have the exhilaration of quickly bringing solutions together as the situation changes in various countries - like france's new lockdown (probably to be closely followed by one in belgium), we're moving quickly to help our stores there, adjusting their black friday campaigns and making them able to meet with customers online. it's seriously really exciting and makes me appreciate working with talented and hard-working colleagues. 

denmark finally instituted mask requirements in public places - like grocery stores and the library and such. they had required them on public transport and in restaurants and bars (until you're seated at your table) some weeks ago. i'm a little tired of hearing people moan about the mask requirement, questioning its effectiveness. and only thinking of themselves. as i see it, using a mask is something we do for one another. i was happy to wear a mask this week, since i had a sore throat and i didn't want to give it to anyone. i don't do it for me, i do it for my fellow humans. 

another thing i did for my fellow humans is that i voted. and sent it via DHL to be sure it got there. i have proof of delivery. and boy, will i be glad when this election is over. 

how are you coping these days?

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 acedia - that thing we're all feeling now.