The Do’s and Don’ts of Returning to the Office

I strongly advise wearing pants whenever feasible. You will rarely regret wearing pants.

This article is an oldie but a goodie. Enjoy a look back at returning to work “post” COVID in the Spring of 2021.

My company recently sent out a survey to see how people were feeling about returning to the office. That got me thinking that it’s time we all mentally prepared ourselves to leave the comfort of our burrows and venture back out into the corporate wilds.

I asked my friends from college (Yes, I do have friends, and Yes, I did go to college, smartasses) to vote on which topic I should cover next. They immediately shot down my well thought out ideas and told me to wing an article about going back to the office. It seems way too early, and maybe a little daunting, to be talking about leaving our relatively sanitary homes and venturing out. Since I’m winging this one, I’m opting for the easiest of all forms of writing: the listicle. Here are some Do’s and Don’ts to keep in mind as you’re planning your triumphant return to the cubicle. Let me know in the comments if you have any more suggestions to share with the class.

Do’s:

• The #1 tip: Pants. Wear them. Preferably clean pants suitable for being around other adults. Leggings, Jeggings, Treggings, and various other Eggings are fine as long as other people are wearing them too. Coordination makes the dream work.
• Remember your sunscreen. It’s springtime here in North America, and our noses and mouths aren’t used to direct sunlight (although we will enjoy the cleansing nature of the UV rays).
• Make sure your car is ready for the commute. You don’t want to find out that your battery has run down when you’re running late for the first day back. Not that you would run late given how early you’ve been getting up all along (10 minutes before logging in, wasn’t it?).
• Reschedule any home service appointments around work hours. I know I loved being able to sign up for the first available spot on a contractor’s schedule, but we’ll have to go back to fighting over evenings and weekend times again.
• Wear your mask. Not the one you bought for that virtual bachelorette party. Pick a professional looking mask for the first few days and then slowly increase the stylishness over time.
• Practice your handwriting. Most of us haven’t written anything down with a pencil or pen in months. You make your five year old practice, so you can practice along with them.
• Wean yourself off of your mid-day nap schedule. It’s a lot harder to schedule a meeting and grab a quick snooze outside of the house.
• Remember your microwave etiquette. We’ve all become accomplished cooks during our “down with the sickness” time. Save the pungent dishes for evenings and weekends, even if you were going to share it with others.
• Go home on time. Those days of work blending into nights can stop now. You got your managers used to an extra hour or two of daily output, and it’s time to remind them that commute time has to come from somewhere. Now if only they’d spring for a car service with wi-fi….

Don’ts:

• Don’t recoil in horror and hiss at an offered handshake. Instead keep a sanitizer soaked rag in your pocket for discrete hand wiping afterwards. Bonus points if you put the rag in a plastic bag first so it doesn’t soak through your clean pants.
• While we’re on the subject, don’t refer to your un-vaccinated co-workers as “the unclean”. They have feelings you know. Dirty, germ-ridden feelings.
• Don’t complain about the # of people until day 2 or 3. Remind yourself that you were complaining about not seeing people for the last year. Grin and bear it for one day, and then you can get back to loudly sighing about all of the other people on the train.
• For those overachievers out there, try not to schedule a ton of back to work team activities all at once. Give people a little time to get acclimated to not constantly seeing their pets around.
• Don’t bring back that box of office junk without sorting through it first. I’ve got a box sitting behind me right in this moment that has many items from my office bookshelf that I packed in a hurry a year ago. They’re still in that box now.
• Remember that other people can see you outside of meetings. Rolling your eyes was fine when the camera turned off, but now people will still be able to see you (and hear the snide comment) all the time.
• Don’t pretend someone knocked on your door during meetings to get away for a minute. They can see you and the door now. And no, knocking on the underside of the table won’t work more than once.
• Finally, don’t forget that everyone around you is feeling nearly the same way you’re feeling. It’s fine, even good, to talk about it. You’ll bond with people you had nothing in common with before COVID, even that jerk Curtis (he knows what he did).

Socially-distance-embrace the chaos and remember that most non-toddler parents are also missing their home offices. We’ll all get through this together. There’s no going back to life exactly as it was pre-COVID, but we will all fake it until working in an office becomes somewhat normal again. Just try not to take all of your vacation days all at once so you can finish that show on Hulu.

-Philip