Missing the office
A year ago this week, The New York Times shut down its offices because of the pandemic. It happened so fast that we didn’t have time to say goodbye. Sarah Lyall, our writer at large, wrote about how she misses going to the office. Here’s an excerpt.
On floor after floor, empty desks and quiet hallways. Jarred Alterman
The Times’s office is on several floors of a building that stretches from 40th to 41st Streets on Eighth Avenue near Times Square. It’s not normally the quietest place in the world — what do you expect, when your nearest neighbor is the Port Authority Bus Terminal? — but it’s our not-quiet place. It has an electricity to it, a frisson, a sense of community and a sense of purpose. It feels like something bigger than itself.
I love our busy newsroom, with its ergonomic desks, its glass-walled meeting rooms, its whiteboards scribbled with strange notations, its people bustling up and down stairways, its random pieces of exotic furniture nobody knows how to use, its layout that snarls up your sense of direction as you try to find a colleague from another department.
I miss all of that. Mostly, I miss the people I work with. I’ve experienced them as disembodied squares on my screen for so long now that I’ve forgotten what it’s like to be with them in real life. They’re smart, thoughtful, irreverent, friendly, difficult, brilliant, subversive, surprising. I miss our unexpected conversations in the elevators.
I miss making lunch dates in the cafeteria. I miss the buoyancy that comes when you work side by side with people you love and respect. I miss the office.
I hope we’ll all be back there soon.
The New York Times
Me: I did not miss not working for a moment. F*** work and in an office – been over 23 years of “retirement now” bet time in my life ever and I am old enough to be retired and get my pension now, so win win.