office check-in

[cellio]

Before the pandemic, I went to the office every day, as one does. Our office manager did what he could to make it an ok environment, but it has the usual pathologies. Pandemic-induced working from home has been good for me in oh so many ways. I'm fortunate to be at a point in my career where I am quite comfortable telling my employer "I really do insist". (There's some pressure, mild so far.) I'll go to the office if there's a specific reason to, like the group outing we had a few months ago, but most of the people I work with aren't local, so going to the office is social, not productive.

On the day of that outing, I learned -- via a coworker finding out the hard way -- that corporate security disables badges that haven't been used in 90 days. That makes sense, though doing it silently isn't so great. Fortunately for me, I last changed my domain password around the time of that outing, so the "time to change your password" reminder serves double duty.

A few days ago I changed my password, and today I went to the office to wave a badge at a sensor. While I was there I cleared out the last of my personal belongings; demonstrably, I no longer need to keep an umbrella or a spare USB charging cable in my desk drawer there.

Comments

[sine_nomine]

At some point I likely have to return to NYC to open the time capsule clean out my cubicle. Haven't been there in nearly three years, and I shudder to think what's there that didn't get done back then.

[cellio]

The start of the lockdown was sudden for a lot of people. I'm told that a security person in our main office had been asked to also water plants until their owners were allowed to come collect them. Other people in my local office are probably happy that I had the foresight to purge the fridge on my way out on that last day in March 2020 -- nobody would have been happy about that milk more than a year and a half later. I doubt your cubicle has anything that challenging. :-)

[jducoeur]

Other people in my local office are probably happy that I had the foresight to purge the fridge on my way out on that last day in March 2020 -- nobody would have been happy about that milk more than a year and a half later.

Yeah, really. My parents live on Sanibel Island, and had to flee ahead of Hurricane Ian.

When my brother got to the house a month later, to start inventorying the disaster of the lower floor and demolishing the walls (they live on a high point, but still got five feet of water), he found that the upper floor (the main living space) was in great shape. Except for the fridge, which was basically a hazardous waste zone to the point where it simply had to be dragged out and thrown away.