My office is in a rundown office building in the northern edge of Toronto.  The first time I went there, I was in a taxi from my airport hotel and I was convinced the driver must certainly be lost.  We were traveling through this industrial park with several pharmaceutical factories and some type of bakery, filling the air with the heavy scent of buttered naan.  I asked the driver if he was certain he was driving to the corporate headquarters.  Needless to say, the location of the office space wasn’t the primary draw.  This wasn’t a sexy high rise downtown with trendy restaurants and coffee shops competing for attention and the novelty of newness.  My office was furnished with a wooden desk, some filing cabinets and a round table with 3 mis-matched chairs, including one black leather chair with an aggressive backrest that extended very high.  It seemed like Dr. Evil, from the Austin Powers film, would spin around and reveal himself at any moment. 

But I embraced the opportunity, not because of the space but because of the people and the potential it offered.  After I started working at the office, I realized that the door for my space was prone to make this loud, high-pitched squeaking noise every time you opened or closed it.  I felt self-conscious about how it disrupted the team who worked in open-concept cubicles directly outside.  One day after the first month or so, a long-tenured team member who sat right outside my office brought me a can of WD-40.  And in the most subtle way, early one workday before most of the staff had arrived, he helped spray the hinges and solved the problem. 

I spent years commuting to that office, and getting to know the team and their joys and quirks.  Who got food delivery daily even while complaining about how much they spent on food delivery.  Who collected the toonies to make a Timmy’s run most afternoons.  Who could fix the printer.  Who forgot that the walls were not very sound proof and felt the need to exercise their old-fashioned approach to commanding respect through volume and intimidation (and who refused to buckle to such an approach).  Who spoke so quietly you had lean close and still apply some level of interpretation.  Who got particularly annoyed when you left a dish soaking in the sink for a few hours before washing it.  Who was always up for the after-five DJ set across the office intercom. Who kept score about what time others showed up and who tried too hard to defend their own timeliness or tardiness. 

I didn’t realize how much I loved my office, until I couldn’t go there anymore.  There were a lot aspects of those COVID years that were hard, but one of the unexpected ones was how much I missed my office, even my commute.  When the world was on a rapid spiral towards shutting down in March of 2020, the concept of working from home was novel and exciting for many.  I immediately dreaded the bleeding of work into home, home into work.  All the colours and flavours and people swirling and merging together like one of those abstract pour paintings that seem like they would be fun to make but are less appealing when hung on a wall.  Like, why did I think it was a good idea to mix my vibrant, pink HR Director in with the yellow, sticky chaos of my 4 year-old and swirl it all up with the black energy of our over-controlling CEO?

The first few weeks I would leave the house as though I were commuting to my office.  I would listen to a podcast, alone in my car, driving to get coffee and then back home in an attempt to preserve my preferred morning routine.  Those transitions between home to office, office to home, suddenly shattered.  I had to do most of my work from the small table in the kitchen as I took on more and more “other duties as required” acting as a teacher to my 4-children, a chef, a mom and a marketing executive. Some people embraced the background filters, transporting themselves into a nondescript modern apartment or a tropical beach.  I never liked the way these backdrops would glitch or blend my body into the backdrop, depending on what colour clothing I was wearing that day.  I mostly stuck with the reality, choosing to show my exact setting – complete with the messy pantry or clutter of clothing draped over my bed frame.

But as the pandemic continued, the kids were sometimes in school and sometimes learning from home.  Our nanny returned so I could hand off a few of my hats to her, and I realized I needed to create a new office space and carve out a spot in our small urban house.  We cleared a section of the semi-finished basement and set things up.  I felt self-conscious about my background, as you could tell it was unpainted drywall.  The limited view captured by my laptop camera was a blessing, as the view outside the lens was a combination of playroom, workout space and storage overflow.  When I told my husband about how I felt self-conscious about the camera view, he made a plan.  That Christmas of 2020, when we were all home and isolated from family, he bought me some local art pieces and painted the wall.  He stayed up late on Christmas Eve to finish it and unveiled it as part of my gift the following day.  This became the new view from my home office and, as long as I angle the camera just right (avoiding the unfinished gap between the wall and the ceiling), I can almost pretend I’m in a space that makes sense given my title and my role.  And it does.

But when returning to that office building in the industrial park, with my mis-matched chairs and quirky colleagues was again a possibility, I jumped back in.  Not every day, but even though my current role and scope aren’t connected to physically being in that office space.  Even though I could work every day from my house or local coffee shop, I still choose to make the commute and to add my own energy to the physical space and community and connections that working side-by-side with others in a shared place brings.