Returning to the Office, 18 Months Later

Hey there! Hope you’ve been staying healthy and safe during this pandemic! A few weeks back, our office gave us notice that they would re-open our office for voluntary visits. Having been through some ups and downs with WFH and needing to replace my work laptop, I decided to give it a try for a couple of days.

For those that don’t know, some Canadian provinces, including British Columbia, came out with a vaccine passport and some guidelines for workplaces. At my company, we set quite strict requirements in order to enter the office and guidelines to follow while inside. In order to enter the building, employees are required to upload proof of full vaccination and complete a daily health questionnaire to certify that we have no COVID-19 symptoms and are not waiting for any COVID-19 test results to come back, among other things. The proof of vaccination must be verified by our HR department, and submitting a satisfactory health questionnaire grants our office badge access to the building.

Inside the office building, we must wear a mask and maintain social distancing at all times. In return, our friendly office facility staff will perform regular cleaning of all facilities inside. Our conference rooms now have additional “Ready for use/Clean room” signage on all conference room doors, which helps signal our cleaning staff to clean rooms after use. Since we’re in a testing phase, only a limited number of conference rooms are available. Washrooms, at least speaking for the male washrooms, are also spaced apart, with certain stalls and sinks closed in order to maintain 2-metre social distancing. Unfortunately, our coffee machines are out of bounds, and we have limited snacks compared to the pre-pandemic scenario. Luckily for me, there was still hot water, so at least I was still able to stay hydrated.

I think my company is setting a good example with these measures. That being said, I don’t think I’ll be commuting back to the office until it becomes mandatory to be back in the office again. There’s literally no food and nobody there so going back and expending 1.5 hours and money for gas to commute is definitely not worth it right now. Plus, I’m pretty happy with my current home office setup right now, especially with my standing desk I got last year (something I don’t have in the office :'( ).

The other important reason why I went back to the office was to check up on my figures. I ended up bringing my Miria and Rem scale figures back home. They were surprisingly not as dusty as I thought they would be. It did look like someone moved some stuff around my desk to wipe it, since Rem’s morning star and pillow were off the figure base. I also bought another electric turntable to take to work, and left Miria on it to spin for the two days I dropped by.

Anyways, that’s all I have this time around. I’ll hopefully have another figure post some time soon, so until next time, I will leave you with Uzaki admiring my office for the first time!
~Lui