I spend a lot of days at home, not so much because of the ongoing pandemic, but because I prefer to work at home. The office lost its appeal to me a long time ago, largely because of the distance that has developed. There was nothing more to be said when it came to talk around the coffee maker, which funny enough became a point of contention, or going out to lunch. We had all pretty much retreated into our private worlds. Still, my wife prefers me coming into work with her, I suppose largely to have someone else in the room with her, although most of the time she is asking me to be quiet. Our office is in an old convent, and we all have our cells, two or three persons to one of these little rooms, which further imposes distance between us as an office.
My wife tells me that part of the problem is my sketchy grasp of Lithuanian. I'm not very good at conversing in this language even if I pick up most of what is being said around me. It takes me too long to form a sentence in my head that is partially grammatically correct. Not that it really matters as most persons in the office can speak English, which is why I speak so little Lithuanian.
However, this is more than a language problem. Whatever novelty there was in having an American in the office has worn off. They have a little Polish girl in the office now, which I rather condescendingly refer to as Sarah Cupcake as she is always bringing cupcakes to the office, or at least used to. She doesn't speak much Lithuanian either but there isn't as much tension concerning her as there now appears to be concerning me.
Could it be that I'm turning 60? It's that awful age where you become considered dead weight in the office, even if I have pulled my own weight and then some for years. It doesn't help when I spend less time in the office, as though I'm semi-retired. I admit that this pandemic has sucked a lot of air out of my sails. I haven't been as active as I should. It was easier for me to "loaf and invite my soul," as Walt Whitman would say, than it was for me to keep up my running and other activities that I prided myself on. However, taking on two new pets this past year has had a lot to do with it.
Most of the time at home I spend with our dog and cat, who prove to be much better company than my office mates. Our dog is certainly glad to have me spending so much time at home. He can't stand when we leave in the morning. After my wife left this morning, he was barking all over the place until I came down to assure him I was still at home. The cat had lept onto the window sill, wanting to come in to finish off her bowl of food from earlier in the morning. They usually get me up around 5:30.
Each year the office manager hosts a retreat - one or two days at some remote place in the country that is supposed to help bring us together. With coronavirus, we haven't done this the past two years, so my wife and I decided to host an outdoor movie on our lawn, hoping that this would serve a similar purpose. Alas, only about half of the office chose to turn up, and many of those who did left early, as we had staged it on a Thursday night to accommodate the office manager who was leaving on vacation the next morning. Because of the long midsummer days, we couldn't start the movie until 11. In the meantime I made pitchers of mojitos while one of the young architects in our office turned out pizzas. When it finally came movie time, I passed around red caps to get everyone into the spirit of Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic. Those who stuck around enjoyed the evening, and I put on some clips from Jacques Cousteau's The Silent World as we cleaned up.
Feeling that somehow we didn't achieve the purpose of bringing the office closer together in these pandemic times, my wife and I decided to host a second movie night, only this time indoors as the temperature had dropped considerably as Fall was upon us. Also, we planned it on a Friday with an earlier starting time so no one would have to worry about work the next day or cutting into their weekend plans. Even fewer persons pitched up, which left us feeling there was some kind of conspiracy afoot, as most called the last day to cancel, long after we had bought food and drinks for the evening. So much for an office retreat. I guess it needs to occur on neutral grounds.
We had a pleasant time nonetheless, but it was hard to shake that bitter feeling. The following Monday everyone at the office acted like nothing out of the ordinary had occurred, leading me to think we were being gaslighted. I decided it was better not to think about it too much, retreating to our cubicle to work on the renovation of a garden house for my son. Still, I would hear them moving about in the hallway, which only became more annoying.
It's an odd relationship we have at the office. We are essentially a collaborative, working on our own separate projects, but because there is no formal business structure for a collaborative in Lithuania we are registered as a joint stock company. We get salaries that cover our health care and pension, but they are paid through the reserves from our individual commissions. In other words, we are expected to carry our own weight.
This is also true of the coffee maker. The officer manager let herself get tricked into renting a coffee maker that used capsules at a monthly rate, but that rate only included so many capsules and the capsules ran out before the end of the month. Not sure who was consuming so much coffee, she initially blamed me as I always seemed to have a cup of coffee in my hands. It was my coffee for the most part, as I had a French press maker on my desk. Turns out it was one of her employees, whom she subsequently fired. Not so much for drinking too many espressos as for a number of other indiscretions she had become aware of. Now one is similarly expected to make his or her own coffee.
There are times one or another of us in the office is short of work and our salaries need to be covered by others. I've never been able to quite figure out the accounting as many times as I have had it explained to me. All I know is that sometimes the numbers don't match up but my wife refuses to argue about it. We hit a little bit of rough patch where we had to have our salaries covered last month, reducing our weekly workdays to two to help reduce the burden. However, she signed a new contract yesterday and we seem to be back in black. This was a big relief to my wife, but I figured all the money we had lost over the years more than made up for those two paychecks.
This created a palpable tension in the office as I guess the office manager was having a difficult time covering her employees. She's taken on six persons, ranging from young interns to thirty-something architects to cover her heavy workload. She wasn't counting on covering us too. We kind of avoided each other all month, which was another reason for having the second movie night to clear the air. We even encouraged her to pick the movie. Sadly, it only seemed to make matters worse. However, after signing the new contract, my wife invited the office manager to join in a bottle of wine and all seemed well again.
Still, I had no desire to go to work today. I put in my two days and that was enough for me. I have other things I would like to work on the rest of the week, namely the Conserving Modern Architecture program I am taking on line through the Getty Conservation Institute. Not sure what I will do with all this newfound knowledge, but it is much more stimulating than two days at the office. Plus, I have a dog and cat that seem grateful for having me around. What more do I need?
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