Returning to a workplace frozen in time after two years at home

Last Friday, after almost two years of working from home, I went back to the office.

I recognised many of the early morning commuters at Gosford station. I felt like I’d won the lottery as, unlike many of them, my boss is happy for me to run the COVID-19 gauntlet only once a week.

After years of empty streets, the CBD is filling up again.Credit: Louise Kennerley/Jessica Hromas

At Railway Square, things were noticeably quieter than the last time I was there, in early 2020. The formerly buzzing Colombian cafe on George Street was closed and it wouldn’t have surprised me to see a few tumbleweeds blowing down the tram lines.

From the outside, my office block looked the same. On the inside, it was a bit like the Mary Celeste.

Nothing had been removed from the noticeboard since March 2020. A moment frozen in time. It’s a language school, so the class timetable bore the names of many colleagues I may never see again.

Somebody’s notepad lay open, with words from a long-forgotten meeting literally cut off mid-stream, the pen gathering dust alongside.

On another noticeboard, a timetable at the end of 2019 brandished some 97 names. Today there are seven. Many fine colleagues, some good friends, moved on due to COVID-19. Our school is part of the higher education sector, where over 17,000 jobs have been lost due to the pandemic. All those names, like seeds scattered carelessly to the wind.

Of course, there are similar COVID-driven scenarios nationally and globally. But like eating pizza in Italy, you can only go on your own experience, the visceral.

It jolts to think that if not for the virus, those people would still be there, just part of a different timetable on the noticeboard. And we thought the global financial crisis was bad.

When you’ve worked somewhere for 20 years with many of the same people, you get complacent. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should not take anything for granted.

You can understand a gradual decline, but it’s different when a light is suddenly extinguished, when the same timetable is still on the wall. Perhaps it’s better this way; but for the Vietnamese coffee shop owner downstairs, the gradual decline has been drawn out and desperate.

The borders have now reopened. The international students are trickling back, the university campuses are opening up. New timetables will be drawn up, with a batch of new names.

There is much cause for optimism, but there will always be time for regret.

Tim Connors is a language professional and writer.

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