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The telegraph printed something which made me have a visceral reaction the other day. You can read the article here. It was strange how much of a visceral reaction I had. I’ve worked predominantly from home the last ten years so being told to ‘go back to work’ shouldn’t have much of an impact.

Thing is, I like many others have never stopped working during the lock down. We continued to work from a different location, and in most cases we worked much better and had our lives greatly improved by it. I think what I took offence to most was the idea that we should be eager to throw ourselves back into the torture that is the ‘normal’ working day. I remember the ‘normal’ working day.

0600 – Alarm goes off and you resist the temptation to hit snooze for another fifteen minutes.

0610 – Nice to see people have e-mailed me already. Fire off quick responses where I can.

0630 – Breakfast finished, time for the three S’ before the rest of the family need the bathroom.

0700 – Dressed and shout out a ‘have a good day at school’ to my daughter who is just waking up. More e-mails. Some urgent. Some just ridiculous. Titanic effort not to snap off a string of ‘are you an idiot’ responses.

0740 – Make it on time for the train. No seats. Sardines in a tin have more room. Sweet music. Mozart. Smile at everyone. Makes everyone nervous. Makes me happy.

0750 – Wonder why so many people who know they’ll be standing on a train in very close proximity to others fail either shower or use deodorant. Keep smiling and try to breathe through my mouth.

0815 – St. Pancreas at last. Time to head to the tube. Pay a ridiculous amount for a coffee. More e-mails.

0825 – The coffee’s trying to come out but I don’t fancy Hep B or C. I’ll hold it till I get to the office.

0840 – The office and a clean toilet at last. Another expensive coffee. Calling it coffee is generous.

0850 – Someone’s already pulled me for a ‘water-cooler conversation’. I’m still in my coat and my laptop is hanging off my shoulder.

0900 – The day officially begins. I’m already tired. The e-mails roll in. In some cases I can see the people who decided to write to me rather than talk to me if I look up.

Sound familiar? Thought so. Why on earth do we want to return to this?

I’m forty three and I’ve been doing this for most of twenty five years.

I hate it. I loathe it with every fibre of my being.

Whenever I have to go into London for work I am bemused by the architecture. Grand facades and structures that sweep and tower over us.

Shouting for all the world to hear; “Look at how beautiful I am! I must hold something or someone important! The business who lives here must be amazing! Look at how big an office they can afford and look all this glass then can have! ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED?!?!”.

Most do not. NO I AM NOT.

Most are gilded cages where humans, who used to have a child’s joy spilling from each smile, are dominated and enslaved to a desk, a phone, a room, a computer or some other apparatus of torture. Places where we are made immune to the call of even the most basic of humanity.

Places which suck you in with ‘open plan’ offices, games rooms and bean bag chairs. Where natural lighting is an up-sell instead of a basic right. Where shiny white furniture tries to make you forget the filth you passed on the way to its clinical embrace.

Uplifting posters, notes written in flashy cards and pictures of people with different colours of skin laughing together which try and make you forget the number of homeless and destitute people you avoided looking at on the way to your own homelessness. How many of us can honestly say we spend any real length of time at home, with those we really love and care about, and not asleep?

Haven’t we had enough of this? Do you want to go back to this?

When this lock down starts to end, let’s do something like this instead:

Don’t go back to the office.

Don’t make your people come back to the office.

Do work from home. Even when it seems not to make sense, do it. Find the new normal.

Stop sending so many e-mails and actually talk to each other.

Invest in your people instead of buildings.

Your fixtures and fittings depreciate. Your peoples happiness appreciates.

Take the money you save and invest some of that in the communities you make money from.

Learn to be a child again. We were our very best when we were children.

Perhaps this is my Jerry Maguire moment, but I honestly don’t care. I love having that time in the morning with my daughter now. I love having lunch in the garden and listening to the birds instead of the traffic and the electronic clatter of an office. I love that I can talk better and easier with my colelagues when I need to. I love that our workflows have become so much simpler and more efficeint. I love that ‘jobs worths’ and ‘paper pushers’ have been caught glaringly in the headlights as blockers of business rather than the enablers they always pretended to be. I love cooking for my family in the evening. I love not being stressed when I get home. I love knowing I don’t have to face the ‘normal’ morning.

As I talk to many, it’s becoming clear everyone is looking at how they can either keep this way of life going where they work or how to find somewhere else to work if required.

It’s time we stopped being impressed with businesses and focussed on each other.