It’s been five months. Five months of working from home and playing hide-and-seek with coronavirus. Who’s the seeker? Ironically, we are.
It’s not your usual game of hide-and-seek where you want to find your friend who is hiding. In fact, you don’t want to find that friend because you know that they are waiting to scare you when you get close to their hiding spot. You count to ten, then cautiously walk by every potential hiding spot, knowing that at any moment, your friend can jump out at you.
With this game against coronavirus, we’ve been counting for five months now, but is it finally time to play the role as seeker and return to working in the office? That is a risk that needs to be carefully thought out before arriving at a decision. In the little mind of one who fears suffering and death, what is there to think about?
The Commute
If your main method to getting to work pre-COVID-19 was taking public transportation, it’s time to rethink that option. With so many people taking the bus and train, there can easily be someone nearby who has been exposed to coronavirus without even knowing it! The surfaces all around are also touched frequently, and during rush hour, it gets so packed it’ll be hard to stay a safe distance apart.
What would the other option be? Driving to work to avoid contact with as many people as possible – which brings its own set of issues. Now you have to pay for gas and parking, and take on wear and tear on your car. Public transportation costs less than $3 a day, but parking itself costs at least $10 a day – that’s a significant increase! Although it may not be sustainable long-term, reducing your transportation expenses by not returning to the office full time unless it is truly necessary can save your wallet.
Being In The Office
You’ve made it to the office safely, so what is there to think about now? Well, you’ve got people who are paranoid about getting coronavirus and people who don’t think coronavirus is real in the office. Whichever you are, your office has come up with a set of rules that everyone is expected to follow…but will people really follow it?
There are some habits that are hard to break. I’ve watched as over half the office got sick after one person walked out of a room and into another person’s office just to cough, covering their mouth with their hands and touching things inside the room before washing their hands. It was only a few days before others were coughing as well. Will everyone really be able to follow the set of rules when they have poor hygiene on a typical day? It doesn’t seem promising. I don’t want to have to suffer and die because someone is unable to follow such simple rules that are meant to keep us safe and healthy.
Living With Higher Risk Individuals
What’s worse than getting coronavirus yourself is exposing someone else to it – especially if they are individuals at higher risk. The worst situation may be watching them suffer with their deteriorating health condition as you helplessly video call them through your phone and remember how you were the only one who had left the house to go to work the past few months. That was a decision you had made, with an impact you can’t undo.
Let’s put it this way: with so much uncertainty in our current situation, is it worth taking that risk to rush back to the office right now when it really isn’t absolutely necessary to be in the office? Is it really time to play this game of hide-and-seek?