Some office workers return and find joy in their cubicles: 'Ooh, a binder clip'

Jennifer Daly, 42, knew going back to the office would mean masks and hand sanitizer. She hadn’t known it would mean a growling stomach, too.

After months of working from home, Ms. Daly craved a return to normalcy. But when she went back to work at the office recently, the New York-based partner at law firm King & Spalding was surprised to find herself also craving extra snacks, like the banana bread she had taken up baking at home. “I was super hungry all the time,” she says.

When the coronavirus swept America earlier this year, office workers packed up and left their cubicles. Since then, some offices have tentatively allowed workers back in, with capacity limits and safety protocols.

With the United Kingdom preparing to distribute a new vaccine and more government approvals expected, employees and companies are starting to contemplate a return to the office. Workers like Ms. Daly are already there, dipping their toes back into a place that is at once familiar and newly strange.

Office occupancy in the top 10 metro areas stood at 24%, as of Dec. 2, up from 20% in July, according to data from Kastle Systems, which provides managed security services for offices. The rate varies widely: in Dallas, for example, occupancy is around 38%, while New York is 14%.

Returning workers are finding the experience to be a potent mix of excitement and strangeness—one involving new coping mechanisms, as well as unexpected joys and the occasional homesickness for the comforts of working from home. Many also say they relish the opportunity to be back, aware that as cases continue to rise, it may not last for long.

Since going back to her office, Ms. Daly has added a drawer full of power bars, Halloween candy and kale chips. She has also brought in colorful books and arranged some tchotchkes to create a more eye-catching background for video calls, though she notes that the overhead fluorescent lighting can’t be fixed. “I think our firm needs to invest in some dimmer switches,” she says.

The transition can be rocky for pets, as well as their human companions. After she and her boyfriend went back to work, Tasha Johnson, 31, a product manager outside Cleveland, Ohio, says their dog started acting out, urinating on the carpet in an effort to get their attention. Ms. Johnson wound up buying the dog a ThunderShirt—a pressure jacket designed to make anxious dogs feel like they are being held—for her to wear while they were at work. It helped.

Summer Hammons, who works for a local tribal government in Tulalip, Washington, says that after she resumed going into the office this summer, her daughter began putting her corgi puppy, Nani, on the phone for FaceTime sessions. Ms. Hammons has also been making lunchtime visits—a 15-minute drive each way—in an attempt to minimize their mutual separation anxiety. “We really bonded,” Ms. Hammons says of the dog, which she and her daughter adopted during the pandemic. The efforts haven’t stopped the corgi from chewing up her carpet, and multiple shoes.

Despite such challenges, some employees say they are thrilled to be reunited with co-workers—as well as previously underappreciated staples of cubicle life, such as abundant Post-its, three-hole punches and other accouterments. “I was like, ooh, a binder clip!” says Courtney O’Connell, 36, a Washington, D.C.-based global director of learning and development at APCO Worldwide, a public relations firm, who began returning to the office once a week in October.

Ms. O’Connell says it was strange to walk in and see her calendar still read March. But she felt a rush at being able to use her whiteboard again and having plenty of desk space to spread out. After months of working with PDFs, Ms. O’Connell says she was especially tickled to use the office printer, enjoying the satisfying, tactile feel of putting pages into a binder and using a highlighter. “This is where I thrive and do my best work,” she says.

In accordance with guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, offices have generally been opening with limited capacity to ensure the ability to socially distance, as well as health questionnaires and mask mandates. Many employees come in on a voluntary basis on staggered days.

In New York, Dakota Gulasa made his first foray back to the Midtown office where he works in marketing in November, booking a seat first through his company’s online reservation system. Though the office is normally around 400 people, it is currently operating at 5% capacity, he says. Mr. Gulasa and other members of their team sat spaced at intervals of about 10 feet.

Mr. Gulasa and his colleagues tried to have an in-person meeting but found they were seated too far apart to hear each other. They opted for a video call instead, with all of them sitting before their laptop cameras, scattered about the open office.

“You could yell to the person who’s 10 feet away, but the person who’s 10 feet away from them is 20 feet away from you,” he says. “It got to be too much.”

In the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, Cathy Torres, 24, prepared to go back to the office last month by buying new clothes and making a trip to Sam’s Club to stock up on mini Oreos and other snacks. Ms. Torres, who works at a medical office as a case manager, says she was relieved to return. “I’m living a healthier lifestyle now,” she says, adding that she had trouble keeping to a regular schedule while working at home. The office water cooler, she adds, also does a better job of supplying her with drinking water at her preferred level of coldness than her home Brita pitcher.

“I know things aren’t normal, but this is a sense of normalcy, and that’s all I really need right now,” she says.

The excitement of going back can be short-lived. After working from home since March, Hayley Radich, 29, was eager to return to her Eugene, Ore., office this fall and to catch up with co-workers in person. The night before she went back to the office, she laid out her outfit in advance, and carefully set her alarm for 6:30—well over an hour before her usual time. “It felt like the first day of school,” she says.

Ms. Radich and her colleagues were sent back home amid a rise in cases in November. She says she misses seeing her co-workers in person and hopes the office can reopen soon.

“I liked the change of scenery,” she says. “It was nice having somewhere to go.”