The New Normal

I went into the office today for what may have been the first time in about a year.  Ostensibly to get a flu shot, but really to see what a return to the office would be like.  Let's start with the commute - which was bad, but nowhere near as bad as I've experienced before on a Thursday before the pandemic.  But I did leave at the optimally worst time - about 8.20 am - so it was never going to be traffic-free.  Once I arrived at the office, that's when you really start to notice the changes.  It started with the parking garage door not opening up automatically when you arrive - which it used to do - and the badge scanner is not within arm's reach so you have to leave your car to open the garage door, which is kind of a hassle.  Apparently at some point during the pandemic, some cars were broken into even though they were parked in our underground garage.  Lovely.  Once you've parked, the first place you have to go to is to a kiosk in the lobby.  Here you answer some basic health questions and I think it scans your temperature, and if you pass then you get issued a wristband which allows you into the actual office and which you have to wear all day.  Which is also a hassle.  You also have to wear a mask the entire time you're inside the building.  Which is uncomfortable and inconvenient to say the least.  If you have an office then you can take your mask off inside your office, but us underlings who are just in cubes don't have that luxury.  First thing I did when I got to my cube was to do some tidying up - things like throwing away my now out of date wall calendar, also throwing out or replacing some things on my desk that had inexplicably become sticky (maybe from when we had those hot temperatures - but even so, it shouldn't have been that hot inside our air-controlled office.  But it looked like someone had pulled up the blinds on my window, so my cube probably got an awful lot of direct sunlight).  That's when you notice another major inconvenience - the lack of trash bins under our desks.  They've all been taken away from everyone, for what they say are environmental reasons but what I really suspect is a cost-saving exercise.  Ridiculous.  I might just bring my own bin in.  Caught up with a few people who had also come into the office, did a bit of work, and also got my flu shot.  Despite the few people that were in the office, it was still eerily quiet.  Decided to go for a brief lunchtime walk - my first opportunity to go round the south side of Lake Union in over 2 years.  They had shut down a road and started replacing a bridge before the pandemic started, but managed to complete the work during the pandemic so I could recommence a lakeside route I often took before.  The neighborhood hasn't really changed much, still a lot of construction of new buildings going on.  Though I worry about what lunch options are still readily available.  I dread to think how expensive it is to live round there now.  But after returning back to the office, that is when the wearing of a mask become a real problem.  I'd worked up a bit of a sweat, I was breathing a bit more heavily, and then I had return into the office and put on a mask which just exacerbated my condition.  Unfeasible.  We are supposed to be returning to the office on 1st November, so in this frame of mind I sent an e-mail to my manager saying that I just don't want to return to the office while there is still an indoor mask mandate.  Let's see how that goes down...