The Open-Plan Office in Summer, A Hellish Experience

If you’re looking for me this summer, you’ll find me behind my desk, slouched in an outrageously expensive ergonomic chair courtesy of the HR department, a chair I’ve never managed to adjust correctly.

And my open-space colleagues seize the summer to turn this already questionable place into an absolute lawless zone, pitting the perennially enthusiastic against those who are leaving in a week and have no intention of pretending otherwise.

And in between, there’s me, going nowhere, trying to survive, and eager to bear witness so that people never forget.

Extreme Weather Conditions

Polar, tropical, or arid, the open space always has its own microclimate and, depending on the milky plasma clusters swirling in the ventilation ducts, its own ecosystem.

While some offices could serve as miniature simulators to explain the greenhouse effect to climate skeptics, the real scourge of the open space in summer is primarily the air conditioning and its stale breath, endlessly interbreeding in dusty ducts before erupting into our faces in a climax of germs and mites.

At the beginning of my professional career, I naively thought that if it got too hot, you just had to open the window, and if at some point the outside coolness made the inside warmth too chilly, you just had to close the window. I practiced this method at home, and it was quite effective.

Then, I apologized to my manager when she explained that some of my colleagues had complained about my awkward eccentricities while the office was equipped with a perfectly functioning air conditioner. Proof of this was that it was 7 degrees Celcius inside, compared to 35 degrees Celcius outside..

Those Who Pretend to Work

Motivation is a bit like COVID variants — it comes and goes, and in the summer, it often goes far away, very far away.

And when I sense the atmosphere of chaos permeating the building, I realize that I’m not the only one who left my motivation at the airport at the beginning of the month.

However, there are some who have kept their motivation, such as my manager and enthusiastic colleagues, who regularly passes behind my screen to delight me with a ‘Wow, you’re working hard!’

So, I’m forced to pretend to work. This task, more challenging than it seems, requires me to constantly have fake projects open on my screen. Regularly, I make random clicks here and there since some companies shamelessly install trackers on their employees’ workstations to monitor their productivity.

People Going on Vacation

The only thing I really reproach about vacations is when they happen without me, and I’m condemned to listen to colleagues recount for the third consecutive time the irresistible lunch in a French restaurant.

There’s always one, sneakier than the others, to ask me in a falsely friendly tone if I, too, am going on vacation, although a glance at my grouchy expression would provide the answer to that question. Being pedagogical, I explain that, unfortunately, my bank account doesn’t allow me to rent a yacht in Miami.

You can still enjoy some little weekends here and there’, inquires the opportunist to dissipate the thick discomfort that immediately spreads among my colleagues. Fortunately, the theory of the ‘little weekend’ is here to save the day and remove the awkward guilt gnawing at my open-space companions.

In consideration of the tacit summer social contract, I nod positively, and I can sense a sigh of relief spreading among my peers. The prospect of visiting a small suburban town and sleeping in a ridiculously expensive Airbnb for a night allows me, at the last minute, to mimic a love for summer adventure that reassures everyone and ensures, at least temporarily, that I keep allies during my trips to the canteen.