A little over two years of working out of borrowed office spaces, coffee shops, and co-working spaces has taught me that not only do I need good physical infrastructure – chair, table, sunlight, Wi-Fi, etc. - but also basic office norms (that are followed, not just stated) for an office space to work for me. Office infrastructure and amenities are easy to design and set up. But office norms require shared agreement and consistent follow through, without which, my productivity suffers.
I was doing pretty well with my home office until my older son became old enough to come and bang on my door. He gave me the cutest and warmest interruptions ever. But after a while, I could sense my colleagues getting annoyed and even I experienced my flow getting disturbed.
Initially, I tried to find the perfect coffee shop. I liked the idea of a digital nomad, and I had fallen for the "you can work from any coffee shop" advice. I imagined if I cracked the code to put in a focused eight-hour day from coffee shops, I could finally graduate to working from anywhere.
I tried many. If the coffee was good, the chairs were not that comfortable, and/or the tables were small and close to each other. The patrons in the nearby tables were sometimes so close that I could not figure out if I was part of their conversation or they were part of mine. The Wi-Fi was often sketchy and bound to fail just as you began an important video call. Invariably, mobile reception would also be poor. Then there are the patrons who believe "vaping is not smoking." I arrived at that conclusion because most vapers never walked out to the designated smoking area like the cigarette smokers did. They would coyly try to steal drags, making it uncomfortable for the rest of us. And then there was the bill—eight hours in a coffee shop meant multiple coffees and at least one meal. For the price I was paying, I was not rewarded with an environment that screamed productivity to me.
Then I graduated to co-working spaces, especially the promise of the Day Pass, which turned out to be nothing more than an upsell tactic. Clinging to my digital nomad dreams, I reasoned that depending on the day and my meetings, I could choose a different co-working space, as new ones were coming up every other day, and get stuff done. I never got the amenities that were promised on the website. The day pass usually came with uncomfortable seating, sometimes in the cafeteria, and usually with a ringside view of all the amenities enjoyed by folks who pay for a month at a time.
Serendipitiously, I was invited for a meeting at a co-working space that has now become my office too. Unlike the other places, this one had great tables and chairs, solid internet, and a manager who treated me, an individual, and my requests at par with other companies that were renting 10s of seats from him. I didn't have to think much at all, and I signed up on the spot.
This is where I learned that good office infrastructure was a necessary but not sufficient condition for my ideal office. I needed the people around me to follow basic office etiquette, which I found had neither been taught or had been simply forgotten.
My first taste of it came abruptly. As I sat focused pumping out a proposal, I suddenly felt very hot. Delhi is hot but this co-working space was air conditioned. I looked up to find that the ACs had been turned off. I raised my head and asked my neighbour if the electricity was out. He eyed me strangely and looked up to the lights, conveying that if there was no electricity, there would be no lights too. I quickly retorted; I assumed the lights were on a generator and there was no electricity because the AC was off. He sheepishly pointed to a girl on the opposite side of the room and whispered, "She turned it off!"
I was aghast. I asked the girl directly why she turned the AC off, and without losing a step, she said that she was feeling cold. She was unconcerned when I asked her if she thought about the rest of us before she turned it off. I quickly checked with everyone around, and we decided to keep the AC on at 25 degrees Celsius. Before anybody could say that even 25 was too cold, I pointed at the jacket I had on my seat and light-heartedly told the group that I was in the habit of carrying a jacket in case I ever felt cold.
In spite of this minor episode, I would find that the lady in question would turn off the AC when others or I had stepped out for a call or a meeting. By the time we would get back, the temperature would be high, and it would take another hour for it to cool appropriately.
If it was just the AC, I would have taken it in my stride. But every day, I was confronted with people listening to music, watching videos/reels, and other content on their devices without headphones/earphones. I had gotten used to this behaviour on the Delhi metro, but I was shocked to see this behaviour in a professional workspace. The behaviour that riled me up was people taking long calls on their desks in spite of being an entire designated area for calls. On the bright side, I learned a lot about wedding planning, albeit too late as I got married six years ago, because of this behaviour.
It felt like worrying about others simply was not part of the default behaviour. There was a moment where I mentally thought of figuring out how to improve this behaviour but then gave up. In spaces where no one truly owns the rules, enforcing etiquette becomes unpaid emotional labour. This can't be my battle right now because I have limited focus and energy. For now, I’ve decided my startup deserves that energy more than my co-workers do.