Office workers returning for the first time after their abrupt departures in March are discovering relics of a different life.
Around the world, once-bustling offices were deserted almost overnight in the early part of the year as stay-at-home orders went into effect. Many of those spaces are still empty months later. In the final week of July, just 6.9% of employees had returned to offices in Manhattan that are managed by CBRE Group, the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm, according to a company spokesperson.
When she returned to the office in early June for the first time since March 17, she saw big boxes of flyers and 2,500 rubber bracelets that had been ordered as promotional handouts. Michael Arciero, an investment banking analyst at Oppenheimer, said he rediscovered six dress shirts in a dry cleaning bag at his desk at the company’s downtown Manhattan office. Winter coats still hung on the backs of chairs.
Rebecca Buckman, vice-president of marketing communications at venture-capital firm Battery Ventures, went back into the company’s San Francisco office for the first time in July. Two yellowed newspapers from March sat on a table in the reception area, capturing the moment the virus crisis delved into chaos in the US. “It was a little bit eerie,” Buckman said. “People had just left things. There was still food in the fridge. But the most striking thing was the newspapers.
Tony Knopp, CEO of Los Angeles-based software company TicketManager, sent his 70 employees home in March. He’s been coming in to collect the mail and keep things running. He now parks right by the front doors each day, a luxury in LA’,” Knopp said. “It’s very apocalyptic. If I don’t go in for a few days, I open the door and it pushes a stack of mail. And nothing moves. Whatever I need, I grab from someone else’s desk.
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