With the kids back at school this week, I’m back to work at my usual hours. Work pretty feels pretty close like normal now, after I run the temperature scan gauntlet.
Everyone must submit to the laser thermometer pointed at one’s forehead on the way in the door. I still cringe at this. I don’t like lasers pointed at my head because it looks like a gun. Plus I remain thoroughly American in my sense of privacy; the site manager is a tall man, and my internal body temperature feels a bit too….personal. I comfort myself with the fact that the thermometer only reads the outside, because while the average human body temperature is 36.5-37.5C, I’ve never heard anyone with a reading higher than 36.5C. Tomorrow I’ll wear a hat and crank the car heater to see if I can get up to 37, which is the “send home” trigger. Yeah…. because if I try to game the system I don’t feel quite so much like a pawn.
We still try to give our work makes some extra space and don’t pass through doorways simultaneously, but it doesn’t feel extreme…..except when it comes to tea and lunch breaks.
Socially distanced lunches feel so….antisocial. It sucks. The little light chit chat enlivens lunch breaks but one person per table isn’t conducive to banter.
Oh, and I guess the other odd thing that remains at work is that the door knobs are perpetually damp from the thrice daily sterilizing. But I don’t really mind this.
Give It A Burl 
Maybe the door knobs are damp from sneezing rather than from sterilizing
Funny–I looked at the photo of your break room and didn’t see anything odd until I read the comment. One reason I dislike the staff break room at school is that the social distancing in your picture was already the norm. Americans. I took a friend to get his wisdom teeth removed yesterday, and the waiting room chairs had every other on facing the wall to discourage people from sitting next to each other. We both remarked that this was rather silly in US offices–people already choose to sit seat(s) apart when possible!
I hope your break room culture can adapt to physical distancing without falling prey to becoming actually socially distant.