Rise of the OOOfers

Is it goodbye to the office for ever? asks Tom Hodgkinson

You may have had a similar conversation recently, about offices and office life. I have lost count of the number of people I’ve heard say, over the last few months, “I never want to go back to the office again.”

This trend is partly a result of the pandemic, but it’s also a demographic thing. I’m talking mainly, I suppose, about people in their fifties. Some of them had had enough before the pandemic and were already making sounds about breaking free. Others have found a new sense of autonomy as a result of working from home during lockdowns, and are unwilling to give it up.

By the superb Modern Toss. More Toss in every Idler mag

While on holiday this summer I met several OOOFERs. They’d worked out that they could leave Blighty over the summer for far longer than the standard two weeks holiday offered by the previous system. With laptop, they could combine work and holiday and be away for a few weeks.

Victoria and I did something similar: we spent four weeks in a flat in Croatia, and I was able to get the magazine sent off to the printer from our Dalmatian retreat. A bit of work in the morning followed by lunch, siesta, swim and dinner. Not bad.

It’s the kind of life that I believe Graham Greene led: a sort of permanent holiday punctuated by bursts of work. Greene, I remember hearing, worked every day from eight till 11am, generally in the south of France, then had his first cocktail.

Anyway it’s a trend to be welcomed and I have a name for these new freedom-seekers: they are the OOOFERs. This acronym, of my own invention, stands for Out Of Office For Ever. Are you an OOOFER? Let us know.

Related to OOOFERs is another idea which is: “things that make you go OOO”, and this refers to fun things that get you Out Of the Office (in the current issue of the Idler, Victoria praises “dropping your children off at university” as an OOO). What makes you go OOO? We want to know.

For my own part, I’m not an OOOFER. I love the mix of home work and office work. We’ve now had the same office for six years and it’s been a lifeline. It’s like a shed, a refuge, a space of freedom. It’s under the Westway so I think about The Clash nearly every day. It provides me with a lovely cycle ride along the Great Western Canal and across Portobello Road. And I think of it as a studio. Like a band, it’s fun to work in a group in real life together some days.

Doing a nine-to-five can be enjoyable, creative, productive. Free-flowing chat leads to ideas. Other days, it’s nice to stay at home.

The new issue of the Idler mag should now have arrived with subscribers. There were delays thanks to a strike by the posties. At this precise moment we’re all somewhat distracted from industrial action thanks to the death of the Queen. But the problems will not go away. I’m looking around for a political visionary as far as work goes, in the cabinet, or elsewhere, but I’m not seeing one.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

I am primarily an OOOFER, since Covid. I’m also physically disabled. However, I do commute to do my freelance (“side hustle”) work. Like yourself, I like the blend. I also have flexible hours in my main work. So I can choose when I work and when I don’t. I also love my work. So for the most part, life is good, which means I pay it forward to people for whom life is not good.
Rona

I would be an extremely dedicated OOOFER. Teaching in a school with ten lessons a day each in a different room is the antithesis of OOOFERism. It makes me very agitated. For example, there is no time to go to the loo. Today I walked out at lunchtime and drove to TK Maxx, where I bought two suitcases. This was to remind myself that in under a month it is half term and then I can OOOFER in Crete, where I hope to follow the Graham Green regime (though that’s probably being a bit optimistic). Most of my students would, I think, be keen OOOFERs. My only solution is to finish every lesson early so they can OOOFER by throwing paper darts to their hearts’ content or GO TO THE LOO!
Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells

I desperately want to be an OOOFER. As someone who is highly introverted, I’ve never really felt comfortable sat in an office all day, in front of a screen surrounded by people I don’t know very well.
Patricia

Love the OOOFER monika – but I think consideration needs to be given to guilt-free OOOFERing so that while at home you don’t spoil the thing with “household shoulds” and end up dusting the books, sewing buttons on the duvet cover, varnishing the worktops to assuage your guilt from being at home. Or worse, learning a new language!
Vicky C.

Well, I like the term and I am definitely an OOOFER. It took forever for home office to catch on in Switzerland and thank God for the pandemic because it forced companies to wake up and realise they can trust the majority of their employees. Company offices are rather like prisons I think, with their cubicles and technology security scanners everywhere. And then the bosses create breakout rooms, or paint a wall bright green and buy some plants and try to fool people into thinking it’s a cool, trendy place to be. No thanks. Many men I’ve met like to go to the office because they find it less work than being at home with the kids, so maybe for them it’s a draw.
A happy OOOFER

Have been living and working without an office for many years now, which allowed me to live in Russia, Georgia, London, Dubai, and travel a great deal. Sometimes I make a “walking workday”, when I simply roam the streets of London and sit down to do some bursts of work in pubs and cafes.
Sergey

Thank you for the nice word „OOOFER“. I am definitely an OOOFER because my home is so much nicer than the cubicles of the corporation I’m working for. With the gas crisis I briefly considered going back for the winter, but no. I have many hot-water bottles, a lambswool throwover and thick sweaters, so will not go back. Almost everybody in my company feels the same, even the bosses.
Iris

I’m a dedicated OOOFER, working from my home office for an Italian conglomerate, and I have several winter OOOs when I prune the 15 climbing roses outside my house in December and January. A work of toil and art, of course, but full of OOO satisfaction after I’ve completed each one.
Tim

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