My pre-screen life

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

It’s expected that many more people,  what with Zoom, Skype, etc., will be permanently working at home, as employers seek to reduce the danger of infectious disease  they might be held responsible for and save  a lot of money on real-estate costs.

There are some big drawbacks. Workers will have less idea of what’s going on in their enterprises: they’ll lose some of the ability of understand what their co-workers and bosses are up too; they’ll have fewer opportunities to develop friendships with, and learn from, their co-workers, and they’ll lose the advantages of in-person training.

Body language can speak volumes.

The post-World War II period to about 1990 was the great age of the American office. For much of that time, the economy was healthy, and  many folks expected  to have long-term work with the same employer.

All the offices I worked in had their social benefits. My first office job,  for several summers, was at a  shipping company overlooking Boston Harbor and Logan Airport.  Much of the work was boring – e.g., filing multi-colored bills of lading – but it had its charms, too, such as talking with  truckers at the loading docks, being sent on some errands in downtown Boston, which at that time didn’t look much different than it had in 1937, and going on a lunch boat.

With the newish IBM Selectric typewriters clacking away in the background, I’d chat every hour or so with my office mates, who came from all over Greater Boston and had, for a little office, a remarkably wide range of backgrounds. Most of the men seemed to have served in World War II or the Korean War, and they’d tell me stories about it. The women would often talk about their children, of whom these mostly Irish-and- Italian-Americans, tended to have many, and what was going on in their parishes. But everyone would talk about the news, most of which they’d get from newspapers, which were strewn around the office.

I learned in that office whom to avoid and whom to seek guidance from. One of the latter was an older man, Mr. Gookin, who had had some managerial job at the parent company that didn’t work out and now was a sort of clerk.  (Big companies  then didn’t fire folks with the abandon they do now.) He took me under his wing. Once, someone, maybe in the cleaning staff, stole $45 I had stuck a drawer. I told Mr. Gookin, who responded: “You’ll lose a lot more than that in this life.’’

Whether in the crowded, smoke-filled and un-air-conditioned newsroom of the old Boston Record America, with its gruff and rumpled scandal-seekers but also with the courtly and natty writer Joe Purcell, who got me the job; the spacious newsroom of the doomed Boston Herald Traveler, which crazies off the streets would sometimes stagger into; the cool and austere newsroom, divided by cubicles, but with many funny people, of The Wall Street Journal, across the street from the doomed World Trade Center; the Art Deco offices of The Providence Journal, and the modernistic but claustrophobic and smoky home of the International Herald Tribune, with its train station-like collection of characters from around the world, there was much to be learned from the people in my office life. Such a range of personalities and backgrounds.

I think that the millions of people who now must work at home will miss a lot of life and learning working at home, though commuting is rarely much fun.