People in Saskatchewan preparing to head back to the office

As the COVID-19 public health orders are stripped away in Saskatchewan, more and more people who’d been cloistered to work in their homes are readying themselves to go back to the office.

“I think I’ll be OK with it. It may take a few days to get used to it, but I think the fact that it’ll probably be a fairly full office like it had been a year and a half ago or so, it won’t take long to get back to how we were before,” Tony Schlotter said.

Schlotter works for SGI and has been working from home since March of last year. His first day back in the office full-time will be mid-July.

When he was first sent home, he didn’t know how long it would be.

“It was more of a cautionary ‘Hey, let’s just get people out of here,’ ” he said. “I figured half a year, maybe upwards of nine months but nothing like this.”

He lives in a house and has a basement office, but said there were some challenges when his wife and their two sons were home. Schlotter said his wife figured out a schedule for the kids that worked.

“It would have to be quiet time for Dad on the phone, if I worked until six for example …,” he said. “Challenges based on schedules was the biggest thing, I guess, to keep my boys quiet for an hour and a half between 4:30 and 6 on some nights.”

When his wife and the kids were out of the house, then Schlotter was alone — and he said that posed dome different challenges.

“My department, there’s 40 of us plus management plus other departments … and going from that — hearing like the office buzz and noise around you that makes the office the office — when you sit down in your first few weeks (at home) and it’s just quiet, it’s kind of eerie,” said Schlotter.

He said he had some mental health issues with loneliness and COVID-19 issues that he ended up getting help for.

“Needing to take care of that was a big part of being home too,” he said.

In heading back to the office, Schlotter said there’s some anxiety and some excitement around not knowing what it’ll be like.

“I’m actually looking forward to it. I think that it’ll be a nice change to get back to the office … It’ll be good to see people and I’m curious how we’ll all react to being with each other because it’s been so long,” explained Schlotter.

Because his first day is after the start of the third step in the province’s reopening plan, Schlotter and his co-workers won’t have to wear masks or distance while at work, which he thinks he’ll be OK with.

“You kind of go from the faucet’s off to the faucet’s on with all things lifted. It’ll be an adjustment but I think we’ll be OK,” said Schlotter.

Other workers were given the option to apply for positions that would have them working at home permanently, but Schlotter said that wasn’t for him; he needs to go out and see people.

Not everyone is looking forward to being back home. Some are being required to go back to the office even though they’re concerned about the virus. Others say they had planned to work from home for at least the summer and now have to scramble to find something for their kids to do.