Back to ‘Abnormal’? Chicago Can Come Back After the Pandemic is Gone
Pardon me if I glance at the top of this column just to remember what day it is.
Besides old age, chalk it up to the past two years of pandemic conditions under which Americans have been living.
When people ask how things are going, I want to say, “We seem to be getting back to abnormal.”
I want to say “abnormal” because after two years of pandemic conditions, it’s not always easy to say what’s normal.
Under the old normal, my biggest New Year’s annoyance came with trying to remember the new year rather than the old one when writing checks.
Under the new abnormal, I have the larger annoyance of waking up like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” hoping that this is, indeed, a new day and not a replay of the previous one. I know COVID-19 is not entirely done with us, but being thoroughly vaccinated, I can feel at least a little more relaxed.
The many maskless faces around me indicate that a new post-pandemic consensus is emerging. Gradually, we appear to be deciding it is time to get back to … something.
The biggest question facing many of us office workers is whether and how we can tear ourselves away from the mixed blessings of Zoom meetings and food deliveries to return to our offices.
Office life as we used to know it has been thoroughly shaken up. For example, daily office attendance in some of the nation’s largest cities currently averages about half of pre-pandemic levels, according to Kastle Systems, which provides security systems for workplaces.
Chicago’s occupancy rate reached 48.5% before Christmas, rising above the average in Kastle’s 10-city Back to Work Barometer for the first time since the start of the pandemic.
...continued
(c) 2023 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
