It was an ✨experience✨, we’ll say that much. It’s true, the entire team at TallyPress has never worked in person before, ever, but we finally got a chance to do so for a whole week at a coworking space. We even got our very own private office, and this is what we all think after working together for a week!
Meet the Team
There’s five of us, but only four of us could make it for the “workweek”, which worked out in our favour, because the office we got could only cater to a maximum of four. There’s Casey (you might have read his movie articles like this, or maybe his tips & tricks articles); JC (who absolutely loves discovering new things like oubaos, both for herself and for you); Jessica, who’s our conversationist (i.e. she handles your enquiries and such); and me, who’s writing this article (and other articles that could be spun into a story). We girls worked together for three days in a row, while Casey made an appearance on the last day.
Things We Absolutely Loved about Working Together
✅ Flexibility of timing: We enjoyed this perk at home, and we continued to enjoy it even while “going to the office”. Nobody forced anybody to be there at a certain time. All we did was to agree upon a time that we should meet, or to inform each other what time we would be there the next day, and that was that. We also left at different times, though I did try out a full 9-5 once.
✅ A different space: I don’t know how or where the rest of my team works, but I have my own work station at home, which I’m usually at. Not gonna lie though, sometimes I just sprawl on my sofa in questionable positions that would probably make a chiropractor blanch (guilty as charged while typing this article, I’m writing this on a Friday, so give me a break). All that to say, it was a nice change of environment for us to have a “proper” office with nice desks and ergonomic chairs. We painted quite the professional picture, all of us tapping away on our laptops, focused on our tasks at hand.
✅ Conversation: As we have never worked together before, chances of real-life, face-to-face conversation were at an all-time low. Imagine our slight wonder and delight when we finally got to do so, as colleagues, in the same room, where we got to bounce ideas off each other quickly and effectively. A couple of new article ideas were born that week, in fact! But it wasn’t all work and no play; I made everyone take a personality test and we spent some time discussing our personalities and getting to know each other better. We also fangirled over Marvel and Spider-Man: No Way Home, and shared some horrible first date stories, but we’re not telling you which are ours.
And Some Debatable Aspects
👀 Travelling/Parking: Commuting is hard. Work, I can do, but if I have to travel to and from work every day, we’d have a problem. We were also at two different branches of the same coworking space, and while the first branch we went to had convenient parking, to say the same of the other branch would be a lie. JC parked in a parking compound near the coworking space because she was unable to find free, public parking, and got charged RM40 unwittingly. I, on the other hand, after being warned by JC to not repeat her mistake, spent 50 minutes trying to get a spot the next day.
👀 Frequency: Not everyone was there every day, but I was, and I don’t think it’s something I want to do all the time. My team expressed the same sentiment: after all, we’re very used to working at home on our own, and we’re still not the type to drag ourselves out of the house to interact with people (we’re all introverts based on the personality tests we took, except for one) despite the joys and benefits of working together. Once a week or every fortnight would be ideal.
Would We Do It Again?
For people very used to working alone, we didn’t kill each other trying to work together, so we call it a win. All of us did enjoy the experience of working together, and I think Jessica put it best: we had accountability (as opposed to falling asleep after lunch time at home, which I definitely do not do), as well as a sense of comradeship. Do we think that we would enjoy working together in person again? Not just yes, but hell yes! Even as we’re recovering from all the travelling we never had to do, we’re already planning for our next work get-together! 😀
Love reading about real-life stories based on the team’s experience? Here’s another story from the TallyPress Team for you:
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