Musings about pantry talk
Where has pantry talk gone? Geraldine muses about how pantry talk is an important part of work life that many may have taken for granted.
When our normal life was abruptly disrupted in April last year, many of us had to learn to adapt. We invented new routines to either keep ourselves productive and effective at work, or to distinguish working hours from family time, or simply to keep our sanity. We also reinvented ourselves to become more adaptable, since our adaptability has been put to the test more often than we woudl have liked in the past months.
While we have started returning to the office on alternate weeks since November, the normalcy that many of us have been looking forward to has not quite been restored. This arrangement requires yet another round of adaptation. Before WFH, I used to be surrounded by colleagues whom I have shared experiences with in the office, but since then, we have seen a rejuvenation of programmes and people at the SEC. While new colleagues may have entered SEC as a stranger, I am now no more familiar than they are, being surrounded by many new faces as well.
I recall when I moved from a small office to a much larger organisation years ago, I used to get slightly nervous about going to the pantry, where everyone would engage in some form of “pantry talk”. Coming from a small organisation where everyone knew one another, I was not used to having to strike up a conversation with every stranger I met when I needed some water or coffee!
Of course, it became easier once I started to get to know my colleagues. The occasional chatter or banter at the pantry often offered respite from a stressful day and livened up the work day. But now that the SEC pantry is mostly cold and silent, it seems that pantry talk is an important feature of the workplace that I have taken for granted.
I recently chanced upon an interesting definition of the word “pantry”: The office pantry is where employees in the office obtain a bulk of their nutrition. If so, pantry talk must be the activity where employees in the office obtain a bulk of their information. I’m not referring to gossip, but interesting nuggets of information about your colleagues, their interests and what they are working on. In the SEC, it is also a place where many collaborations were seeded.
As we re-navigate the once familiar office that has grown less familiar, let’s bring back the spirit of openness and friendliness that used to pervade the SEC, be it pantry chats or a simple greeting along the corridors. Or even better, let's hope that we will manage to adapt and reinvent a “pantry” in the physical or digital space to connect and reconnect with people, ideas, interests and experiences.
