Saturday in 1970: A Cashless Bank

It's been an exhausting day at the end of an exhausting week.

It's a bit indiscreet, but no real secret to say that almost any company that relies on online advertising for revenue is not doing well in the current economic climate. The top managers of our parent company have been swinging in wide pendulum curves between profound gloom and peppy optimism ('we've been through this before in 2018, and our fundamentals are strong'); but even when you can metaphorically see the thought bubble 'Oh. My. God.' over their heads in video calls, I will say I've rather admired how our upper echelons have dealt with it. One thing that's certain is that we can't hire new colleagues for the foreseeable future, which badly sucks for my team as the pressure of clients builds and builds.

Fortunately, my direct manager is hugely helpful. He listens to my fears and gives blunt but optimistic answers. He 'manages expectations' in the beautiful jargon of our business, and makes it absolutely clear that if we have fewer people in the team, everyone knows to expect less work from us. He's also showing me here and there where my team can put new emphases in our work that don't impinge on quality but do help us achieve the most effect we can given our resources. To be honest I think that he's supplying 60% or more of my competence.

What he couldn't help with (because I didn't think it was appropriate for me to fish for personal information about a colleague) is that I was slightly shocked that a fellow team lead suddenly went on sick leave for two weeks. We're also friends, so I'm quite worried for her. The former product owner for my team is still out sick after months, and I miss her very much; so I've become a little more paranoid when this happens. (Also, one of my teammates has been in and out of hospital for weeks, a gruelling experience for her and obviously a situation where I've tried to think through how best to offer support.)

There's no Great Resignation at the company, and no mass firing. (Shopify just fired 10% of its staff, for example, and it does feel a bit like guillotines are being set up all around us for other companies and we're all wondering who's next.)

But still, for the last six or so months I feel as if, to use a German phrase 'Da ist ein Wurm drin.' It feels like we're seeing sick day statuses in Slack everywhere and we can't assume they're all purely medical. The merging together of work stress and personal stress is just overwhelming. And while the past week or so has been beautifully harmonious at work, I think that conflict and misunderstandings between colleagues have been thriving. It's pandemic-related and not company-specific, but I really believe that it is in our control: we need to purposely start lots of communication and give more proof of goodwill than would otherwise be necessary, to achieve the same harmony that we would have taken for granted two and a half years ago.

The top managers in my part of the company are however focusing on the idea that luring everyone back into the office will achieve this sense of harmony. It may be true-ish; but I was annoyed when I heard it, because we do pay a personal price for that. The time spent commuting is time lost for family, fitness, and hobbies outside of work; and that time is often lengthened by transit delays due to medical emergencies, railway repairs, etc. And the nasty experiences I've had in the U-Bahn and S-Bahn, and had apparently systematically repressed, recurred to mind — people passed out, violent, drunk, in need of medical attention; the stranger who smushed his hands all over mine and seemed proud of his molestation, ... If I take the bicycle, I do become physically exhausted. And my colleagues seem too comfortable with and fond of each other to take Covid safety regulations seriously, which is in one way a nice problem to have — in another way, just a problem. At least we're not facing an Elon-Musk-esque dictum that we should return to work if we don't want our CEO to pompously assume that we're not getting anything done. (A notion that has struck a nerve with many people I've spoken with since then!)

I've been listening to a lot of rock and dance-pop etc. music to keep up my energy. I'd had no idea that David Bowie released "Space Oddity" in 1969, having associated him with the 1980s. But it's The Kinks' "Waterloo Sunset" and "Sunny Afternoon" that I've been playing over and over again (although despite my enthusiasm, digging further into their catalogue also reveals musical self-recycling and a few songs that I don't admire as much), as well as The Beatles. Besides I listened to colleagues' recommendations. On Friday I dialled back and forth between radio channels and ended up snuffling with laughter through Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy." Which is a little unusual after 35 years of listening to classical music, but I think that at this point I don't see as much of a difference between genres: you know the real thing when you hear it, no matter what the instrumentalization and tone and topic are.

***

Yesterday night my mother, who's on her annual summer pilgrimage far away from home, spent another night al fresco. So when I woke up at 5:30ish this morning anyway, I stayed awake for a bit over an hour, just in case she wanted to chat with someone. To pass the time I perhaps unwisely did work, for one of our company's biggest clients. (But my mindset around overtime is changing; I did track the minutes I worked so that, if I feel exhausted next week, I can take a longer lunch to compensate.) And I also did a little light reading in between.

Then I went back to sleep, woke up after ten, and began cancelling the plans I'd had one by one, as my brothers slept in. It turns out that the house key was in the bowl in the hallway all that time, so I could have gone on all the excursions I wanted and I was just being silly. The feeling persisted throughout the day that I wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

Either way, it was relaxing to have a morning shower for pure enjoyment and not out of professional etiquette. And I dressed up, wearing a striped t-shirt and short skirt in tribute to the year 1970.

Fast forward through housecleaning. Once the brothers woke up, I heated kidney beans and boiled eggs as a semi-British breakfast, using the haybox again to finish heating the eggs in order to save gas.

In terms of my plans outside the house. ... It turns out that trying to run errands past 4 p.m. on a Saturday is unwise, especially on a day that was only 24°C or thereabouts but was cursed with high humidity. The dry cleaner's was closed, the bulk food store was closed, the little organic store was closing, and in the end I relied on the chain organic food store across the street to buy food. Cauliflower, Persian cucumbers, red beets, apricots, and blueberries, as well as chocolate-covered popsicles and a jar of plain yoghurt, were what I ended up buying.

Despite the worry that I'll be landing myself with orthorexia, I've been even more careful lately to buy regional or low-carbon-footprint produce without (much) plastic packaging, due to the energy crisis and global warming. I know that weather is cyclical; but the 36-38°C temperatures in Berlin earlier this month and the fires near London have acted as acute warnings. And I'm also starting to avoid wheat products because of the shortages in the Middle East. One of my former bosses, who's well versed in macroeconomics, did explain however that it's not good for the wheat industry if demand in countries like Germany dries up in the longer term. Besides I've advanced further in reducing the use of gas, because the political games surrounding Nordstream 1 make me angry.

The trip to the bank was another wild goose chase. Most of the proper ATMs have suddenly been replaced by black machines that are twice as big, look like props from a Sylvester Stallone science fiction movie, and perform half the operations of the previous ATMs. None of these operations seems to be cash withdrawal — which in Berlin is madness, as many small businesses only accept cash. And one of the two proper ATMs would only pay out 50 Euros.

I can imagine the reasons for the ATM switcheroo — the environmental friendliness of cashless payment, the wish to prevent robberies, and likely the remaining trauma of bank personnel who were affected by a hold-up around 2020 and might want less money on the premises as a result. But I was still disgruntled. A few other customers just left.

Back at home, I sliced the cucumbers for a salad and washed the apricots; and then my youngest brothers and I dined just on those, the ice cream popsicles, and later on a bowl of cereal.

My grandmother seems to have bought an Olympia typewriter in the 1970s, and I used this machine today to practice touch-typing. It was a rather lovely form of time-travel, although from an ergonomic perspective, the modern computer keyboards of Linux laptops and Apple desktops are sheer luxury by comparison (quiet and gentle, requiring no pounding, and having keys that never stick except if you spill Coke on them). We have a manual that has a labelled diagram of the most common levers and other features of typewriters, as well as touch-typing exercises, and it was incredibly helpful.

I've been working away at preliminary outline of the plots and characters for a modern retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion, since the Netflix film with Dakota Johnson seems to have been such a disappointment to those who watched it, and have also used the typewriter for that.

I'd also wanted to create a shopping bag using macramé techniques to celebrate the 70s, but we don't have a pattern in the book that I'd thought would have one. Also, the twine reels that we have are rather rough-looking.

One of my other historical experiment regrets is not actually reading Doris Lessing short stories, Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice, or more of Black Rage.

But I've made progress in mending and darning, as well. And found an old package of carbon paper to use with the typewriter. And watered the houseplants that needed it. And my mother ate a good breakfast and found a comfortable-looking lodging to stay tonight. And I really enjoyed the conversations with my brothers. So altogether it felt like a Saturday well spent.