Living with Your Desk Mates

This spring, as the months of quarantine dragged on and Taylor Mecham’s three roommates left their Lower East Side apartment to stay with family outside the city, she found herself longing for some non-remote companionship.

“I didn’t even go outside for, like, six weeks,” Ms. Mecham, 27, said. “When I first entered quarantine, I did a puzzle, paint by numbers, watched all the Harry Potters, but there’s only so many times you can Zoom your family for drinks.”

In daily virtual contact with her colleagues — Ms. Mecham works in digital marketing at Dataiku, an enterprise A.I. and machine-learning platform — she discovered that several of them were feeling the same way.

“We come from a company that has a really strong culture. We like going into the office,” Ms. Mecham said. “And we all hang out and are friends outside the office.”

While many of her co-workers were quarantining with their families, four lived alone and were also growing weary of social isolation.

“I was in an East Village walk-up studio, and after a few months, the space was kind of closing in,” said Jesse Bishop, 42, an account executive.

The group decided to search for a house rental outside the city for the month of June. A month, they figured, would be about the right amount of time to try things out — they were prepared for the possibility that isolating together in the country might not go well.

Limiting the length of the rental would also keep costs feasible for those who would be paying double rent: Ms. Mecham and Abby Zwillinger, 30, who has a studio in Chelsea. Ms. Zwillinger had to cancel a 30th birthday trip abroad with friends because of the coronavirus; the rental was a nice alternative.

For the others, leaving for a month posed few downsides. Mr. Bishop’s lease was up at the end of May, so he could just move his things into storage. Kevin Graham, 33, lives in a studio on the Upper East Side; his siblings, who work in health care, knew of a traveling nurse looking for a sublet. Ben Burkholder, 30, owns a house in Boston, where he lives with his dog, Max.

---

$12,000 | Westbrook, Conn.

Taylor Mecham, 27; Abby Zwillinger, 30; Jesse Bishop, 42; Kevin Graham, 33; Ben Burkholder, 30

Occupation: They all work at Dataiku, where Ms. Mecham is the director of demand generation and digital marketing, Ms. Zwillinger is a recruiter and the others are sales account executives.
No surprises: While the group had never lived together, they had gone on work trips, including to the company’s Paris office.
Going back to their apartments: “Will be sad,” Ms. Mecham said. “But I feel blessed to come here. And to work for a company where I like the people enough to quarantine together.”

---

After searching on Airbnb and VRBO for a dog-friendly space close to the water, they found an ideal spot: a five-bedroom Greek Revival bed-and-breakfast in Westbrook, Conn., a short walk from the Long Island Sound. Because of the pandemic, the property, Bushnell House Inn, was being rented in its entirety — the innkeepers would also be gone — for $12,000 a month, which came out to $2,400 a person.

Unlike other Airbnb rentals, which often involve shared bathrooms and might count a pullout sofa in the living room or a cot in the basement as a sleeping space, the inn had proper bedrooms with private bathrooms — a feature that would, the friends figured, be helpful in preserving group harmony. A lovely coincidence was that it was also a 15-minute drive from where another colleague was staying with her parents, so she could come visit on the wraparound porch.

Before leaving the city, everyone in the group who hadn’t been in strict quarantine was tested for Covid-19, and they all agreed that there would be no visitors, with the exception of their nearby friend, who would observe social-distancing protocols.

The friends quickly fell into a routine. Mr. Burkholder would wake up first, around 5:30 a.m., to take Max for a long walk, and then make a smoothie for the group. Afterward, they would work together on the patio if the weather was good, with people disappearing into the house for private calls and meetings. Lunch was leftovers, and they shared grocery shopping, cooking and cleanup duty.

“I thought for sure there would be some natural issues,” said Ms. Mecham, the group’s only vegan. “But there was no difficult adjustment. We were just really excited to be together.”

They tried, as much as possible, to take advantage of the outdoor space; the inn’s main kitchen is also outdoors, off the porch, with just a kitchenette inside. The shared indoor space consists of a parlor, decorated with antiques, and a small dining room.

They played Wiffle ball, catch and volleyball on the lawn and card games in the evenings. Mr. Bishop brought Christmas lights for the back patio to liven up the space. He also brought a microphone so they could have karaoke nights — singalongs at Baby Grand in SoHo were a favorite pastime before the pandemic.

The Long Island Sound was only 10 minutes away, and they had several bonfires there, after determining that it was legal in Connecticut, Mr. Bishop said.

One pleasant surprise, they agreed, was the extent to which living in the house was a boon not only to their social lives, but also to their professional ones. Before a morning presentation, Mr. Bishop ran his pitch by the group over dinner the night before and found himself well prepared. “All the points they brought up were also brought up at the meeting,” he said.

“I really feel like I’ve become better at my job,” Mr. Graham said. “Just constantly brainstorming and iterating and being able to trade knowledge.”

It was an unusual living experience, he reflected. During the day it felt like the office, but the rest of the time? “It doesn’t feel like being roommates or vacation,” he said. “It’s somewhere in between.”

They all enjoyed the experience so much, in fact, he added, that “we’ve been talking about doing it again later this summer.”

from Hacker News https://ift.tt/3isDGfQ