Hello Crew,
The upcoming International Coworking Day (9 August 2021) is suitable enough an occasion for this, my personal love letter to the movement of coworking, as personified by the members of tuesday coworking. Unless my golf skills improve significantly, I’m not sure there’s any other job I would love to do more than run these spaces for you. I’ll tell you why:
Bar the occasional, shall we say, “challenging” member, you coworkers, as a species, are most pleasant to be around. We humans, being the social animals that we are, need that interaction, that collegial esteem. I’m not sure where I’d be now if I had continued on my freelance translator career, but I don’t think it would be anywhere good. I’d probably be working from home in solitude, definitely wifeless, and with little to no future perspectives (*ahem* deepl.com).
tuesday has welcomed hundreds of coworkers like yourselves through our doors since we opened in 2016 and it’s been a delight to be the grease in the cogs of those working relationships that have flourished between coworkers here over the years.
Whether it’s Umut K. and his orange-filled strollings, Martin E. with his genuine enthusiasm for what you’re doing, Barbara K. with her most infectious of laughs (perhaps a poor adjective choice these days, but I’ll leave it) or David R. who always comes first in the annual Broadest Smile Competition, each one of you contributes in your own way to making tuesday what it is, and for this, I would like to thank you. True, there are plenty of you who are less active, who I won’t know or who I haven’t met yet, but the fact that you’ve chosen tuesday as your workspace is already evidence enough, to me at least, that you’ve got your heart in the right place. I like to think that part of the reason you chose to cowork with us is our independent, sustainable approach. This approach itself means that we can put your membership fees towards not only making the spaces more environmentally-friendly and socially-oriented, but also to providing you with better service and a wider range of amenities (did someone say Product Photo Studio?).
Sure, we’re not perfect, we know that, you know that and it’s the last thing we would ever claim to be (we can’t always be there to clean up your dishes when you get called away by that important client). But that imperfection itself is what separates a coworking space from the arguably more soulless large-scale serviced offices that do a lot of the shouting but have very little to do with the essence of coworking. (Read what the difference is between a coworking space and a serviced office). In fact, independent providers like ours by faaaar outnumber serviced offices, which is a beacon of hope for a more considerate, understanding and tolerant future, I would say.
So thank you, thank you, thank you for being a member of tuesday, have a happy and productive International Coworking Day on Monday and see you around for some of the ol‘ (alcohol-free) beers on Thursday!
John N.
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