The Covid diaries: Day 5 - Working with your flatmates - A guide

The Covid diaries: Day 5 - Working with your flatmates - A guide


A daily fly-on-the-wall blog about running a legal business during the Covid-19 crisis.

By Dónall Breen - 20 March 2020

Step 1: Choose your office colleagues carefully. Too late, you have chosen to live with these person/people and you must now work together in self isolation for months to come. Is your office colleague the love of your life, or just Matilda from SpareRoom who happened to have a cheap place in Clapham? It doesn't matter. Remember growing up you were told you have to live with the consequences of your decisions? Well, welcome to a real life simulation of that on steroids.

Step 2: Don't sweat the small stuff. Except if it's eating too loudly, tapping feet, or not making you tea. Then sweat that stuff really hard and make a big deal out of it. Then get it out of your system as this is the path you have chosen (see step 1).

Step 3: Be respectful of others' space. Hold on, have you decided to live in London where space means £1,000 per square foot and your 'cosy little hideaway in Angel' now feels like a recurring episode of The Cube? No worries, your dinner table will now become the centre of your entire existence. God bless population pressure.

Step 4: Keep a routine. If you used to take the tube to work, why not cram all the members of the house into a small cupboard and not talk to each other for 40 minutes? Really recreate that commuting experience. If you used to cycle or jog to work, just cut out the middle man and smoke a few cigs in the morning to get that pollution right in.

Step 5: Don't forget to have some fun. Remember as a child when you used to have play dates with your friends and just mess about in the house all day? Tap into that. Build a pillow fort and take a very serious client call from inside it as your other house mates try to break in. If you laugh, you lose.

Step 6: Stop reading this blog. Look across the table, or your corridor, and ask if someone wants to have a cup of tea. Skype your parents. Give your old friend from school a call. Remember, you may be on your own but you are not alone. And when all that is done, take a sigh of relief knowing that next week you can just read sarcastic blogs written by lawyers again to make you feel better about yourself.

With love, from GQ|Littler.


If you would like to read our Covid diaries starting from day 1 please click here.