San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Loneliness cure: Co-working spot helps beat blues
Jamie Snedden was sitting in his London home around this time last year when his wife pointed something out: He hadn’t left in almost a week.
“That cannot be a healthy thing,” Snedden, who had been working remotely during the pandemic, thought to himself. He tried going to coffee shops and co-working spaces to get out of the house after that, but he felt cut off from other people.
“It was an isolating experience in its own way,” Snedden said. “I wasn’t making meaningful connections to other people.”
Snedden, like so many other people pushed into remote working by the pan
demic, found himself cut off from the social side of work that once formed the bulk of run-ins with others before the pandemic for many people.
Feelings of loneliness have been connected to work stress and burnout since before the lockdowns of 2020, though studies have shown the pandemic has led to many people experiencing increased feelings of loneliness.
And while many companies have talked about, and poured resources into, different mental health apps and initiatives to help remote employees, none of those can replace chatting with a co-worker over coffee.
So Snedden decided to do something about it, moving to the States and landing in San Francisco last year and, along with co-founders Leutrim Rexhepi and Jermaine Ijieh, opening a co-working space in the Mission District called Groundfloor that isn’t just about working, but making friends.
Since the opening in March, Snedden has about 200 people paying $200 per month for access to the space on Valencia Street, with a waiting list to join. There are plans to open another location in Oakland next year.
The main working space is full of comfortable, colorful couches and desks. During one recent afternoon, about a dozen members were curled up, tapping away on laptops as upbeat rock music played in the background. A shaggy dog lay curled next to one of the armchairs. And across the room at a long dining table near the kitchen, a group chatted as they finished lunch prepared by a member who used to work as a chef.
The long, communal table and the square-shaped couch that makes people face each other are no accidents. “We provide a space that is specifically designed to facilitate friendships,” said Snedden, whose background is in architecture and design.
For some members, like Soukaina Targa, the space has been a social life preserver after the punishing isolation of the pandemic.
A native of Casablanca, Morocco, who works for her family’s hospitality business, she normally splits her time between home and San Francisco. Targa spent part of the pandemic living in Atlanta, mostly going from her apartment to the grocery store and back again.
“It was really hard for me mentally,” she said, sitting on one of the couches in Groundfloor’s open living room-like working and hangout space. “It made me sad and stressed.”
Targa said she developed abdominal pain that turned out to be a cyst that doctors told her was from stress, which she felt was brought on by intense feelings of isolation.
When she returned to San Francisco earlier this year, Targa saw an Instagram ad for the space and immediately joined. Groundfloor also hosts numerous clubs and events, and she’s become a part of the wine-tasting club that meets every other Thursday, along with taking yoga classes and working on her painting in a creativity club. And she’s made friends. “People recognize me here now, and I’m always invited and included,” Targa said. She’s been to concerts and birthday parties around the city with other members and become friends with their friends, too.
Getting out of the house and connecting with new people has been a boon for her mental health. “Groundfloor is like a psychologist, but it’s a place,” she said.
Many companies with plans to allow remote working for good have tried different ways of bringing employees and teams back on the same days to build connections with one another.
“The biggest motivator for people to go back in (to the office) is collaboration … and building camaraderie,” said Sheela Subramanian, one of the founders of the Slack-based Future Forum, which studies flexible work.
Foster City cybersecurity firm Exabeam offers employees catered lunches on Wednesday and a happy hour on Monday with a full spread, events that plenty of employees show up to, said the company’s human resources chief, Gianna Driver.
Driver said when she talks to people about the events afterward, work and productivity aren’t the main reasons they show up. “People cite building relationships with one another
“People recognize me here now, and I’m
always invited and included.” Soukaina Targa, on Groundfloor co-working space
as the real value of coming into the office,” she said. “When people say ‘The relationships,’ they’re really talking about with one another.”
But for people working remotely without a nearby office, or whose team is based in another state or country, relying on inoffice run-ins and happy hours just isn’t an option.
Daria Fluor-Scacchi, another Groundfloor member who works as a video game development director at Electronic Arts, is one of those people. Her team is based in Canada and she got rid of her car earlier in the pandemic, so commuting to the company’s Redwood Shores offices isn’t an option, especially since they stopped running the private buses that used to take workers there from San Francisco.
“I am a woman, and … my coworkers have predominantly been male,” Fluor-Scacchi said. “My work was not creating an opportunity to connect with other women casually and form those friendships organically.”
On top of that, during the pandemic, many of her friends in their 30s decided to have children, something she was not ready to do. “My friend circle was going to be very different on the other side of the pandemic,” Fluor-Scacchi said. “I needed to find a community and a space where I could connect.”
She said she had looked for a secular place to get to know people since before the pandemic, getting into dancing and even using Bumble’s BFF friend-finding function, which she said was somewhat awkward. But broadening her female social group remained elusive, especially with so many apps and activities geared toward dating.
So when she walked by the newly remodeled Groundfloor space on Valencia Street, near where she lives, and looked it up online, “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is what I’ve been looking for for years.’ ”
Fluor-Scacchi said she doesn’t really use the space for working, since she has a comfortable setup at home and is on hours of calls most days. Instead, she’s become an eager participant in the wine and foodie clubs, and captains the weekly board game night each Wednesday.
The yoga studio and a gym set up in a backyard area with weights and a few machines also help justify the cost, she said.
So far, Fluor-Scacchi has mostly spent time with members inside the club, but she has exchanged a few phone numbers and is getting to know the group. “Everyone is open to talking and being friendly and maybe even looking for more friends,” she said.
While some search for community, not everyone has been affected equally by the isolation brought on by remote working.
“Some love it and it has no impact,” said Mitchell Marks, an organizational psychologist and professor emeritus of leadership at San Francisco State University.
“For a lot of people it just sort of creeps up. You don’t go from zero to 60,” he said. “You get a little more annoyed, a little more impatient, a little more lonely.”
Marks said some of that comes from having fewer options to vent about a work situation with a trusted co-worker in the remote and hybrid work setting.
He said managers checking in frequently and happy hour events do help, “But don’t think because the food truck rolls up that everything is peachy keen.”
One company Marks works with recently took a Friday afternoon off to walk around a museum, giving people a chance to connect in a different way than normal. “It’s nothing fancy or structured,” he said. “It creates a context for interaction.”
After so much time working remotely, those settings have been few and far between for many people, and it’s not always easy to chat up new people — even in an explicitly welcoming space like Groundfloor.
That’s where Ning Recio and the buddy system come in.
“I’m the puppy in the dog park looking for other puppies,” said Recio, a Bay Area native, longtime Mission District resident, and Groundfloor member since day one.
Recio has been assigned three of four new members since she joined to help orient and introduce them to the space and other people. Recio said some members can be a bit timid to break into the social scene at first, but joining one of the clubs is usually a surefire way to get to know people.
She said she shows up a few times a week to hang out and go to the events. A former tech worker, Recio switched to a career in voice acting, which requires a studio setup and doesn’t exactly lend itself to a coworking space.
“I’m really personally passionate about building community,” and Groundfloor has become a large part of that, she said. She tries to find ways to extend the welcoming feeling of the space outside of its walls, helping to throw Halloween block parties where she lives near Dolores Park, and even stopping people on the street to introduce herself and her husband to try and create a friendlier vibe in the neighborhood.
“I’ve personally seen the magic of what Groundfloor has brought to my life,” Recio said about combating loneliness during the pandemic. “I’m almost, like, to the point where I’ve almost thought, ‘(It’s) too busy now!’ ”