#Comeback soon, without you we don’t want to be #Everythingwillbefine

22/03/2020

#returnees

Today is Sunday and I’m going to the office.

In Nerviano the only car that circulates is mine, I enter the building sideways with my badge and while I walk down the corridor, my steps resound. Everything is calm and suspended.

I walk past the factory entrance, and I decide to take a look at the departments. I pass the metal door that begs passers-by to be left closed, I wear headphones and shoes and I enter the factory. From the skylights comes clear enough for me to see; the silhouettes of the silos, of the bins and of the machinery look at me mute, they look like figures sitting waiting. Every now and then the whistle of a spy coming from who knows where through the muffled atmosphere, as a call to which no one responds. I go to the left, push to move the door along its track and pass, I quickly slip to the other side before its stubborn blue folds back into its home. The filling department is motionless, empty, melancholy.

The firm factory seems to cry of loneliness.

I walk all the way to the IN warehouse with its cartons, there are neat boxes of finished products waiting patiently for Emiliano’s hands. Through another heavy door, up to the manufacturing department, and then back to the offices.

The sound of my steps follows me as I walk slowly towards the reception, the phones are unusually mute. I look in every office and I see empty chairs, dozens of post it, dolls sleeping next to computers, blackboards with misunderstood notes, strands and prototypes everywhere.

Everything speaks to me of numerous presences, of frenetic activities, of ideas and of work. I think back to the voices of the people who greet each other, the shouting at the end of the shift from the changing rooms, the music of Augustus, the incessant coming and going of the ladies around the technical room.

I go up the stairs, I go to the left. I expect Vanessa always sitting in her place, but today there is not. A little further, the map of the world I go up the stairs, I go to the left. I expect Vanessa always sitting in her place, but she’s not there today. A little further on, the map of the world looks from its frame at three orphan posts.

I take a few more steps and reach the CS office. The water bottle suddenly emits its deaf bubbles, as if they were a hiccup: he also miss Simona on the phone who denies an exception to Ugo, and Antonella bends over orders. You seem to hear the quick answers of Elisa, Deborah and Ilaria. The sheets on the tables, the folders, the printer, everything is suspended and motionless.

I finally sit at my desk, do what I had in mind and decide to go home. Outside it is almost spring, the first insects chase each other in the air, but I am thoughtful. I don’t think this building knows anything without the people who animate it. I think of colleagues forced by this emergency to stay away, to suspend work. I think about how hairdressers can feel forced to close their businesses. Our products are nothing without the customers who use them, and all the buildings in the world are empty shells when there is no one who fills them with their commitment and life.

There is a word that expresses what I feel for collaborators, customers and our partners in many nations of the world, and it is brotherhood: this unexpected crisis has brought out the importance, the inevitability and the beauty of belonging to a community, and with this to possess a common destiny. The message I want to send out is of hope, because with the commitment of all this moment will pass and we will be able to return to dealing with what makes us free and that gives us citizenship in the world: our work.

#Comeback soon, without you we don’t want to stay, and remember that ##Everythingwillbefine