A few years ago, xw bought me a nice bathrobe. It’s warm and super comfortable, so I often wear it at home. Then I started working on Flux and often worked from home. This bathrobe became my signature “work attire” since I only needed to zoom with a handful of friends at Flux for the first year. It became a tradition. Every new member would soon learn “Wei usually shows up in a bathrobe on zoom.” And we did a few “bathrobe” zoom parties during the pandemic and even sent every team member a bathrobe with the Flux logo as a nice company swag.
A bathrobe is usually comfy but not meant to be durable, especially if you wear it day to day. After a few years, the elbows of my robe were all worn out. Wen bought two patches and patched the elbows. Then this year, the whole robe started falling apart. Big holes showed up all over the robe. Today I finally said goodbye to this robe and ordered a replacement.
I miss the days I felt comfortable to zoom with colleagues in a bathrobe. It was a high bar of how tightly knitted a team is.