So your commute downtown to an air conditioned office building might mean some modification to what you carry -- what are some examples of urban office carry?

Looking at the offices I tend to go to:

• Dress shoes vs. outdoors shoes. I work hard to find shoes that I can walk a long way in that are still appropriate.
• Inconspicuous folder vs. any kind of fixed blade knife.
• Small flashlight in my pocket vs. something larger in a belt-pouch.
• Business appropriate laptop bag (in my case with medical and other emergency gear in it) vs. a hydration pack.
• I keep a lighter in my laptop bag on general principle (I don't smoke) but nothing more than that for starting a fire.

*Raincoat, most days. otherwise an umbrella
*Water bottle
* bus or rail pass

*spare dress shirt
*toothbrush
* spork, waterbottle
*charger and cords, various
*small flashlight

Good shoes are quite worthwhile. I am able to find comfortable dress shoes (Ecco, Rockport, etc.), but they are not designed to be rugged, to do well in rain, mud, etc. What are your recommendations?

My office prep is mainly for an overnight stay. Perhaps the road home gets flooded. Perhaps there is a chemical spill. I assume the office building is still "working," but maybe that's not a great assumption.

I used to do well with Dunham, which is a New Balance brand. I could run in them and they were waterproof, if not overly rugged. They changed their lineup and I don't wear them any more. More recently I've been wearing Johnston & Murphy shoes at work. They're about the same cost, a bit better looking (at least to me), last a lot longer, and still waterproof. Good for long walks or shorter distances running.

When I had a downtown office I surreptitiously stocked a locking file drawer with involuntary overnight supplies, being largely a change of clothes, a pair of boots, toiletries and snacks. Now with my "office" being my car more often than not, I have a lot more flexibility.

Top one of the essentials, IMO, is water

Before retirement, I had some lockable drawers in the office. So, I made a cache of essentials in case I was stranded in the office and couldn't go back home due to the weather or whatever. I stored and rotated a few bottles of water and biscuits/crackers that I bought from the cafeteria. In addition, I stored a few other items that would be helpful if I had to sleep in the office.

There was also a small bag containing flashlight, extra batteries, lighter, multitool ..etc. just in case I had to walk

Never needed them but was good feeling to know they were there.
Funny thing is , in the same drawers I kept a small personal tool kit, which has seen tons of use in the office.

My recent office experience has centered around seasonal work in our county's election office. We go into high gear at least the week before the election,working late well into the evening. Flashlights are good things to have.

Election night is typically an all-nighter,although those of us who started at 6AM can usually leave by 1 or 2 AM the next day. Power outages occur, although emergency generators do kick in. On one occasion of election day, our phone network crashed and I had to leave our basement office in order to deal with a problem in one of our precincts reduced to using my personal cell phone. At least this sort of thing is relatively predictable, like an impending hurricane.

It is really a good idea to have a few goodies and useful items at hand, because you never know....

Dec. 1st, time to go through my office kit.

spare set of glasses, toothbrush, chem light in addition to a task LED light, P95 mask, whistle

Sparre glasses is genius - never thought of that. Will Add

I have found that the mail-order glasses places work well for me, and at the price I can have a spare pair of glasses in my laptop bag and my car kit. My prescription is pretty tame.

Mrs. Magnet, on the other hand, has a pretty extreme prescription. She couldn’t use the one pair of mail-order prescription glasses I got for her, even as a spare pair.

I have 8 spare pairs of glasses! I ordered them a few years ago from Zenni.com when they had a BOBO sale. Optically they're pretty good. The most expensive pair is titanium framed and was still just $80 for the pair, and the entire order was under $200. One of the styles I got doesn't fit my face that well but for the price I can't complain. Now I have spares stashed everywhere, a necessity when you're as nearsighted as I am.

I get the sense that all of us here wear glasses.

Embracing her geek goddess image since she was five,
Jeanette Isabelle

I read a story years ago that Teddy Roosevelt had three or four extra pairs of glasses when he rode up San Juan hill! Apparently he worried about breaking them.

While I don't wear glasses, I am old enough for reading glasses, and yes, I have a spare pair (generally folding) along all the time. It is amazing how life can suck when you cannot read anything or do fine work.

It's very rare for me to wear my glasses at all; the eye doc annually expresses amazement at how well I tolerate contact lenses.

When I was a teen, Mom suggested that I get contacts. I wanted to stick with glasses.

Jeanette Isabelle

When I was about 40, I began to have problems readng a monitor in the open heart suite where I worked. Went to an Opthalmologist and got my first pair of no line bifocals. I've worn glasses for the last 30 years. 3 or 4 years ago, I asked about contacts and was told ,due to my age, I was unlikely to tolerate them.

Funny thing is I have 8 or 9 pair but I almost always wear contacts, too. Although during the pandemic, working from home, I am often too lazy to put 'em in. I've worn glasses more this past two months and in the preceding two years.