In recent years some Wellingtonians have been forced to immediately leave their office buildings and work from home for months on end, but the reason for this has nothing to do with Covid-19.
It's because the buildings they work out of have undergone fresh seismic assessments, with engineers reportinglower earthquake ratings than first thought.
Last month I found myself in exactly this position. Journalists who cover Wellington issues are not immune from the issues themselves.
The building that NZME works out of on the corner of Abel Smith and Taranaki Sts has been given a 25 per cent New Building Standard (NBS) rating after an assessment was undertaken for evaluation purposes.
About 180 Meridian Energy staff were sent home just before Easter after the award-winning waterfront building they usually work from was deemed potentially earthquake-prone.
About 1000 Inland Revenue staff found themselves in the same position last year when an earthquake risk was discovered at the Asteron Centre. They have since been temporarily relocated across several buildings in the city while remediation is undertaken.
The Meridian building on Wellington's waterfront. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Even before the first Covid-19 lockdown, working from home was the new normal for some.
In early 2020 staff at the Ministry for Women and the Ministry of Education moved out of the building they leased on The Terrace after an assessment indicated it was earthquake-prone.
And so the list goes on.
Despite these workplace exits, Wellingtonians wander in and out of earthquake-prone buildings every single day and probably don't even notice half of the time.
Cuba St is lined with buildings likely to collapse and cause injury or death, or damage to another property, in a moderate earthquake.
Last time I checked there were about 590 earthquake-prone buildings in Wellington.
When a building has this status, the council acts as the regulatory authority and gives the owner a certain amount of time to get it strengthened. The building is still legally allowed to be occupied in the meantime.
Building owners are not required to inform the council of their intentions to undertake work before their deadline expires.
That means Wellington City Council is in the dark about the future of many of these buildings, despite the expectation the capital will experience a significant seismic event in our lifetime.
If the owner fails to comply with their deadline, the building is issued with a red sticker and it is only then that it's not allowed to be occupied.
Those are the rules, but many corporates and government departments have decided they have a different tolerance for risk.
A report last year by the Ministry for Building Innovation and Employment found many public and private sector tenants were only willing to lease buildings that are 67-80 per cent NBS.
An earthquake risk was discovered at the Asteron Centre last year. Photo / Mark Mitchell
This created perceptions of government double standards or not "walking the talk", the report said.
However, the report suggested this attitude to risk reflects a move from life safety to building resilience.
If a moderate earthquake happens, employers want their people to be safe as well as business continuity in the wake of such a seismic event.
On the one hand, that's good because it means the city will have more resilient buildings, but one engineer I spoke to recently described it as "concerning".
Some engineers feel the focus should be prioritising the really bad buildings, to find and strengthen the "CTVs" of Wellington.
Christchurch's CTV building rapidly and almost completely collapsed, killing 115 people, when the 2011 February earthquake struck.
It's also worth pointing out there's still a lot of uncertainty about NBS ratings and they are by no means an absolute thing.
Many earthquake-prone buildings survived the 2016 Kaikōura earthquake in Wellington unscathed, while newer buildings like Statistics House partially collapsed.
It's a big balancing act between doing as much as we can to prepare for when the big earthquake happens without shutting down the entire city in the process.
There is an element of learning to live with risk here, such is the reality when New Zealand's capital city lies in the collision zone between two of the earth's great tectonic plates.
Personally, I don't have a problem with spending three hours dining at a restaurant that's located in an earthquake-prone building.
But I feel less comfortable about spending eight hours, five days a week working in one.
• Senior Wellington journalist Georgina Campbell's fortnightly column looks closely at issues in the capital.
