A personal confession: I’m back in the office — and I like it
It’s been six months since I riffed about hesitations of going back to the office for most & how I’d found a good way to find my balance amongst the chaos. At that point I was begrudgingly accepting a mandate to go into the office three days a week, but I was one of the few actually doing it in my division. By the end of summer, leadership significantly relaxed the mandate and just wanted people in at least one day a week — ostensibly to keep the top leaders of the company (who were very strongly in favor of having everyone back full-time) off their backs. As we headed into the fall and full-testing and vaccine mandates became “a thing” only those vaccinated could be in the office and there was a perception of some who were fully vaccinated that they were being punished for doing the right thing and being forced into the office when unvaccinated employees could work remotely full-time. In short, the world has gotten awfully twisted in this pandemic and with each turn of the story, things get even weirder.
In the midst of all of this, something even weirder happened: I’ve voluntarily started going into the office almost every day.
Not even I saw this coming. Part of this is because I was very unhappy in my job in March 2020. Were it not for the pandemic, I probably would have left. I already had an informal agreement with my manager that I could work from home one day a week and found myself wanting to be in the office less. The office was loud and did not have assigned seating. There were many distractions, you couldn’t be assured of having a seat with colleagues (And if you could find a seat, often some piece of equipment wouldn’t work) and finding meeting space or a quiet room to take a sensitive call was a constant struggle. Every day, I would face a crowded commute to a neighborhood with expensive lunch options, so I tried to make my lunch the night prior. There was free coffee, but it was terrible, there were two coffee shops on site. The office did have a cafeteria with some good food options, but it was no bargain. There is also an on-site gym as well and it’s really nice, but you had to pay. The only benefits my company offered on a regular basis other than having paid onsite conveniences was free dinner after 8pm and a free car service home after 10pm; not exactly enticing but at least reasonable after long, difficult days. For me, with a comfortable & fully functional home office, working from home before the pandemic was a more convent, satisfying, productive and less expensive choice.
Somehow in the midst of the pandemic, my company became Google: A highly-profitable enterprise that recognized that a good way to keep workers on-site and productive was to incent them in every way to come to the office and stay as long as possible. They made the following changes:
They stopped charging for food at the cafeteria, premium coffee & the gym
They started reimbursing up to $50 a day in non-Mass Transit options. I don’t know if this was good from an overall standpoint for New York City with traffic getting worse but instead of paying $5.50 round trip to get to the office, I’ve gotten status on Uber and get $5 in Uber credits a day each time I come in
They bought furniture to allow for more gathering spaces
They put Zoom cameras at every work station to allow for easy collaboration
In addition, by mandating vaccines and requiring weekly tests (you’d be surprised how many positives there have been), I had more piece of mind regarding my health going into the office than if I never went in.
And because of minimal in-office requirements and comfort with Zoom, my floor is never crowded and I always have the same desk with a great view. After a while of being back in the office regularly part-time I noticed that some of the inconveniences of being at home were overcome in the office:
I have a huge wide screen monitor that is superior to my 3 smaller monitor set-up at home
The internet connection speed is amazing and never has interruptions. At home I often have hiccups
I never have to make coffee or grab lunch. I can easily run down to the cafeteria twice a day for meals, multiple good coffee options are available and snacks are plentiful, all for free
I recognize at this point that my satisfaction being in the office is based on three things that are unlikely to last:
Less than full occupancy
A bunch of free stuff
Reimbursement for not taking the subway
And when any or a combination of them go away I’m likely to want to spend more time working from home. But for now, I’m in most days and am happy about it.