A modern office building.I used to be a drone like everyone else.I worked in offices all throughout the 2000s: in anonymous buildings, in office parks and in garages retrofitted into office spaces.I sat in cubicles, and in open-air bullpens with no partitions, and in windowless offices of my own.I commuted via car, bus, subway and with my own two feet.I ate strange lunches: sometimes bagged, sometimes from chain joints, sometimes from local restaurants of questionable repute.I sat in long in-person meetings.I pored over hard copies of PowerPoint decks.
I interacted with people I didn’t really care to interact with.But I had somewhere to go.I started working exclusively from home in 2009 and I remember the hardest part about the transition was that I no longer had a place to go to every day.That was never an issue with office life.
Back then, I had a reason to leave my house and get out into the world every morning.I never questioned the setup.Why would I? I had spent my entire childhood commuting to school on a cramped bus and then dealing with all of the bulls—t that school entails once that bus arrived.I was conditioned for this sort of existence.
This was what I wanted.The idea of NOT going anywhere on a weekday was bizarre to me.A job at home felt like no job at all.It felt wrong.It no longer feels wrong.Every day now I get up, throw on a hoodie, drink my coffee, eat my breakfast , send my kids off to school and then assume my position in front of my PC in my home office to punch in for work.And I do work.I make money.
I have good relationships with my co-workers.I am a really useful engine.This feels RIGHT.So right, in fact, that the idea of sitting in traffic for hours a day to an office lit like an interrogation room is what feels wrong to me now.
Doesn’t that ritual strike you as unnatural? Isn’t it weird that you grow up, break into the white collar sector, and then your primary place to go is a cubicle surrounded by random people whose greatest personality flaws and whose worst midday habits you will grow to know intimately? Why would you accept a life engineered that way if you didn’t have to? You don’t.Employers have tried to fight against permanent work-from-home arrangements all year, and they’ve had no shortage of media henchmen willing to back them up on the assertion that working on your terms, and for whomever you choose, simply isn’t how things are done.
But now, even the most nakedly capitalistic elements of society are rethinking the office model.And do you know why? Because it’s becoming clearer and clearer that no one — not workers, and not even bosses — needs it to thrive.From the New York Times : “Wall Street banks posted record profit and revenue during the pandemic, as government stimulus supported consumers stuck at home and companies sought to do deals, proving to bankers and traders that they have little need to work out of the office the way they used to.” You hear that? Even BANKERS don’t wanna go to the office anymore.They don’t wanna put on suits.They don’t wanna trek downtown.
They don’t wanna spend all day with aggro stock bros who stand up anytime they answer the phone.Expensing a lukewarm rib eye for lunch at the Capital Grille does nothing for many of them.Turns out they want to LIVE.And they can! They can work from home.And you can, too, even if you’re not some big swinging dick at Goldman who dabbles in crypto on the side.
Maybe you can’t have a home office, because you live with four roommates in a cramped San Francisco Victorian whose bathroom drain clogs with every shave, or because you live with your parents, or because you have three kids and two dogs at home who are loud ALL THE TIME and you need the type of separation that an office typically provides.But who says an office is your only option? The world can be your office.
You can find a new place to work every day: a peaceful library, a friend’s house, a coffee shop that won’t shoo you away.All you truly need is a laptop and good Wi-Fi reception.A modern office devoid of workers.Americans know this in their bones now.Eighty percent of people who worked from home during the pandemic would like to keep it that way .Quitting rose to record levels in September, not only because employees want better pay but because they want a better work environment, and because they know that the current American economy has been robust enough to give them better options.And those options are increasing.
The biggest employer in the country, the federal government, has already embraced a permanent hybrid work model without much fuss.Regular-ass companies can do this, too.They can not only accept working from home — something their employees did during the pandemic, although not nearly in numbers you might imagine — but embrace it and promote it.They can train people to work remotely (I am available as a consultant) and they can learn to manage remotely as well.Their profit margins will remain unscathed; in fact, they might outright flourish, as the bank sector’s have.Companies won’t have to pay as much overhead to rent office space, or to furnish that office space with all of the usual, grim accoutrements: desks, chairs, bad conference room art, smelly microwaves, etc.And they’ll find that, through working remotely, employees will have more energy, ideas and inspiration.
Hard to think of new things when you’re all staring at the same wall for 10 hours a day.Most important, Americans workers will have more TIME this way.They won’t have to burn precious hours commuting or traveling on business.They won’t have to scramble to pick up their kid early from school or run vital errands because they’ll already have fluid hours.
They won’t be tortured by uneasy intra-office dynamics because they won’t be IN an office.Think of how much time that saves everyone in the equation.Think of what everyone could do with that time.Think about living in an economy where there really IS a chance to have it all when you’ve been told for decades that no one, especially women, ever can.There are dangers to a majority remote workforce, but nothing you haven’t already endured.
Worried your boss will force your job to also be your life? Bosses already do that, only by outfitting offices with the comforts of home so that you don’t feel like you’re at work.I can tell you from firsthand experience that it’s far more pleasant to flip that equation by having a designated office space in a place where you truly ARE comfortable, with good food and people you like always on hand.There’s also the fact that a remote white collar workforce will exist at a literal remove from the blue collar workforce, but that segregation already exists and is quite pronounced.
If you work for an hourly wage at Facebook and you have an issue with management, you can’t walk over to Mark Zuckerberg’s office to tell him he’s a freakshow with a goat-murdering fetish .You probably don’t even technically work FOR Facebook.
So I’m not seeing the diplomatic upside of cloistering the entire executive level of a firm inside a glass tower when they could live out in the world — and actually interact with it! — instead.This can be an awkward adjustment, but it’s one everyone can make.I did.I have my routine down now.I report to work on time every day: logging into Slack before 9 a.m., churning out vital investigative pieces and then closing up shop in time to make dinner.When I need a place to go, I find one.On my own time and on my own terms.
The other day, I took myself out to sushi for lunch, then came home and finished my work like a pro.I live right by a highway, so every rush hour, I think of all the drones stuck out there in their cars, desperate to get home to lives they only see fleeting glimpses of.I remind myself that I was one of those people for a very long time.I don’t know why I lived that way.I don’t know why anyone does.You don’t have to be unhappy to be productive.Never let anyone, especially your goddamn boss, tell you otherwise.
— Let’s never go back to the office — Life never lived up to what Anthony Bourdain wanted it to be — We are canceling the right people — Tesla is just another car company, and Elon Musk is just another billionaire.
