Call it a litmus test, a Rorschach blot — maybe a new question for the Meyer-Briggs personality quiz? But the topic of working from home … well, let’s say it brings out a lot of personality. That personality was on full display in the comments to our post on Alta Planning and Design’s move to the west side of the river. As Jonathan wrote, the move was “part of their strategy to lure more employees into the office.”
WFH (work from home) can be such a hot-button issue that I hesitate to say anything about it. But at least let’s describe the range of the phenomena. It extends from taking one day a week at home, to making home in another state. Yep, some folks have put hundreds, even thousands, of miles between themselves and their employer, and are real happy with the arrangement.
PTB is not buying it. Here’s why PTB thinks going to work matters:
Not everyone loves WFH. My role at work won’t allow it, but there are some here that can, and during the height of Covid, did. I thought it sucked. I hated Zoom meetings. There’s something very human that is lacking when your only interactions are online. It would be one thing to Zoom with someone in a different time zone, but when that person is a couple miles from where you’re at, goddamn, something about it irks the hell out of me.
And it clearly irked my coworkers because once vaccines rolled out they did what I thought we were all waiting to do once they were available; they came back to work. Didn’t we all hate being home and not seeing people? Vaccines were gonna help us get back to normal life, yeah? Then a bunch of office workers decided, nah, fuck it, this spare room office life is legit…I’m staying. You’re the master of your own isolation, same goes for me. I’m going out and leaving the house, thanks.
And yeah, downtown workers help the vendors that sell sandwiches and coffee and work lunch buffets and all that stuff. All that stuff that made downtown a fun place to be before Covid. All those jobs are important, too. I worked those jobs for a lot of years. I like the random encounter you have with someone in line waiting to get coffee, or running into a friend that also just got off work and deciding to grab a drink. I continue to wonder why people deprive themselves of these human experiences and decide they’d rather stay home all day.
Hats off to Alta for their move downtown. I love it. We can’t abandon downtown and just let it rot. We do that and there will be horrible consequences for the region and the state at some point. What they’ll be, I don’t know, but it’s probably best not to try and find out.
Thank you PTB, that was a lovely comment. I bet your co-workers like having a coffee with you.
You can find the full range of opinions in the comments under the original post.
