Ages back I heard a brief talk on "why it's so hard to make friends in your thirties." The answer was: Because in high school and college, you spend a lot of time moving around a space big enough to put you in contact with too many people to actually *know*, but small enough that you can expect to spontaneously meet people multiple times. And our relationships are dependent as much on multiple, spontaneous meetings as on our compatibility of interests. People show you themselves slowly over time, you learn who and how to be around them by repetition, and eventually you end up with the rich array of interlocking, vaguely-concentric friend-and-acquaintance circles many of us remember from our school days. The spontaneity, the tedium, the awkwardness of those first few hangouts, the slow, invisible settling of someone into one or another sphere of your life -- I feel like people treat this as suboptimal, somehow, energy lost to heat in the friend-making transaction, when in fact this is all friend-making has ever been.
Your point about capitalism rings intensely true. Not to derail further into culture war stuff, but I see this obsession with transaction in descriptions of tough conversations as "emotional labor," or especially in the way introversion/extraversion are framed right now. I've literally had people give me multi-page written guides on how to interact with them without exhausting them, because it's more efficient to provide me with the rules up front than to do the simple, messy, trust-building work of telling me what they need in the moment, or - god forbid - occasionally being a little socially exhausted without immediately ascribing it to some inherent flaw in the interaction.
I gain absolutely nothing from the vast majority of tiny interactions I have day to day, and yet a year without them was the most miserable I can remember. It's a facet of human life that simply can't be quantified.
It’s always done with really helpful intentions, too - like, “Don’t worry! This will make it so *you* don’t have to feel anxious about whether you’re doing it right!” It’s a kind of social anxiety that assumes identical anxiety on my part. I don’t know how I could make someone in that place comprehend that I wasn’t anxious at all until I was given a list of rules to memorize.
I think, for many, this is simply not the way their workplaces operate anymore, even before COVID.
Around half of my coworkers are in India. I experience them only as emails sent in the middle of the night and very occasional appearances in team meetings. Churn is also constant in tech--people rarely stay with a company for more than two or three years. Tech companies are always desperate for workers, so headhunting is rampant. You're constantly losing people. I've been at my current job for not quite five years (after a bunch of 2-year stints at other companies). Of the team I started with, only four (including me) of about thirty remain. There isn't time for real friendships to form.
It's a nice dream, but it wasn't COVID that took it away.
I agree with your point, but I wasn't actually thinking about the workplace. I genuinely don't mean that to sound snide, I'm clarifying because the comments here mostly are about the workplace and I didn't specify that I was thinking more broadly. My workplace, for example, even before it went remote, was only 5 people, of whom many were not in the office every day - it's really not a place where I can get many small, incidental social interactions of the kind I described. The other 50ish people who work for the org work in different cities, so I only see them on Zoom and by email. I'm fortunate in that I like my coworkers and am happier when some of us are in the office together, chatting briefly in the kitchen or sticking our heads into each other's offices to ask questions. But that isn't something I've had for years and I don't think I'll get it back.
When I do get that kind of lovely, casual spontaneity, it's outside of work. I'm lucky in that my city is well-organized for it - a nice downtown core of small businesses, plenty of coffeeshops, not really a small-town feel but one where if you're out walking around you'll run into people you know or kind of know, you get the simple pleasure of seeing your usual barista, etc. It takes time to build that, and I haven't been able to find it in every place I've lived.
To a greater extent as I get older I've had to build it myself. Most my good friends in this town, I didn't hit it off with right away - we met once incidentally, at a gathering hosted by others or through a networking event, and then we had four or five fine-but-not-especially-thrilling planned hangouts over the course of a few months, and then one night we decide to invite them to do something on short notice, and then they ask us if we can drive over to let their dogs out because their car broke down and they'll be home late, and then we celebrate someone's birthday together, and somehow a year later the awkward first hangouts have turned into a real, close friendship.
So, yeah, that's the kind of interaction I'm trying to get at, and I definitely don't think this is something all or most people can get from the workplace these days. I worry more about people who see these kinds of interactions, period, as dead weight they can shed. I also worry for people who actually really want those kinds of interactions, the kind who would type "why can't I make friends after college?" into Google, but are losing the ability to seek and instigate the kinds of spontaneous interactions needed to form friendships.
I take classes at a community college, and I also us the Y situated on the border of a very low income and a pretty high income neighborhood. The interactions are very much like what we saw on Community. But those aren't workplaces. If you're a Virtual, the people you're working with are probably pretty similar whether you're in the office or not.
A fellow lawyer and I agree with all of this. Plus, law is a stressful occupation, and having colleagues to collaborate with and bounce ideas off of not only helps you be a better lawyer, it alleviates some of the stress as well.
I'm also in law, though legal aid and not a big firm. I think what you are saying has some truth to it, but it depends too much on the specific person and their specific supervision and training. I've seen tremendous success stories and surprising failures since the pandemic, which is par for the course anyways.
Spontaneous interactions are valuable, but I've had a much easier time concentrating on writing briefs at home rather than in my office, and also a much better time doing virtual hearings where witnesses don't have to waste a day sitting in a courtroom until they testify and where everyone can be looking at the same piece of evidence on their screen. Eliminating the commute goes a long way towards getting my life back in a profession where hours billed doesn't necessarily equal time spent in the office. Plus, our clients sure don't miss us billing for traveling to hearings etc. Hopefully some degree of balance and flexibility becomes the norm, as you say.
I get that, but I don't think there is societal cost. Humans are social and most people are simply not going to stay inside their homes forever for the same reason people don't go around touching hot stoves.
I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of long-term cost to some percentage of knowledge workers working from home full-time. Paradigm shifts are often painful and confusing, and we're in the middle of one, so what is happening right now is not going to be the set point.
I don't know, you could say this about anything. I don't have children and will never have them. Should I be criticized for not having children because there is a societal cost to having a significant percentage of people not having children?
I used to say one of the greatest places in NYC was the TGI Fridays bar in Penn Station on the LIRR concourse because you had every slice of life jammed in there together, finance guys next to construction guys next to who knows what. Where exactly do you get that from what you described?
I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment. In any event, I lived in New York for most of my adult life and never stepped foot into the TGI Friday's in Penn Station but I certainly interacted with a great variety of people just being out and about in the city.
I'm cool with an optional return to offices. I don't want to be forced back by nosy bosses though.
Also many of us work for companies that are HQed in a different city, or who simply don't have offices large enough to fit the whole workforce. I'd rather not lose my job to support the local dry cleaner.
Yes. To me there is a distinction between going back to the office and going out for human interaction/socializing, in general. Being holed up forever is definitely not great. But the office specifically is its own ball of twine, and can be about many other things, including control over employees and the 'butts in seats' style of measuring productivity.
The left/liberal/blue state whatever neuroticism is really distressing. Different than the other side but both are symptoms of a decline of broad social group engagement. Commute to work, buy a coffee, take your mask off outside, buy a lunch, say hello to a stranger. It’s good for you and it’s good for us all!
I teach high school and obviously cell phones are a constant issue. But the thing is - kids used to use them to actually communicate with each other on the sly! But now they're all diving down into these little algorithmically-curated hard drives that the internet has created for them and placed in their pocket. They're interacting with brands and videos and games that have no connection to a real person on the other end. And they're doing this stuff all day, even when they're around other people! I had a long chat with a student a few weeks ago whose average daily screentime is nearly 13 hours. She's not happy. She hates it. She feels isolated. But she can't stop.
I see the same thing happening with my middle-schoolers. A bunch of 7th and 8th graders who have the social skills of 3rd graders and have fancier phones than most teachers (I teach in a private school in a rather privileged area).
Yeah, starting about three years ago (pre-pandemic) I was shocked to see that kids were WATCHING VIDEOS in my class. I took the phones away, but that was just a whole different level.
Our district has refused to allow high school buildings to take away cell phones. No particular rationale, though they are constantly talking about equity which is weird since the students who spend the most time on their cell phones are generally the ones who are furthest behind. The ones on grade level are more willing to have a conversation with you about whatever once they’ve finished assignments.
Yeah I mean I don't want to get into a debate about school policies, I guess my concern is that these things are so damned isolating, and kids are isolating from each other even when they're in the same physical space. Disconcerting.
Damn, that sucks. I had a hard rule when teaching college math - no cell phone use in class. It was on the syllabus, and I tossed many non-believers for failure to adhere. One time this kid says "but I was talking to my dad about ... ". I just pointed at the door and told him he might need some privacy then.
Sounds like your district is too coddling, but I guess that's the environment we're in.
Working remotely has enabled me to connect deeply with my neighbours in a way I never did while commuting. I take in parcels, wave to retirees while walking the dog at lunchtimes and so on. I’m an introvert. It may seem strange to you, but the world has changed in a way that’s much better for us. I’ve lived my life in a dystopian world of open plan, shared offices and forced social exchanges with colleagues. Don’t fret. We’ll be fine, and you have the evenings to socialise :-)
Yeah, agreed, modern technological convenience is a double edged sword. The technology that solves problems with Zoom creates the problems of Netflix. 10% of people will use their new free time to finally pursue hobbies they always wanted to; 90% will look at more Instagram.
The problem can of course be solved by some hybrid solution like "people have offices and it's optional to go in for people who want to." But in my experience, in most things that require any sort of motivation, I choose the simplest low-energy path 100% of the time rather than some optimal compromise. Because I don't HAVE to walk to work now, I never walk period.
And I'm not saying this to be like "and that's why offices should be legally mandated!" But I also think people too often are dismissive of downsides and tradeoffs in a lot of situations.
I suspect it'll be great for the 90th+ percentile introverts and people with social anxiety disorder...but as a "mild" introvert who worked from home as a freelancer from 2012 -18, my experience is that while there were very real benefits, over time the downsides were less acute but much more damaging in total. The comfort zone can become its own sort of "dystopia."
Yes! And our local businesses are thriving all the more because we aren't buying lunches & last-minute dinner provisions nowhere near our own communities then getting home after they've closed. What were once places that were dead by day because all we did at home for 5 days a week was sleep have a chance to be places in which we actually live.
I live in Europe. I’m a semi-retired public sector worker. I still do some work for the public sector remotely. I travel around from place to place, and yes, because I work from ‘home’ wherever that is, I connect with new communities all the time. Home is wherever I hang my hat these days
I’m an introvert and having in person work has helped me come into contact with people that I otherwise wouldn’t have because my default mode is to stay at home all the time. I am not really great at making friends with neighbors or parents at school so I don’t really have another way of coming into contact with others. However, I don’t ever want to go back to being forced into the office 50 hours a week. I like my current hybrid life.
What worries me is those who are not replacing the less-than-ideal office socialization with anything else. I keep a pretty big social divide between my work life and my personal life, and I have many close friends outside the office. But some of them I didn't see for a year+ during the pandemic - their tight limits on where they would go, how long they would stay, and what they would do meant that we could only actually see each other when the stars aligned perfectly with their comfort levels. And many people's tight limits have not changed at all as circumstances have. They really are just spending all that time inside, working remotely and then socializing remotely.
If those of us able to work remotely were largely using the extra time to take back the social lives our commutes sucked away from us, I think I'd be all for it. Some people (like you!) definitely are doing that. But I've been actively seeking more outside-of-work socialization, and been alarmed at how many people just do not seem to be interested in it at all.
You know, I thought I was an introvert until the pandemic. I still need quite a bit of time alone to recharge my batteries, but I can't wait to get back to an office. Having the evenings to socialize with people I already know just isn't enough.
The powers that be are saying they will drop a lot of the restrictions in my state. The COVID realists are freaking out in the comments section of the Seattle Times.
I've helped raise kids. It's like getting children to give up their binkies or to stop thumb sucking.
I agree with you — being holed up is destructive in the ways you describe. I worry too.
Trying to conduct a social life online seems most destructive of all. But for certain types of work, I’m less convinced.
Being required to appear for work at a job you will do at a computer in some faraway office, spending two hours every day getting to and from, when you could do the work from a computer in your home, in comfortable clothes, with your comfortable furniture, with appealing and less expensive food and coffee nearby, with a fraction of the interruptions—well, that seems like a lot to ask people to give up, to sit in front of a computer far away.
Many of our jobs were already very disconnected from people. We just did them far away from home in a very inconvenient way.
You can see why people would prefer an extra couple hours in their day.
Maybe urging “office people” back for one day a week would be the best solution.
They also weren't good interactions. You have to be guarded so many different ways at work. Most companies don't like any sort of negativity or criticism. It's like cancel culture x10.
That’s the truth. I tend to be very plain spoken at work, not in a mean way but like “let’s keep this real, say what’s on our minds and get to a solution.” That’s construed as being sort of a troublemaker because we’re all supposed to be blandly agreeing with everyone else and making sure no one is ever sad and making sure everyone complies with nonsensical new policies without pushback or complaint and …basically you’re not supposed to say much at all. There’s a lot of hierarchical nonsense too, about not telling people at lower levels of the hierarchy what’s happening, even when there’s no reason to keep the info from them (other than in a vague “knowledge is power” sense and we’re therefore depriving them of that power). Work culture is insane and not healthy. It’s no way to run an organization and it’s no way to run human interactions. Do I miss putting on that show every day? Heck no. It’s emotionally draining.
Right, I hated the fact that I can only display 10% of normal human emotional range at work. I'm much happier now that I only have to act for a few zoom (initially typo'd zombie instead of zoom, thought y'all should know) calls every day
For me those dynamics have all been lifted and shifted into Zoom, where the sense of humanity is gone and the worst social dynamics are amplified by ten.
And maybe if I only had one or two zoom meetings a day I would feel differently. But instead I’m on zoom 8 hours a day and my brain is constantly fried.
I hope your solution of having people come in one day per week is indeed a workable solution to this. I'm about to start a new job, where the current expectation is 100% remote work, but which will eventually require at least 1 day/week in the office. I'm kind of excited for this though, even though it means a commute.
This is partially because I share a car with my wife, who has to drive into work (she works with kids). So with the 100% remote work, the default is that she uses the car, which makes it hard for me to get out, other than going for brief walks, given that we're in the middle of MN winter.
I really hope that commuting 1 day / week will be sufficient to let me connect with my new co-workers. I agree that the office isn't a good place for socializing and I'm so grateful to work from home, but I feel like working 100% remote all the time for the foreseeable future doesn't sound like a sustainable equilibrium for my relationships and mental health either. That is, unless we could normalize things like having friends over for our lunch hour, or meeting up with friends at coffee shops so that we could both work remotely but chit-chat in between bouts of work. I've done this a little bit during the past two years, but having it be more common would I think make remote work more sustainable.
Do you have any of those remote-work offices in your area, where you pay a monthly fee but can work there? I think a lot of those shut down in the pandemic for obvious reasons, but they were good places for self-employed people who wanted to be around other people. That might work for you although you’d still have the problem of getting there and back. Having my one car and two working adults is hard in many regions.
I haven't looked into one of those, but as you said, getting there and back would still be an issue. Although there is one that is relatively nearby, where it would be biking distance once its warmer out. So it might be worth looking into later in the Spring as something to try out.
Yes it worth it to keep trying stuff till you find something that works. When we lived in Boston, zero cars was fine. When we lived in various places in California, one car was a hardship. Good luck finding a good situation for yourself!
Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah we're in Minneapolis, right on the NE edge of the city, on the border with the first-ring suburb. So public transit is of limited utility - close to bus routes which are good for specific trips, but not very built out or reliable. Realistically a second car might need to happen eventually, but for now we're going to try to make it work. Cars are so dang expensive now anyways!
They are expensive! We did eventually get two after we moved to a place with horrible public trans. Our cars are 20 and 16 years old and getting less reliable, and we keep talking about getting a newer one but even used cars are really expensive. My boss was going to trade in one of his cars, and they offered him more than he paid originally for it. I never heard of that before.
My job is currently 2 mandatory days in-office per week, or more if you want. It suits me just fine. I do like going into the office and seeing co-workers, having spontaneous conversations, etc. But that doesn't occupy 40+ hours a week.
Aside from which, working from home frees up time to get domestic tasks done over the course of the day, which makes *actual* socialization in my free time a lot easier.
Your last paragraph is a great point. My best friend is an elementary school curriculum coordinator. I'm taking a hybrid online/in person class. If he could work from home (and we didn't have little kids at home, which we do--my 4yo and his 8 month old, who I babysit) then theoretically we could each be in the same location doing our separate jobs but in each other's comfortable presence.
We've been able to see one of our friends, who lives a bit far away, more often in the pandemic, because he can just work at our house for a bit, and then we hang out when everyone's done. I suspect at least *some* WFH knots (not everything, of course) would work themselves out eventually. It's certainly a large shift, and the development of new norms and cultural practices around it, developed organically, takes time. Two years might seem long, but it's really not, for that level of change. Plus, we're still in a weird state where all the pandemic-related changes seem partially temporary and partially indefinite at the same time. Our entire culture really seems to be in a massive state of flux that preceeded COVID but was also accelerated by it.
I'll never forget how at the very beginning when we really were on a true lockdown how busy with pedestrians our suburban neighborhood streets were. Kids on bikes, families out walking, people walking dogs. I saw more of my neighbors then than I ever had before or since. Which is what makes this discussion not binary, but situational. People who live in suburbs or exurbs are in many ways getting great benefits from WFH--and again, I stress, this is when their kids are able to attend in-person school.
Freddie's perspective makes more sense from the point of view of someone who genuinely values his job as a passion and source of meaning. For the rest of us who grind through a white-collar job to pay the bills, "work" is definitely an odd hill to die on as far as pointing out how disconnected our culture has become (a point I otherwise agree with, just not when it comes to sitting in an office all day).
"Many of our jobs were already very disconnected from people. We just did them far away from home in a very inconvenient way."
I think this has a lot to do with the disconnected perspectives on the issue. For many, the dystopia was in having to needlessly drive hours every day, alone, then be away from loved ones all day, simply to use a different computer. For those whose work and/or work-based interactions were more fulfilling in Before Times, it may be hard to understand why WFH matters to us so much. Likewise, for those who find WFH to be a major quality-of-life improvement, it can be hard to understand why some people miss in-person work.
Also important: I work for a union of state-employed professional employees, and it has proven infinitely harder to build solidarity among workers in the telework era. One of the keys to a strong union is is the conversation around the water cooler, or in the lunchroom or the hall: those conversations are now almost gone, and organizing has been incredibly difficult. By separating people, they can't as easily share stories about working conditions; just as important, they don't feel as connected to their coworkers. So in the last two years we've suddenly been sent into something of a tailspin as all our old strategies for organizing have been thrown out the window.
I am seeing this also in professional organizations. people want everything virtual but they are less inclined to connect that way as the years go by. Our winter conf. had over 14K attend pre Covid in 2020; first virtual in 2021 abt. 8K; this year virtual abt 2K.
New entrants know no one to be virtual with and the older ties are fraying.
As someone who wants the option to remain working from home: there's plenty of ways to interact with others, and work, for many of us, is one of the poorest. Not commuting gives me more time (and for me "commuting" means "an hour alone in a car"). Half of my coworkers are in India either way, and my job contains no interaction with the public or clients. Do I miss playing boards games over lunch with my work buddies? Sure. But if I weigh that against having more time at home, being able to sleep in a little longer, and being able to complete some chores like laundry or baking something complicated while at work...it's not even a contest.
I want more activities to drop restrictions and go back to in-person so I can see people, but work? Eh.
I often stay in my apartment, but that has little to do with covid and a lot more to do with social anxiety, which I've struggled with my whole life. I've screwed up and misread countless social cues and very easily feel deep shame and embarrassment. I don't date because I'm scared of rejection.
Having said all that, I still don't want "Lockdowns Until Zero COVID." People need socialization, even if I myself struggle with it.
I don't want endless lockdowns, for sure. I've hated that aspect of the pandemic, and it made my previously well-controlled agoraphobia come raging back, and I'm finally starting to retrieve a measure of normalcy on that front.
But I also don't want my husband forced back to a needless hours-a-day commute to work in an office environment he hates, for no particular reason. Socialization can come in a lot of forms, and work isn't even a particularly good one for many people.
Surely there must be a suitable compromise to be found. Whether we'll find it in our current polarized, balkanized state of affairs is another question, though, I guess.
This is so wonderfully put, and so true.
Ages back I heard a brief talk on "why it's so hard to make friends in your thirties." The answer was: Because in high school and college, you spend a lot of time moving around a space big enough to put you in contact with too many people to actually *know*, but small enough that you can expect to spontaneously meet people multiple times. And our relationships are dependent as much on multiple, spontaneous meetings as on our compatibility of interests. People show you themselves slowly over time, you learn who and how to be around them by repetition, and eventually you end up with the rich array of interlocking, vaguely-concentric friend-and-acquaintance circles many of us remember from our school days. The spontaneity, the tedium, the awkwardness of those first few hangouts, the slow, invisible settling of someone into one or another sphere of your life -- I feel like people treat this as suboptimal, somehow, energy lost to heat in the friend-making transaction, when in fact this is all friend-making has ever been.
Your point about capitalism rings intensely true. Not to derail further into culture war stuff, but I see this obsession with transaction in descriptions of tough conversations as "emotional labor," or especially in the way introversion/extraversion are framed right now. I've literally had people give me multi-page written guides on how to interact with them without exhausting them, because it's more efficient to provide me with the rules up front than to do the simple, messy, trust-building work of telling me what they need in the moment, or - god forbid - occasionally being a little socially exhausted without immediately ascribing it to some inherent flaw in the interaction.
I gain absolutely nothing from the vast majority of tiny interactions I have day to day, and yet a year without them was the most miserable I can remember. It's a facet of human life that simply can't be quantified.
It’s always done with really helpful intentions, too - like, “Don’t worry! This will make it so *you* don’t have to feel anxious about whether you’re doing it right!” It’s a kind of social anxiety that assumes identical anxiety on my part. I don’t know how I could make someone in that place comprehend that I wasn’t anxious at all until I was given a list of rules to memorize.
I think, for many, this is simply not the way their workplaces operate anymore, even before COVID.
Around half of my coworkers are in India. I experience them only as emails sent in the middle of the night and very occasional appearances in team meetings. Churn is also constant in tech--people rarely stay with a company for more than two or three years. Tech companies are always desperate for workers, so headhunting is rampant. You're constantly losing people. I've been at my current job for not quite five years (after a bunch of 2-year stints at other companies). Of the team I started with, only four (including me) of about thirty remain. There isn't time for real friendships to form.
It's a nice dream, but it wasn't COVID that took it away.
I agree with your point, but I wasn't actually thinking about the workplace. I genuinely don't mean that to sound snide, I'm clarifying because the comments here mostly are about the workplace and I didn't specify that I was thinking more broadly. My workplace, for example, even before it went remote, was only 5 people, of whom many were not in the office every day - it's really not a place where I can get many small, incidental social interactions of the kind I described. The other 50ish people who work for the org work in different cities, so I only see them on Zoom and by email. I'm fortunate in that I like my coworkers and am happier when some of us are in the office together, chatting briefly in the kitchen or sticking our heads into each other's offices to ask questions. But that isn't something I've had for years and I don't think I'll get it back.
When I do get that kind of lovely, casual spontaneity, it's outside of work. I'm lucky in that my city is well-organized for it - a nice downtown core of small businesses, plenty of coffeeshops, not really a small-town feel but one where if you're out walking around you'll run into people you know or kind of know, you get the simple pleasure of seeing your usual barista, etc. It takes time to build that, and I haven't been able to find it in every place I've lived.
To a greater extent as I get older I've had to build it myself. Most my good friends in this town, I didn't hit it off with right away - we met once incidentally, at a gathering hosted by others or through a networking event, and then we had four or five fine-but-not-especially-thrilling planned hangouts over the course of a few months, and then one night we decide to invite them to do something on short notice, and then they ask us if we can drive over to let their dogs out because their car broke down and they'll be home late, and then we celebrate someone's birthday together, and somehow a year later the awkward first hangouts have turned into a real, close friendship.
So, yeah, that's the kind of interaction I'm trying to get at, and I definitely don't think this is something all or most people can get from the workplace these days. I worry more about people who see these kinds of interactions, period, as dead weight they can shed. I also worry for people who actually really want those kinds of interactions, the kind who would type "why can't I make friends after college?" into Google, but are losing the ability to seek and instigate the kinds of spontaneous interactions needed to form friendships.
I take classes at a community college, and I also us the Y situated on the border of a very low income and a pretty high income neighborhood. The interactions are very much like what we saw on Community. But those aren't workplaces. If you're a Virtual, the people you're working with are probably pretty similar whether you're in the office or not.
Very very true and I see it my industry as well (banking).
A fellow lawyer and I agree with all of this. Plus, law is a stressful occupation, and having colleagues to collaborate with and bounce ideas off of not only helps you be a better lawyer, it alleviates some of the stress as well.
I'm also in law, though legal aid and not a big firm. I think what you are saying has some truth to it, but it depends too much on the specific person and their specific supervision and training. I've seen tremendous success stories and surprising failures since the pandemic, which is par for the course anyways.
Spontaneous interactions are valuable, but I've had a much easier time concentrating on writing briefs at home rather than in my office, and also a much better time doing virtual hearings where witnesses don't have to waste a day sitting in a courtroom until they testify and where everyone can be looking at the same piece of evidence on their screen. Eliminating the commute goes a long way towards getting my life back in a profession where hours billed doesn't necessarily equal time spent in the office. Plus, our clients sure don't miss us billing for traveling to hearings etc. Hopefully some degree of balance and flexibility becomes the norm, as you say.
I get that, but I don't think there is societal cost. Humans are social and most people are simply not going to stay inside their homes forever for the same reason people don't go around touching hot stoves.
Loneliness also hurts, which was my point.
I remain unconvinced that there is any sort of long-term cost to some percentage of knowledge workers working from home full-time. Paradigm shifts are often painful and confusing, and we're in the middle of one, so what is happening right now is not going to be the set point.
I don't know, you could say this about anything. I don't have children and will never have them. Should I be criticized for not having children because there is a societal cost to having a significant percentage of people not having children?
I used to say one of the greatest places in NYC was the TGI Fridays bar in Penn Station on the LIRR concourse because you had every slice of life jammed in there together, finance guys next to construction guys next to who knows what. Where exactly do you get that from what you described?
I'm not sure what this has to do with my comment. In any event, I lived in New York for most of my adult life and never stepped foot into the TGI Friday's in Penn Station but I certainly interacted with a great variety of people just being out and about in the city.
All this time, we've been free from influenza. We're gonna get clobbered when we go back.
I couldn't agree more. It's not healthy.
I'm cool with an optional return to offices. I don't want to be forced back by nosy bosses though.
Also many of us work for companies that are HQed in a different city, or who simply don't have offices large enough to fit the whole workforce. I'd rather not lose my job to support the local dry cleaner.
Yes. To me there is a distinction between going back to the office and going out for human interaction/socializing, in general. Being holed up forever is definitely not great. But the office specifically is its own ball of twine, and can be about many other things, including control over employees and the 'butts in seats' style of measuring productivity.
I hated, hated hated hated being stuck in an open plan office trying to get work done surrounded by the noise of 50 other people.
I'll take – and keep – WFH forever, thank you.
Same for my husband. He gets a lot more work done now that he can focus, without constant distractions and random interruptions.
The left/liberal/blue state whatever neuroticism is really distressing. Different than the other side but both are symptoms of a decline of broad social group engagement. Commute to work, buy a coffee, take your mask off outside, buy a lunch, say hello to a stranger. It’s good for you and it’s good for us all!
I teach high school and obviously cell phones are a constant issue. But the thing is - kids used to use them to actually communicate with each other on the sly! But now they're all diving down into these little algorithmically-curated hard drives that the internet has created for them and placed in their pocket. They're interacting with brands and videos and games that have no connection to a real person on the other end. And they're doing this stuff all day, even when they're around other people! I had a long chat with a student a few weeks ago whose average daily screentime is nearly 13 hours. She's not happy. She hates it. She feels isolated. But she can't stop.
I'm worried too.
If there were a referendum in my state to ban social media for anyone under 18 (or even 21), I'd vote for it. Net negative in sum, imo.
The sponsors in early television land who used to say, “Don’t touch that dial!,” could only have dreamed of audiences as captive as we are now.
I see the same thing happening with my middle-schoolers. A bunch of 7th and 8th graders who have the social skills of 3rd graders and have fancier phones than most teachers (I teach in a private school in a rather privileged area).
Yeah, starting about three years ago (pre-pandemic) I was shocked to see that kids were WATCHING VIDEOS in my class. I took the phones away, but that was just a whole different level.
Our district has refused to allow high school buildings to take away cell phones. No particular rationale, though they are constantly talking about equity which is weird since the students who spend the most time on their cell phones are generally the ones who are furthest behind. The ones on grade level are more willing to have a conversation with you about whatever once they’ve finished assignments.
Yeah I mean I don't want to get into a debate about school policies, I guess my concern is that these things are so damned isolating, and kids are isolating from each other even when they're in the same physical space. Disconcerting.
Damn, that sucks. I had a hard rule when teaching college math - no cell phone use in class. It was on the syllabus, and I tossed many non-believers for failure to adhere. One time this kid says "but I was talking to my dad about ... ". I just pointed at the door and told him he might need some privacy then.
Sounds like your district is too coddling, but I guess that's the environment we're in.
Working remotely has enabled me to connect deeply with my neighbours in a way I never did while commuting. I take in parcels, wave to retirees while walking the dog at lunchtimes and so on. I’m an introvert. It may seem strange to you, but the world has changed in a way that’s much better for us. I’ve lived my life in a dystopian world of open plan, shared offices and forced social exchanges with colleagues. Don’t fret. We’ll be fine, and you have the evenings to socialise :-)
Yeah, agreed, modern technological convenience is a double edged sword. The technology that solves problems with Zoom creates the problems of Netflix. 10% of people will use their new free time to finally pursue hobbies they always wanted to; 90% will look at more Instagram.
The problem can of course be solved by some hybrid solution like "people have offices and it's optional to go in for people who want to." But in my experience, in most things that require any sort of motivation, I choose the simplest low-energy path 100% of the time rather than some optimal compromise. Because I don't HAVE to walk to work now, I never walk period.
And I'm not saying this to be like "and that's why offices should be legally mandated!" But I also think people too often are dismissive of downsides and tradeoffs in a lot of situations.
Removing the office is just going to give them the opportunity to make the rest of the world an office.
I suspect it'll be great for the 90th+ percentile introverts and people with social anxiety disorder...but as a "mild" introvert who worked from home as a freelancer from 2012 -18, my experience is that while there were very real benefits, over time the downsides were less acute but much more damaging in total. The comfort zone can become its own sort of "dystopia."
Not sure. I’m far from 90+. But this way, I can spent my precious social energy connecting with my friends and neighbours. I’ve really loved it
"The comfort zone can become its own sort of 'dystopia.'"
Oof. Amen.
Yes! And our local businesses are thriving all the more because we aren't buying lunches & last-minute dinner provisions nowhere near our own communities then getting home after they've closed. What were once places that were dead by day because all we did at home for 5 days a week was sleep have a chance to be places in which we actually live.
I live in Europe. I’m a semi-retired public sector worker. I still do some work for the public sector remotely. I travel around from place to place, and yes, because I work from ‘home’ wherever that is, I connect with new communities all the time. Home is wherever I hang my hat these days
I’m an introvert and having in person work has helped me come into contact with people that I otherwise wouldn’t have because my default mode is to stay at home all the time. I am not really great at making friends with neighbors or parents at school so I don’t really have another way of coming into contact with others. However, I don’t ever want to go back to being forced into the office 50 hours a week. I like my current hybrid life.
What worries me is those who are not replacing the less-than-ideal office socialization with anything else. I keep a pretty big social divide between my work life and my personal life, and I have many close friends outside the office. But some of them I didn't see for a year+ during the pandemic - their tight limits on where they would go, how long they would stay, and what they would do meant that we could only actually see each other when the stars aligned perfectly with their comfort levels. And many people's tight limits have not changed at all as circumstances have. They really are just spending all that time inside, working remotely and then socializing remotely.
If those of us able to work remotely were largely using the extra time to take back the social lives our commutes sucked away from us, I think I'd be all for it. Some people (like you!) definitely are doing that. But I've been actively seeking more outside-of-work socialization, and been alarmed at how many people just do not seem to be interested in it at all.
You know, I thought I was an introvert until the pandemic. I still need quite a bit of time alone to recharge my batteries, but I can't wait to get back to an office. Having the evenings to socialize with people I already know just isn't enough.
The powers that be are saying they will drop a lot of the restrictions in my state. The COVID realists are freaking out in the comments section of the Seattle Times.
I've helped raise kids. It's like getting children to give up their binkies or to stop thumb sucking.
I agree with you — being holed up is destructive in the ways you describe. I worry too.
Trying to conduct a social life online seems most destructive of all. But for certain types of work, I’m less convinced.
Being required to appear for work at a job you will do at a computer in some faraway office, spending two hours every day getting to and from, when you could do the work from a computer in your home, in comfortable clothes, with your comfortable furniture, with appealing and less expensive food and coffee nearby, with a fraction of the interruptions—well, that seems like a lot to ask people to give up, to sit in front of a computer far away.
Many of our jobs were already very disconnected from people. We just did them far away from home in a very inconvenient way.
You can see why people would prefer an extra couple hours in their day.
Maybe urging “office people” back for one day a week would be the best solution.
They also weren't good interactions. You have to be guarded so many different ways at work. Most companies don't like any sort of negativity or criticism. It's like cancel culture x10.
That’s the truth. I tend to be very plain spoken at work, not in a mean way but like “let’s keep this real, say what’s on our minds and get to a solution.” That’s construed as being sort of a troublemaker because we’re all supposed to be blandly agreeing with everyone else and making sure no one is ever sad and making sure everyone complies with nonsensical new policies without pushback or complaint and …basically you’re not supposed to say much at all. There’s a lot of hierarchical nonsense too, about not telling people at lower levels of the hierarchy what’s happening, even when there’s no reason to keep the info from them (other than in a vague “knowledge is power” sense and we’re therefore depriving them of that power). Work culture is insane and not healthy. It’s no way to run an organization and it’s no way to run human interactions. Do I miss putting on that show every day? Heck no. It’s emotionally draining.
Right, I hated the fact that I can only display 10% of normal human emotional range at work. I'm much happier now that I only have to act for a few zoom (initially typo'd zombie instead of zoom, thought y'all should know) calls every day
Hahaha!
"Zombie Calls" would make an awesome band name.
For me those dynamics have all been lifted and shifted into Zoom, where the sense of humanity is gone and the worst social dynamics are amplified by ten.
This.
And maybe if I only had one or two zoom meetings a day I would feel differently. But instead I’m on zoom 8 hours a day and my brain is constantly fried.
I hope your solution of having people come in one day per week is indeed a workable solution to this. I'm about to start a new job, where the current expectation is 100% remote work, but which will eventually require at least 1 day/week in the office. I'm kind of excited for this though, even though it means a commute.
This is partially because I share a car with my wife, who has to drive into work (she works with kids). So with the 100% remote work, the default is that she uses the car, which makes it hard for me to get out, other than going for brief walks, given that we're in the middle of MN winter.
I really hope that commuting 1 day / week will be sufficient to let me connect with my new co-workers. I agree that the office isn't a good place for socializing and I'm so grateful to work from home, but I feel like working 100% remote all the time for the foreseeable future doesn't sound like a sustainable equilibrium for my relationships and mental health either. That is, unless we could normalize things like having friends over for our lunch hour, or meeting up with friends at coffee shops so that we could both work remotely but chit-chat in between bouts of work. I've done this a little bit during the past two years, but having it be more common would I think make remote work more sustainable.
Do you have any of those remote-work offices in your area, where you pay a monthly fee but can work there? I think a lot of those shut down in the pandemic for obvious reasons, but they were good places for self-employed people who wanted to be around other people. That might work for you although you’d still have the problem of getting there and back. Having my one car and two working adults is hard in many regions.
I haven't looked into one of those, but as you said, getting there and back would still be an issue. Although there is one that is relatively nearby, where it would be biking distance once its warmer out. So it might be worth looking into later in the Spring as something to try out.
Yes it worth it to keep trying stuff till you find something that works. When we lived in Boston, zero cars was fine. When we lived in various places in California, one car was a hardship. Good luck finding a good situation for yourself!
Thanks for the encouragement! Yeah we're in Minneapolis, right on the NE edge of the city, on the border with the first-ring suburb. So public transit is of limited utility - close to bus routes which are good for specific trips, but not very built out or reliable. Realistically a second car might need to happen eventually, but for now we're going to try to make it work. Cars are so dang expensive now anyways!
They are expensive! We did eventually get two after we moved to a place with horrible public trans. Our cars are 20 and 16 years old and getting less reliable, and we keep talking about getting a newer one but even used cars are really expensive. My boss was going to trade in one of his cars, and they offered him more than he paid originally for it. I never heard of that before.
My job is currently 2 mandatory days in-office per week, or more if you want. It suits me just fine. I do like going into the office and seeing co-workers, having spontaneous conversations, etc. But that doesn't occupy 40+ hours a week.
Aside from which, working from home frees up time to get domestic tasks done over the course of the day, which makes *actual* socialization in my free time a lot easier.
Your last paragraph is a great point. My best friend is an elementary school curriculum coordinator. I'm taking a hybrid online/in person class. If he could work from home (and we didn't have little kids at home, which we do--my 4yo and his 8 month old, who I babysit) then theoretically we could each be in the same location doing our separate jobs but in each other's comfortable presence.
We've been able to see one of our friends, who lives a bit far away, more often in the pandemic, because he can just work at our house for a bit, and then we hang out when everyone's done. I suspect at least *some* WFH knots (not everything, of course) would work themselves out eventually. It's certainly a large shift, and the development of new norms and cultural practices around it, developed organically, takes time. Two years might seem long, but it's really not, for that level of change. Plus, we're still in a weird state where all the pandemic-related changes seem partially temporary and partially indefinite at the same time. Our entire culture really seems to be in a massive state of flux that preceeded COVID but was also accelerated by it.
I'll never forget how at the very beginning when we really were on a true lockdown how busy with pedestrians our suburban neighborhood streets were. Kids on bikes, families out walking, people walking dogs. I saw more of my neighbors then than I ever had before or since. Which is what makes this discussion not binary, but situational. People who live in suburbs or exurbs are in many ways getting great benefits from WFH--and again, I stress, this is when their kids are able to attend in-person school.
Freddie's perspective makes more sense from the point of view of someone who genuinely values his job as a passion and source of meaning. For the rest of us who grind through a white-collar job to pay the bills, "work" is definitely an odd hill to die on as far as pointing out how disconnected our culture has become (a point I otherwise agree with, just not when it comes to sitting in an office all day).
"Many of our jobs were already very disconnected from people. We just did them far away from home in a very inconvenient way."
I think this has a lot to do with the disconnected perspectives on the issue. For many, the dystopia was in having to needlessly drive hours every day, alone, then be away from loved ones all day, simply to use a different computer. For those whose work and/or work-based interactions were more fulfilling in Before Times, it may be hard to understand why WFH matters to us so much. Likewise, for those who find WFH to be a major quality-of-life improvement, it can be hard to understand why some people miss in-person work.
I agree with every sentence of this; and also, when I think about how many hours of my life I spent commuting, I never want to go back to the office.
Also important: I work for a union of state-employed professional employees, and it has proven infinitely harder to build solidarity among workers in the telework era. One of the keys to a strong union is is the conversation around the water cooler, or in the lunchroom or the hall: those conversations are now almost gone, and organizing has been incredibly difficult. By separating people, they can't as easily share stories about working conditions; just as important, they don't feel as connected to their coworkers. So in the last two years we've suddenly been sent into something of a tailspin as all our old strategies for organizing have been thrown out the window.
I am seeing this also in professional organizations. people want everything virtual but they are less inclined to connect that way as the years go by. Our winter conf. had over 14K attend pre Covid in 2020; first virtual in 2021 abt. 8K; this year virtual abt 2K.
New entrants know no one to be virtual with and the older ties are fraying.
As someone who wants the option to remain working from home: there's plenty of ways to interact with others, and work, for many of us, is one of the poorest. Not commuting gives me more time (and for me "commuting" means "an hour alone in a car"). Half of my coworkers are in India either way, and my job contains no interaction with the public or clients. Do I miss playing boards games over lunch with my work buddies? Sure. But if I weigh that against having more time at home, being able to sleep in a little longer, and being able to complete some chores like laundry or baking something complicated while at work...it's not even a contest.
I want more activities to drop restrictions and go back to in-person so I can see people, but work? Eh.
I often stay in my apartment, but that has little to do with covid and a lot more to do with social anxiety, which I've struggled with my whole life. I've screwed up and misread countless social cues and very easily feel deep shame and embarrassment. I don't date because I'm scared of rejection.
Having said all that, I still don't want "Lockdowns Until Zero COVID." People need socialization, even if I myself struggle with it.
I don't want endless lockdowns, for sure. I've hated that aspect of the pandemic, and it made my previously well-controlled agoraphobia come raging back, and I'm finally starting to retrieve a measure of normalcy on that front.
But I also don't want my husband forced back to a needless hours-a-day commute to work in an office environment he hates, for no particular reason. Socialization can come in a lot of forms, and work isn't even a particularly good one for many people.
Surely there must be a suitable compromise to be found. Whether we'll find it in our current polarized, balkanized state of affairs is another question, though, I guess.
“I understand that I’m weird in wishing I had an option to not work from home.”
I don’t think that’s weird at all. A lot of people are beginning to feel like the walls are closing in on them.