Corporate America seems confounded as to why many of its workers are not going gently back into the office.
I have to say some of my best work experiences, best work ideas and best work in general happened at the office. But I doubt there’s an office in the world that could lure me back on a daily basis.
In 2013, my company sent us all home to work remotely. I cried for a week. I missed my colleagues. I missed being a part of the “machine.” I even missed my desk.
And then realized, “Wow, I love this.”
I’ve been working from home ever since. So, when the COVID shutdown mandated almost everyone else do the same, I found myself reassuring others that working from the most comfortable place you know can be a gamechanger. Less distraction and more privacy only made my job easier.
It’s no mystery to me why creative people don’t want to go back into that boring, overly structured, “Joe Versus the Volcano” routine. In fact, it’s simple: Working from home is efficient, cheaper and empowering.
You can turn that 20-40-60-minute commute into productivity. No clogging the highways, no searching for parking. No maneuvering an umbrella or galoshes across slippery pavement.
Sure, you have to spring for higher electric and toilet paper bills, but you save on gasoline and car repairs. You can make your own coffee and drink it all. There’s no pressure to be fashionable, no need to carry extra shoes or change out the purse with the season. And dry cleaners? What dry cleaners?
Working at home can be healthier. No suspicious looks because you coughed. No COVID PTSD because someone else coughed. No worrying about everyone else’s flu shot standing, booster opinions, or cooties in general.
There’s less grief. No arguing with the office Packers fan the morning after another Bears loss. No evil-eyeing your pod mate’s political sticker. No worrying your peanut brittle will send someone into anaphylactic shock. And no clocking the smokers’ break times while we toil away.
Mass shootings. Ugh. Need I say more?
And there’s all that bathroom privacy.
Yes, working from home is progress. It makes life easier, just as no longer having to save coins for tolls or wrestling a foldable roadmap makes life easier.
When you’ve found something good, it’s hard to go back to the way it was.
That said, when I look back on my career, so many of the highlights – almost all, in fact — involve coworkers. Election night madness, which always came with pizza. Convening around a giant table to talk about how to cover a murder, the recession or being told we live in “the fattest city in America.” The energy and ideas that came out of those sessions were electric.
I loved collaborating on headlines, page designs and editorial ideas. I loved the jokes, the updates, even the sarcasm that others couldn’t help hurling your way.
Of course, there was the drudgery. Long hours spent watching the clock. There were office curmudgeons and bullies.
But there also were sparkling personalities — guys who were in garage bands on the weekends, women who loved to cook and share their wares, world travelers, artists, deep thinkers and a certain sports editor who yelled “Mercy” every time you told him something mildly shocking.
We gathered over good news and bad. To celebrate and grieve. We were a family of sorts.
And there were so many shenanigans: The group lunches at Beefy’s, Panera, the local Thai place and Ford City Mall during Christmas time. Once, a bunch of us lunched at Taste of Chicago. When the company announced massive layoffs, some who shall remain nameless piled into a car, stopped and bought cigarettes, tried to smoke them out the window, coughing hard while we drove around processing the news.
There were silly things, too. Salsas contests. Match the pet to its owner photo quests. Round-robin stories.
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It seems that when people are planted in a single setting, creativity can’t help but bloom. Ideas are formed, problems are solved and jokes are cracked throughout the process.
It’s human nature.
That said, so is the need for balance. To strike that, perhaps we need to take a tip from working moms.
When my kids were young, my whole existence was about the pursuit of balance. I had two worlds I loved — work and home — and I needed to be my best at both.
Back then, most working moms sought “flex-time.” Maybe now, the world is ready for “flex-place” too.
I doubt workers will ever go willingly back to dress codes that require the use of an iron or long commutes to complete work that can easily be done at home.
They’ve found and embraced another way, but a balance can still be achieved, face time can still be accomplished, creativity can still be sparked, brains can still be stormed and milestones can still be made — by meeting in person less frequently.
Allowing a worker to split his week between the office and home can make for an employee who feels empowered, connected, grateful, less stressed and more eager to see coworkers and bosses.
And we all know a happy worker is a worker who gets the job done.
Donna Vickroy is an award-winning reporter, editor and columnist who worked for the Daily Southtown for 38 years.