Re: return to office
[Company name] wishes to inform you that we’re now implementing a [full-time, hybrid] return to the office
Eventually, you will need to print something. Perhaps a proof of address for a government department still operating on Windows XP or a boarding pass for a low-cost airline. And when that moment arrives, your printer will betray you. The network connection will be lost, the paper will jam or the ink will run low. And you will understand that Basil Fawlty was guilty merely of stoic under-reaction when he gave his red Austin 1100 Countryman a “damn good thrashing”.
It is often only when a machine misbehaves at the worst possible time that we remember just how important a quality ‘reliability’ is — and how rare. The same is true in people. Many of us might wish to be remembered as kind, loving, compassionate, loyal, successful, or inspirational. But ‘reliable’ is rarely high up on that list.
Indeed, to call someone ‘reliable’ confers a whiff of condescension, sitting just a half step above ‘dependable’ — which is practically code for ‘dull’. No one wants to be seated next to that person at a wedding. And yet, in real life, someone who does what they say, who gets things done and who is there when you need them? These are S-tier qualities.
Zoom out
As traditional news media continues to atrophy, and Google AI summaries replace SEO-driven articles that tell you what time the football or EastEnders starts (beneath several layers of pop-ups and meaningless guff), there remains one guarantee of traffic: work from home / return to office stories. If you report on it, they will click.
It’s all rather tedious. Some people like working from home, others don’t. Some people can work from home, others can’t. Some people think it’s good for productivity, others fear it’s bad for culture. Or younger workers. Or high streets. Or commercial rental yields. For some bosses, the very fact that some employees like it is evidence that it must be bad. And views appear to be hardening.
Amid a cooling jobs market, the idea of a golden age of remote working wrought by the pandemic may prove fleeting. Only yesterday, The Financial Times reported that almost half of UK businesses expect their staff to turn up to their place of work “all the time”, according to research by the British Chambers of Commerce. Meanwhile, some who purchased Covid pads in the countryside, expecting only to have to make occasional visits to the office, are now being forced to sell at a discount.
Earlier this year Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, America’s largest bank, responded to a petition signed by more than 1,000 employees that demanded the company maintain its hybrid work model:
“I don’t care how many people sign that f**king petition. Don’t give me the sh*t that ‘work from home Friday’ works.”
He later apologised for the bad language.
Productivity foregone
Clearly, the work from home debate touches even the best-remunerated of nerves1. At its core, it isn’t really about where people sit, but whether we believe anyone can be trusted to do their job even when no one is watching. This question of reliability is what makes the debate feel so personal and at least partly explains its refusal to die. Sure, commuting can be miserable. But being treated like a miscreant is far worse.
I have written a daily newsletter, first for the Evening Standard and now on Substack, since December 2020. The vast majority of those more than 1,000 editions have been sent from anywhere but the office: airports, aeroplanes, trains and buses, hotels, Airbnbs, beaches and ski slopes, doctor’s offices, cafes, the South of France and Sydney’s Inner West. Occasionally, I even managed to write them at home.
This, I accept, is not necessarily scalable. Clearly, a newsletter such as this does not require vast amounts of collaboration with colleagues, let alone herding customers or farmyard animals. Workplace culture at Lines To Take has yet to fully emerge, but I am keeping an eye on it.
I have always been at my most productive and creative when freed from the shackles of an ergonomic chair and the smells too terrible to name emanating from the communal microwave. Ordering me back to an office would only make me less productive.
This is not a morality tale in which I am the dashing hero. Daily deadlines have meant that my bosses would know pretty much instantaneously whether I had clocked off early or not. And even if they didn’t, I feel compelled to complete whatever task is placed in front of me if only to ward off the shame and nausea that come with prevarication.
Conversely, there are people who want to work from home despite the fact that they would get less done. Either due to the nature of their job, or because they are not reliable employees. Managers are not always wrong to be suspicious. Not everyone is self-motivated. Some people will genuinely use working from home as an excuse to do as little as possible And in plenty of jobs, it is not always obvious what the key metrics of success even are.
Much safer to haul everyone back in the office. Productivity gains foregone are much harder to price than productivity lost. And by the way, if you are in the market for a properly reliable printer, take the FT’s Sarah O’Connor’s advice.
This hasn’t even touched on issues of childcare, neurodivergence, accessibility etc.
Basil was thrashing the wrong end of the car. He needed to hit the petrol pump, under the back of the car. Many 1100 owners kept something to bash the pump in the boot.
Retired now, but when working, I found I could engage in non-productive activities when at the office just as easily as at home. Chatting to colleagues about non-work related matters probably took as much time as walking the dog when working from home.