{"id":4159,"date":"2023-07-18T21:21:12","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T02:21:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=4159"},"modified":"2023-07-18T21:21:15","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T02:21:15","slug":"why-the-remote-work-debate-stays-so-heated","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/07\/18\/why-the-remote-work-debate-stays-so-heated\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the Remote-Work Debate Stays So Heated"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Atlantic<\/a> The conversation often foregrounds large-scale issues such as productivity and company culture, but the question of where an employee works is intensely personal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Better Together?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the summer of 2021, I started going back to the office. It was not the allure of watercooler chatter or the promise of juiced-up productivity that pulled me in. At the time, I just really wanted to sit in the AC. It was June; it was hot. Access to a desk in a freezing-cold Midtown tower\u2014a far cry from my living room, which tended to get steamy on 90-degree Brooklyn days\u2014seemed like a major perk. I was living with roommates, was vaccinated, and had no child-care duties. Each morning, I strapped on my mask and packed my backpack with canisters of coffee and sandwiches to sustain me through the day. I often felt better when I got home: When you\u2019re going into an office, I found, it\u2019s harder to have a day where nothing happens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My desire to return to a routine that involved leaving my home was inspired, in part, by my now-colleague Ellen Cushing\u2019s 2021\u00a0Atlantic<\/em>\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0about what the monotony of the pandemic was doing to our brain. \u201cSometimes I imagine myself as a Sim, a diamond-shaped cursor hovering above my head as I go about my day. Tasks appear, and I do them. Mealtimes come, and I eat. Needs arise, and I meet them,\u201d she writes in one memorable passage. In another, she quotes an expert saying that \u201cenvironmental enrichment\u201d\u2014seeing new people, observing new things on a commute\u2014is good for our brain\u2019s plasticity. After reading the article in March 2021, I became fixated on the idea that observing random humans on my commute would keep my mind sharp. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the fall came around, and so did more of my colleagues. It was great to see them. It was also great, sometimes, to return to the relative solitude of my home and take walks in Prospect Park at midday. I was lucky to have that flexibility. Now that I work for The Atlantic<\/em>, I go into the office almost every day. I have enjoyed meeting new people and, again, sitting in the industrial-grade AC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve given you this narration of my personal experience because, for all the talk of productivity and metrics and company culture, the topic of returning to the office is intensely personal. My needs and desires, for a variety of reasons relating to my age, finances, circumstances, health situation, and lifestyle, might be very different from those of workers who fall elsewhere on any of those axes. Some working parents have said they might value flexibility at school-pickup time. Some workers of color have raised the benefit of being free from\u00a0in-office microaggressions<\/a>. Recent college graduates may want to go into the office to make friends. And of course, not all workers are able to work remotely. The physical space in which one works, or hopes to work, intersects with one\u2019s most personal choices. It collides with and reveals what people value most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Atlantic The conversation often foregrounds large-scale issues such as productivity and company culture, but the question of where an employee works is intensely personal. Better Together? In the summer of 2021, I started going back to the office. It was not the allure of watercooler chatter or the promise of juiced-up productivity that pulled […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-psychological-and-sociological-impact"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4160,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4159\/revisions\/4160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}