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Returning to the Office Sparks Anxiety and Dread for Some

By Julie Creswell and Peter Eavis New York Times April 2, 2021

A year after the pandemic abruptly forced tens of millions of people to start working from home, disrupting family lives and derailing careers, employers are now getting ready to bring workers back to offices. But for some people the prospect of returning to their desks is provoking anxiety, dread and even panic, rather than relief.

Martin Jaakola, a software engineer in Minneapolis, never wants to go back to the office and is willing to quit if the medical device company he works for says he must. “I can’t honestly say that there’s anything about the office that I miss,” Mr. Jaakola, 29, said. People like Mr. Jaakola say last year proves that people do not need to sit close together to be productive. Working at home is superior, they say, because they are not wasting hours in traffic or on crowded trains. Far better to spend that time with family or baking sourdough bread, nor do they have to worry about getting sick.

Today, many companies are falling over themselves to appeal to office-reluctant workers. Salesforce says its work-from-anywhere approach would “unlock new growth opportunities” and “drive greater equality.” Spotify describes its flexible work policy as a “jewel in our Talent Attraction crown.” Target, Ford Motor Co. and PricewaterhouseCoopers say they are going to let office workers work remotely more frequently. Even Wall Street banks where employees often while away hours at their desks to be seen by the boss are preaching the gospel of flexibility. JPMorgan Chase is telling some workers they can cycle in and out of the office.

How long will employers remain flexible? When the pandemic loosens its grip, bosses could demand that people return to the office immediately. Some leaders, including Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, have already called people back. Amazon told employees on Wednesday that it expected “to return to an office-centric culture”

Amy C. Edmondson, a Harvard Business School professor who studies human interaction, has been advising financial firms, consumer products businesses and universities. She said many executives are afraid that they’ll lose their best people if they are not flexible. But she said some managers might now be going too far. Teams need to get together to get stuff done.

But many employees said that the pandemic gave them free time they don’t want to give up. Several people said they felt less beat down because they were not spending time in cars and on trains or buses. “I’m not excited to go back to the office,” said Tracie Smith, who has an hour commute each way to her job as an analyst at California State University, Fullerton. For the first time in decades, Ms. Smith, 49, said she felt rested because she’s not getting up early to commute. Over breaks or during lunch, she did her laundry or grocery shopping, rather than using up precious evening hours. While she has, at times, been lonely and is looking forward to socializing with colleagues and students, she doesn’t want life to return to its previous grind.

“I feel like a whole person. I am living an actual life every single day, instead of trying to cram it into a day-and-a-half on the weekend,” Ms. Smith said. “It’s definitely making me re-evaluate my work-life situation.”

Plenty of people are eager to return to the office, especially younger workers who feel they have more to lose by being away. Sheeta Verma, 21, a recent graduate, was hired early last year before the pandemic shut down the offices of her tech firm Neurable, based in Boston. “Being the youngest in the office, I don’t get to connect with my colleagues and it’s important that I connect, to get to know them, understand their mind set, how they learn and how they grew their careers,” Ms. Verma said.

Yet, even Ms. Verma wants her employer, who hasn’t yet set a date for a broad return of employees to the office, to let her work from home some of the time, a hope shared by experienced workers like Deborah Paredes, who works at the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. Ms. Paredes commuted one hour each way from her home in Palmyra, N.J., to her desk before the pandemic. She is not interested in resuming that trek daily. Ms. Paredes also believes she got a lot more done working at home. A self-described introvert who is easily distracted, she liked working at her own pace without standard office interruptions. “I can wake up, go for a jog and be working by 8:30 and sometimes I’ve worked until 10 at night and I don’t feel resentful about that because I’m on a roll,” she said. “But there’s no way I could have been in the office until 10 p.m. working.”

The ability to focus on work without distractions from other employees is the main reason Mr. Jaakola, the Minneapolis software engineer, does not want to return to the office. He admits he finds dealing with other people kind of “draining,” and hopes his company won’t force him to return to the office, even for a few days a week. “My sense is that my company will try to go back to how things were before and I think they’ll quickly realize there are a lot of remote possibilities out there for us,” he said. “If they try to force us to come in without a legitimate reason, I can get another job if I don’t want to come in.”

1. Read the essay above.

2. First, write a summary of the article.

3. Then in at least one paragraph, respond to the central theme of the article by answering the following question:

Which do you believe is the best situation for learning, classroom study or distance study?

Which do you prefer, classroom education or distance education?

Make sure you give strong reasons to support your opinion.

· Your summary has no required length. It should be thorough, as we have studied.

· Your response paragraph(s) should be at least 500 words.

Provide the number of words of your response at the end of your composition (Do not include the number of words in the summary.)

Make sure that you space your composition appropriately.

Due Date: Tuesday, April 20