I do not know a single person including myself who has any interest in returning to the office. This is like propaganda.
If you are lonely, go see your friends or go out. You know, the things you can’t do when you commute 2 hours a day.
If you are lonely, go see your friends or go out. You know, the things you can’t do when you commute 2 hours a day.
This is an important part. The commute represents an obscenely large amount of our lives in time alone - forget sanity - that we give to employers for free. Is it because that's what we're willing to give for a job? Fucking no, of course not: It's because, historically, there was simply no other choice for most jobs, so it just became another part of the bargaining (I'm willing to sacrifice a bigger chunk than you, so I do better in the job market). Removing that has immeasurably improved the wellbeing and quality of life of everybody I know. Even a single hour round-trip (chair-to-chair) every day is a burden when you consider how our society has become so optimized in filling every available hour of the normal citizen's day.
Without that 4-5 hour wasted block of time, I now see my kid/family more, have time for hobbies, socialize with friends and people I actually like (rather than the at-work "performative socialization" with co-workers). Night and day difference.
I don't think I know a single person that has any interest in continuing to work from home. But around here the commute is a 20 minute train ride, and homes are small.
Any chance you're in the USA, in a big house, in the suburbs?
That's not even a commute across whole city, only across about half of it. And majority of the people had the same times. Lucky ones maybe had 30-40 mins.
I know a grand total of zero people, among friends and extended acquaintances, that showed any preference to work from the office when given a choice, irrespective of the commute time.
Make of that what you will.
But I’d say maybe only a quater or less of people I know would be positive about a return to office. (Me excluded, surprisingly)
It’s a pretty low percentage of people because it’s low flexibility for pretty much no benefits unless you’re a special kind of weirdo (myself)
I live a 6 min walk to my office, and like the amenities + chatting.
It is important not to idealise the perfect timing, what it should be if there were no cars on the roads, no traffic jams or the train comes exactly on time. Take a chronometer and measure it every day and you will be surprised by reality. I did it lots of times.
I have been living in big cities around the world and almost everybody spent an hour or so going to work.
I had a small apartments but was living alone and did as much remote work as I could.