The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that companies are beginning to create products for a post-pandemic life that anticipates more people working from home some, most, or even all of the time. That’s fine, but if office commutes become optional, work-from-home champions should understand that it likely comes with a heavy price.
It’s only rational to want to work from home. It eliminates the necessity to dress for an office, pack a lunch, and spend otherwise valuable time making the physical trip to a different location. But it also eliminates invaluable opportunities to develop relationships with colleagues and supervisors, who are often responsible for the direction of any other worker’s professional advancement.
All other things being equal, an employee who is physically in an office constructively communicating in person with colleagues and supervisors is better positioned to get a promotion, raise, or new opportunity than one who opts to remain in the comforts of their home. That’s life.
Liberals are inherently averse to that kind of merit-based reality because going to an office for the sake of being there means people have less time to take naps and hang out in cafes, so they’d rather do away with our modern office culture altogether. New York Times writer Anne Petersen wrote last week that even if office visitation were optional for workers at a given company, no one should be permitted to go each day.
“Let people do what they want and the pre-pandemic power dynamics of the office will simply reproduce themselves,” she said. “No one, for example, should be allowed to go to the office every day — otherwise it’ll just become yet another way to prove yourself the better, more present worker.”
Uh, yeah, that’s the trade-off — either drag yourself to the office to “prove yourself the better, more present worker,” or work from the comforts of home, out of sight and out of mind when it’s time for the boss to make important decisions about raises and promotions.
How would that not be fair, especially if an office made visitation optional?
Plenty of people work just fine from home, and bringing themselves to an office, perhaps makes no difference in their output. But they should understand that choosing not to visit the office, while others are, has great risk.
