This week, I learned that my work won’t be going back in person. Ever.
I want to start by prefacing: I am fully aware that working from home is a massive, massive privilege. Having the option to work safely during a pandemic is not something that I take lightly. I am extremely grateful for the flexibility, the continued income, and most of all that my workplace has taken appropriate precautions to keep us all alive. Working from home has many advantages, and many people long to be able to do that. This is not to complain about or trash work from home as a concept, especially right now when I am so, so lucky to have that option.
However, when my boss announced that our team was up for consideration for permanent remote status, a sense of deep sadness and dread washed over me.
I’ll start with my more practical, “adult” concerns. To start, I have never met my team in-person. I am, quite literally, faceless. I’ve met my boss a single time in-person, and I am fairly certain that with my newly dyed hair, he would probably not immediately recognize me on the street. And as a young professional just out of college, this is deeply worrying to me in regards to my career. Most folks I know who enjoy working from home are those who are very established in their careers or companies. They don’t have to worry about not being recognized for their accomplishments, because they already have experience and time on their side to back up their resume. Without the face-to-face interaction, without the visibility that comes with being in an interpersonal environment, I fear that my contributions will go unnoticed, and that it’ll stunt my career growth.
My second concern is that writing jobs have trended towards the gig economy. And while this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon, there is an instability that comes with constantly having to string different gigs together. Thus far, tech writing has seemed to be one of the few exceptions to that in the writing world. However, I’m seeing more and more of it the longer I’m in this field. I’m seeing more 10-99 jobs pop up, and more remote jobs. It says something about your worth to a company if they don’t think your job is important enough to give you benefits or a desk.
But honestly, most of my sadness hasn’t come from my concerns around career ambitions – it’s the loss of a social workplace.
I’m at the phase of life where I’m transitioning to a very “adult” existence. I’m not staying out late with friends anymore – I’m in a serious relationship – if I eat like shit, I feel like shit – and hanging out with friends feels deeply inorganic. I don’t mean that it’s not enjoyable or rewarding or fun, I mean it takes so much more time and work to schedule something than it did when I was younger.
And all this is apart from the pandemic itself.
We’re a year out from March 2020, and I’m just now starting to feel how much of my social life I lost all at once. In the span of a few months, I dropped out of grad school, left my church, and then suddenly we were all informed we need to stop seeing people altogether. Basically, I very abruptly stopped being a part of all the communities that had been my whole life. And a month into the pandemic, I started my first “real job” post-graduation, completely remote. At the time, the “remote” part was temporary and only because of the pandemic. I was assured that our client wanted us in the office.
Until they found out we were just as productive outside the office, even slightly more.
Sure, on paper, it makes sense that we’re slightly more productive without those pesky distractions like chats at the coffee cart, lunches with coworkers, happy hours, and you know – all the stuff that makes working with other people an enjoyable thing.
I don’t mean to make office life sound like some perfect utopia. But from the little bit that I’ve been able to get to know my team from afar, most of them seem like great people. And I wish that I’d had the chance to really get to know them. Some of them, I’ve had to stalk their LinkedIns just to figure out what they look like. Some of them, I still don’t know what they look like. Others, I know I could be good friends with if we ever had the opportunity to be in the same space.
In the United States, one of the few spaces where socializing is built-in to daily life is the workplace. Sure, connecting with coworkers as more than coworkers isn’t always easy. But even for those coworkers that never make it past “acquaintance,” being around them still fulfills some of our social need as people. There has been so much talk this year about how children are being deprived of necessary social interactions for their development. And yet, many adults are embracing permanent work from home for its ease and flexibility, as if the innate need for broader social interaction just disappears once you’re an adult.
I miss so many things about pre-COVID life, as I think most of us do. Working from home has been a vital part of keeping folks safe, and I am 100% here for that and grateful. But with hope on the horizon for a world where we don’t all have to work from home, it stung to hear that I won’t ever get to decorate a cube of my own, that I won’t be able to have post-work happy hours with my coworkers. And with in-person jobs in my field becoming scarcer, I’m feeling that loss even harder. The loss of friends, work acquaintances that chat your ear off while you’re trying to finish things, folks on your team who drive you a little nuts, people who spontaneously bring donuts.
I have always known that post-pandemic, it was going to be much harder than it was before to make friends, given that I’m no longer a student. But my boss’s announcement made it sink in just how much harder it’s going to be to fight loneliness and build up community.
Carpe Noctum 