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52 Fridays

Fifty-two weeks ago, my company sent us home. We got an email from the big boss saying, essentially, work from home until further notice.”1 That was on Thursday, March 12, 2020. Friday the thirteenth was a fitting day to start the weird year that has passed.

We all packed up our laptops and coffee mugs and headed home, expecting to be back in the office in a month or so.

Here we are a year later, and my company has no plans on bringing my team back to the office. We were slated to move into a new space last summer anyway, we had outgrown our space. We got a notice in September that our desks and offices would be packed up by Facilities Management teams and put into storage. We were allowed to schedule a time slot to go in and get anything personal that we didn’t want to be packed up. Talk over the last months has slowly morphed from how and when do we go back” to do we really need to go back at all?”

I’ve been a work-from-home person my whole life. My current job is the first job I ever had that required me to go into an office regularly. I’m pretty productive in my home office, and I’m in no hurry to get back to the office. Some of my colleagues don’t have it so lucky. They may not have a dedicated room to be an office in their house. They have a house full of people making it difficult to concentrate. They just like being in an office. I feel for them. I spent a couple of weeks at my parents’ house, and working in the corner of a bedroom in a house full of people is really tough.

Ideally, when things get back to normal” (whatever that’s going to be) my company will adopt a hybrid approach, allowing some to work remotely, some in the office, and some to do both. I would love to be part of the do both” group. I love the freedom and flexibility of working from home, but I do miss seeing my friends and coworkers in person, watching car chases over lunch, or just going to a meeting in person instead of on Zoom.


  1. My summary of the email is far more terse than reality. My company has been fantastic during this whole thing, giving us the flexibility we need to get our work done without sacrificing our physical or mental health. I’m so grateful that I’m in a job that allows me to continue working through this pandemic.↩︎

🗓️ March 12, 2021 🏷️ personal
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