Only Michael Scott Wants to Go Back to the Office

The Battle Over Remote Work Is Approaching Threat Level Midnight—But Workers Shouldn’t Back Down

Among its countless ongoing disruptions, COVID-19 created the biggest remote work experiment in modern history. 2020 gave many office workers their first real taste of working from home — and they loved it. They loved it so much, in fact, that in a recent survey of 3300 employees, just 10 percent of employees said they wanted to return to the office full-time. Yet that exact same survey queried more than 280 CEOs about coming back — and a whopping 83 percent of them want employees to return in person.

That mind-blowing preference gap (which has been replicated in numerous studies) is currently fueling a massive impasse. CEOs are issuing ultimatums, deriding remote workers as lazy, or threatening to replace all staff with contractors — and yet, the majority of office workers are refusing to budge. A full 40 percent of employees say they’ll quit if they have to go back to commuting and cube life five days a week, and a record-setting four million people quit their jobs in April alone. What’s been dubbed “The Great Resignation” has been directly connected to businesses ordering employees back into the office.

The Washington Post called this conflict a “seismic standoff” over remote work — but really, it’s over a much bigger paradigm shift in how we define a “good” worker, how managers measure performance, and whether employees deserve any say in how and where they get their jobs done.

My message to employees eager to retain their remote freedom is this: The data, the science, the ethics, the job market, the majority of your fellow workers, and the cultural shift away from the glorification of grind are all on your side. If remote work or flexible office hours are what you want, stand your ground, because the arguments for a permanent return to the office are specious at best, laughable at worst. Only the Michael Scotts of corporate America are insisting we go back to the way things were.

Why CEOs and Executives Remain So Enamored of the Office

We keep hearing that returning to the office full-time is essential for productivity, collaboration and the all-important “culture,” but these arguments simply don’t hold up under scrutiny. Data shows workers with flexible work-from-home options are more productive, happier and more engaged (in part because they save hundreds of hours a year and an average of $4000 in transportation costs by eliminating their commutes). Remote work could save businesses untold millions in office space costs, absenteeism, increased productivity, and employee retention. With all these clear advantages, why are 83 percent of CEOs still so adamant that the sky will fall if we don’t go back?

The answer: Because they’re Michael Scott.

Picture it: An episode of The Office, set during the pandemic, with Michael Scott, Regional Manager of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin Inc., trying to work from home. No crowded open-office plan he can stride into from his private office to make declarations. No conference room he can order everyone into at will. No captive audiences to perform terrible comedy bits for or vent about his love life to. No subordinates required to feign attention as he waxes poetic regarding his business philosophies (though I am still dying to read his volume of collected workplace wisdom, Somehow, I Manage). No badly-lit room to gaze out upon, filled with people he is in charge of. He would be utterly miserable. He would suffer an existential identity crisis.

Managers Love the Office the way Kings Love Their Castles

Think about it: Your boss’s experience of being in the office is wildly different than yours. Like Michael Scott, most managers and bosses have private offices. The open office plan that most employees can’t stand and that’s been proven to drag down productivity doesn’t bother them, because when they want it, quiet, privacy and a closed door are right there. Higher managerial salaries mean they can often afford to live closer to the office, which means a shorter, less expensive and less frustrating commute (and hey, the parking space is a nice perk!). Same with eating out — they don’t sweat that overpriced Au Bon Pan soup and salad for lunch twice a week.

Because they tend to travel a lot, managers are rarely actually physically present in the office Monday through Friday, 9 am to 6 pm. But even if they are, they can leave when they feel like it, departing without requiring anyone’s permission. An executive or CEO’s experience of being in the office is nothing like that of the rank-and-file staff — if anything, it’s the total opposite. The reality is, offices work for them. That’s why 83 percent of them are champing at the bit to return, even though the vast majority of us want to be done with offices forever.*

*Now, I use ”done” and “forever” hyperbolically (the same way I did in my cleverly polarizing enrage-to-engage clickbait title). It would be ridiculous to assume that every non-exec could thrive working from home. But it’s equally laughable to assume that millions of us spending hours commuting five days a week in order to assemble in the same noisy office every so that we can get less done while someone who makes more money that we do “manages” us is the best way to do business in 2021. Of white-collar professionals (and let’s be clear, that’s who we’re talking about here — the issue of improving working conditions and reducing burnout for in-person and blue-collar workers still needs to be addressed, as more than half the work force has no opportunity to work remotely) the majority reports that they actually would prefer some time in the office. What most modern workers actually want are options and choices that add to their quality of life. Is that really so much to ask?

Forcing People to Commute is Inhumane and Stupid

Not commuting is consistently cited as the number one reason people don’t want to go back to daily in-office work. Commuting is horrible for us, negatively impacting our finances, our quality of life, and our health (including our mental health). If you’ve ever had a long car commute, you know it can drive you to existential despair. It’s like the most exhausting experience you can have while simultaneously wasting tons of money, trashing your lower back, getting nothing done, breathing pollutants and contributing to global warming.

Now, not all commutes are brutal — some people love their bike ride, or their calm headspace on the train. But again, this is about choice, not a binary. People don’t want to be forced to commute Monday through Friday, in shitty weather, losing hours daily doing something they hate, when that time could be so much better spent sleeping, working, exercising, cooking, relaxing, doing laundry, dropping kids at school, being with family and friends, or just living.

For many workers, commuting in 2021 looks like the human appendix: a pointless leftover organ from a bygone era that we don’t need and that could maybe kill us.

Offices are Terrible for Getting Work Done and Actually Harm Productivity

When lockdowns forced us into working from home last year, the higher-ups at my company always signed off Zoom calls with an overly cheery “Have a productive day!” The crystal-clear implication was that they didn’t trust us to get our work done without visual monitoring. But data shows that productivity actually improved during the pandemic. A full 76 percent of workers say they are more productive working from home, and numerous studies of their actual output confirm that claim. It turns out that even the stress of being stalked by a deadly global disease is less of a barrier to productivity than the constant interruptions and irritations of the typical office.

Paul Graham’s invaluable essay Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule may explain much of this productivity increase (how I wish I’d read this essay during the years I spent silently panicking in meetings that were running long while my manager cheerfully rambled about his disdain for the latest Marvel movie’s color palette, and I watched helplessly as all of my looming deadlines closed in like zombies and my evening plans evaporated like mirages in the desert.)

According to Graham, “Most powerful people are on the manager’s schedule. It’s the schedule of command.” Conversations, calls, meetings and discussions dominate a manager’s days. To a manager, coming and going from meetings, talking on calls, and sending tons of email often signals activity and busyness, from which they infer that lots of work must be getting done. But as a blog post at Nuclino points out, “Real work is not getting done. Meaningful work is usually done quietly and in solitude.”

For makers (programmers, accountants, writers, designers, educators, publicists, producers, case managers, paper company salespeople, et al) every day is filled with deadlines and deliverables. We need large chunks of time to think, problem-solve, and actually produce. Meetings, impromptu discussions and office cross-talk directly contradict our ability to fulfill our work responsibilities. No wonder so many of us treasure remote work, where we can close a door and put our phones and the rest of the world on silent.

Michael Scott is a classic example of life on the manager’s schedule. Being in the office doesn’t harm Michael’s productivity, mostly because he doesn’t do much (one of the central, scathing pillars of The Office is the fact that management does virtually nothing).

Like many managers, Michael has ample time for workday conversation and adores the synergy of spontaneous brainstorming. He thinks nothing of yanking people away from their projects or ordering everyone into the conference room for an impromptu meeting or discussion or rant. Meeting running long? NBD, he’ll just have Pam postpone the next one!

For makers, the cost of meetings is far higher than it is for managers. The inherent conflict between the maker’s schedule and the manager’s schedule is just one more reason why so many of us are far more productive when we work remotely. It’s also part of why CEOs don’t understand or empathize with our reluctance to return to the office.

“But What About the Culture?!”

A lot of CEOs are claiming remote work will destroy the all-important office culture. Take Cathy Merrill’s infamous Washington Post op-ed, “As a CEO, I worry about the erosion of office culture” in which she insisted her office’s culture had been “established over years in large part by people interacting in person” and darkly warned that “Now, we face re-creating a workplace where a good culture of trust will be harder to build.” (Apparently, Merrill’s idea of building a culture of trust was to write a WaPo editorial publicly threatening her staff.) The entire piece is bonkers (seriously, read it) but one paragraph in particular caught a great deal of flak:

I estimate that about 20 percent of every office job is outside one’s core responsibilities — “extra.” It involves helping a colleague, mentoring more junior people, celebrating someone’s birthday — things that drive office culture.

Merrill is clearly unaware that the 20 percent “extra” that she requires and thinks is so wonderful for driving culture is well-known and actually enormously resented by many office workers. We know all about the “extra” we give at the office every day — because we don’t get paid for it. While it might make a CEO feel good about her culture when she sees her staff organizing baby showers or cleaning the smelly fridge, I guarantee you her employees are sick unto death of it. (Fun fact: her staff found her op-ed so offensive and out-of-touch that they went on strike, which was probably not great for the culture.)

Culture also gets extolled because it’s all about interaction, which managers, CEOs, and founders seem to think is always a positive. Studies show the managerial class tends to be extroverted (again, picture Michael Scott, who loves to chat almost as much as he loves the sound of his own voice).

Because extroverted personalities so often run the workplace, those of us who aren’t extroverted (or just don’t get into team building, or have plenty of human connection outside the office) are all required to operate at the extrovert manager’s comfort level. Another unspoken reason we don’t want to go back to the office is that many of us are tired of performing hustle, enthusiasm, “family” and cheerfulness for bosses who either implicitly or explicitly measure our performance and value based on these superficial metrics. The 20 percent “extra” isn’t just unpaid—it’s exhausting.

As Charlie Werzel, co-author of an upcoming book about working remotely, points out, executives don’t decide if the company culture is good — employees do. “The type of executive who thinks they can just reset company culture with a sweeping, restrictive decree just straight up isn’t a very good manager….deep down, they don’t trust their employees,” he writes. Too many managers think they’re creating a culture with forced fun, Go-Karting field trips or birthday cakes — all those “extra” things you have to do on top of the rest of your responsibilities.

But you’ll never build a truly strong culture if you won’t or can’t listen when your staff tells you what they want and need. If you force your staff go back to the office against their will because “the culture”? Your culture will automatically suck.

“But What About the Spontaneous Ideation and Creativity That Happens at the Office!”

This claim is so annoying and out-of-touch.

“Those who manage but don’t do work love talking about how the office is this magical collaboration circus, where the brilliance of human minds connect like Voltron to form Genius,” scoffs journalist, author and PR agency founder Ed Zitron. Next time your boss claims that chance meetings at the office boost creativity and innovation, ask them for proof, because the New York Times says there’s literally no evidence to support that claim.

They Have No Real Argument For Taking Remote Work Away

The New Yorker noted that the main obstacle to a new flexible work paradigm is “the reluctance of bosses.” Even in the face of all the data, all the ample evidence showing how much businesses could profit if they gave employees the choice to work remotely, America’s biggest business leaders are responding with….mostly weird nonsense.

The bizarro, wildly out-of-touch, “let them eat cake while they commute” editorials coming from CEOs are their own genre of strange, clueless denialism. They’re rarely evidence-based (the aforementioned Cathy Merrill, owner of a magazine and employer of journalists whom I assume are required to fact-check their work, provided mostly random anecdotes from friends as support for her argument for why work-from-home needed to end).

Even though flexible schedules are better for the environment, better for parents and families, and better for workers with disabilities, executives continue to spout vague jargon about collaboration and creativity and human connection. (My personal favorite executive concern-troll is when they claim to be deeply worried that people will work too much when they’re working from home—yes, every boss’s greatest fear!)

The truth is, they have no real, evidence-based argument for taking remote work away. A lot of bosses want us back in the office simply because it makes them feel more in control—and even though it seems to go against every rule of capitalism, that sense of control feels more important to them than even profits. Ed Zitron is harsh but frank: “Bosses love control, and a lot of people build companies in stupid ways that make them feel better rather than the company better.”

Another harsh truth: your anti-remote work boss probably doesn’t trust you. As a Forbes piece pointed out, ”Most managers have spent a lifetime assuming that ‘working from home’ is synonymous with doing nothing….Put another way, it’s not enough for you to do the work, they want to watch you also” (italics mine, because good god, that’s sooooo creepy).

Executives claim it’s too difficult for them to manage employees remotely — but the pandemic proved that many workers don’t really need to be managed. And if we don’t need managing….what are managers going to do with their time? Where do they even fit into this brave new world? They’re seeing the whole balance of power shifting, along with their own roles: “Remote work inherently messes with the power dynamic of the worker and the boss,” says Zitron, and plenty of bosses are not comfortable with that at all.

Executives, managers and bosses who were comfortable with the way things were and don’t want to evolve will continue to fight hybrid schedules and remote work. But if rank-and-file employees can hold the line and insist on continuing with this new, far more fair and much more profitable setup, leaders will have to change, because they won’t be able to keep staffers or attract new talent if they don’t. As Zitron points out, remote work should actually benefit companies too, because “It focuses in on actually doing stuff versus appearing to do stuff.”

Michael Scott famously claimed that “An office is not for dying. An office is a place for living life to the fullest, to the max… an office is a place where dreams come true.” Maybe for some, that’s accurate—but for most of us, the pandemic revealed that we were, actually, kind of dying at the office. The combination of commutes, interruptions, noise, wasted time, bad lighting, forced fun, annoying coworkers, overpriced takeout, micromanaging managers, and hard pants was killing us softly.

The old office paradigm is actually the thing that needs to be subtracted from our lives so that we can live them to the fullest—and so businesses can remain competitive. As Anne Helen Peterson, author of Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation and co-writer of an upcoming book about remote work points out,

The best thinkers, innovators, and workers will go where their work is valued and their organization makes policy that underlines their trust and respect for their workers….Companies will either decide to shift their policies to become competitive, or they’ll slowly atrophy, because a company that foists full-time back to work on its employees with no reason has much bigger problems with company culture, control, and bad management.

Michael Scott and his fellow managers may not like it—but they’re just going to have to deal.