How did people who'd rather work from home become the enemy?

A few years ago, companies were tripping over themselves to send employees home.“Stay safe.”“Work remotely.”“We’re all in this together.”

These days remote workers are being treated like they’re running an underground criminal enterprise because they threw a load of towels in the washing machine between Zoom calls.

The corporate whiplash is fascinating.

I do believe businesses have the right to call it anyway they want to, but during the pandemic, millions of employees proved something management had resisted admitting for decades: a lot of office work can be done perfectly well from home. Productivity didn’t collapse. In many industries, it improved. Meetings happened. Deadlines were met. Customers were served. Companies survived.

And nobody got to say, "Uh, no, I'd rather be here. I can't concentrate at home."

But now that the crisis has passed, some executives are acting like employees committed a betrayal by enjoying the flexibility they were told to embrace.

Apparently, if you commute an hour each way, sit under fluorescent lights, listen to Brenda microwave salmon in the break room, and pretend to look busy while scrolling through email, you’re “collaborating.” But if you answer emails from a home office while the dryer runs in the background, you’re somehow cheating the system.

Give me a break.

I've been working from home for five years, sometimes doing mutliple radio shows in different markets on the same day from my home, while grabbing a nap and walking the dogs in between shows. I miss the great people I worked with in the building every day, but the vast majoroty of what I do is radio prep and research, which is much better done at home, where I can concentrate.

Let’s stop pretending the traditional office environment is some sacred temple of productivity. Offices are full of distractions. Gossip. Birthday cake gatherings. Endless chatter about somebody’s fantasy football team. Ten-minute conversations that somehow become forty-five. People wandering cubicles looking for an audience. Meetings that should’ve been emails. And don’t even get started on the productivity black hole known as “mandatory team-building.”

But someone tossing laundry into the washer during the workday? Or making a quick school run? THAT’S the line? If an employee is getting the job done, meeting deadlines, communicating effectively, and producing results, why does it matter whether they also unloaded the dishwasher at lunch?

For decades, workers quietly absorbed all kinds of inefficiencies that benefited employers: long commutes, expensive wardrobes, gas money, parking fees, rushed childcare arrangements, office politics, and wasted time pretending to look occupied when the actual work was already finished.

Then workers got a glimpse of another way to live.

Many discovered they were more productive at home because they could focus without constant interruptions. Others found they could finally balance work and life without feeling like one was destroying the other. Parents could see their kids more. People could cook their own lunch instead of inhaling fast food at their desks. Some workers even—brace yourself—became happier.

When I worked a 9-5 job, I was always dismayed that you were expected to be at your desk unitl 5 even if you had already finished your work for the day. Your boss didn't need anything else, yet you SAT THERE until 5. Zero incentive to be more productive. Unless you're a receptionst who has to be there during business hours, why not be allowed to leave early? It's that mentality that drives a lot of people away from office jobs.

And for some executives, that may be the real problem.

Because a lot of return-to-office demands don’t seem to be about productivity. They seem to be about control. About visibility. About managers wanting to physically SEE people working, even if the actual output is no better.

Of course, not every job works remotely. Some jobs absolutely require people on-site. Some workers prefer office life. Some companies genuinely collaborate better in person. Fair enough. But the growing narrative that all remote workers are lazy freeloaders because they occasionally fold a towel during the day is absurd.

The modern workplace has always included distractions. The only difference now is that some of those distractions happen at home instead of beside the office Keurig machine.

If employees are producing results, maybe companies should focus less on whether someone started a crockpot at noon and more on whether the work is actually getting done.

Because most workers don’t care where they sit. They care whether they’re trusted. And good employees are still hard to find and harder to keep.

Heidi Harris