Opinion

OPINION | GARY SMITH: Employees appear to want a return to the workplace, but with day-to-day options

People like “optional” approach to returning to workplaces

I broke down the other day and did it. I went back to the office.

And by "the office," I mean that big place where lots of people all used to go every day to get their work done, not that room upstairs at my house where I currently go to get my work done.

There's a distinction that definitely has a difference, the crux of which is the cause of much debate in Northwest Arkansas and the world.

It seems we've been both hinting at and dodging the bullet of actually returning to the office for some time now. There have been a few head fakes and false starts, most of them built around surges and variants and all sorts of very good reasons, and even some that sounded a lot like, "My stomach hurts and I don't want to go to school." But it appears all the good medical excuses have just about expired and we're landing on one big one.

We'd rather not.

Alright, that's a bit broad. We'd rather not as in, we'd rather not ... all the time. Words like "hybrid" and "flex" keep coming up (typically without the benefit of specific meaning, which can add to the confusion). In a recent poll, 87% of American workers said they want to return to the office. Apparently there was no follow-up question about if they actually remembered what it was like to be in the office, but we'll take them at their word.

However, in another recent poll (we have a lot of those, apparently), only 3% of white-collar workers want to return to the office five days a week.

A digression: If I decide to wear a blue shirt, do I not count as a white-collar worker? How about those new shirts that golfers wear that sort of don't have a collar? Would those fall under the dress code? Do we have a dress code anymore? Does anyone know where their dress pants are? How about any pants that don't have a drawstring? Or belts? Or shoes that aren't tennis shoes ... .

So, basically what the afore-polled white-collar workers are saying is they want to have an office, they want to go to the office, they just don't want to have to go to the office. So, maybe they go a couple of days a week. Or when it's taco salad day in the cafeteria. Which is a pretty good reason, by the way.

Sort of like in college when I used to ask coeds for a date. In theory, they were fine with going out with me. It's just that nailing down that specific timeframe was a little tricky.

This does raise a sort of difficult question for people who have to make a decision on this sort of thing and can either compel or release folks, either way. On the one hand, if we insist everyone come into the office, we sort of at least hint that everything we've managed to do for the previous two years was fine, but could have been better if done in the company of a lot more people in louder surroundings.

And if we say folks don't have to come into the office, well, the more introverted of us will likely never been seen again. Except on a Zoom screen. And then we'll never know if dress pants were found. Or, pants at all.

The challenge is that, pre-pandemic, most of our work lives, and lives in general, were conducted basically like a math test. There was only one right answer. You got up every day, you had a Pop Tart, you headed to the office and you came home. OK, some details in between, but those were the big data points.

Now, it's an essay test in that there are technically no right or wrong answers, but plenty that have the teacher looking over the tops of her glasses as if to say, "You didn't read the book, did you?".

But that's the post-covid world we live in, isn't it? Should you wear a mask? What about a booster? Is travel safe? Is staying at home safe for my mental health? Has that light/building/road/bridge always been there? Again ... about those pants.

It's a cliché that every day is a new day. But for all of us, that has never been more true. And now, with all the other questions we have to answer, we get to add one more: How did these pants I used to wear to the office every day shrink so much just hanging in my closet?

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