I hate work from home. Here’s why.
This post is all about why I Hate Work From Home.
We’re living in a new world. Work from home, or hybrid work, is now the norm. Covid arrived into our lives and really shook the office culture up!
And here’s the thing: it wasn’t all bad. There were things about office culture (or any job that required to be in person five days a week!) that weren’t healthy. I accept that, not least because I was part of it too.
Three years later, we’ve accepted that WFH offers flexibility.
It’s saved people time because a daily commute is now gone. Families might be spending more time together. There are probably more opportunities to get home-related tasks completed.
In the early days of Covid when I was miserable with WFH, I told myself day in and day out that these were real advantages – not just for me, but for other people – that I simply wasn’t recognizing and feeling grateful for.
But now it’s 2023. And I’m calling BS on most of the above.
WFH blurs all boundaries in regards to work, home life, intimate relationships and social events.
Every layer of one’s life is compounded into one house or apartment. It means stepping into a roommate or partner’s office too. It means hearing their Zoom calls too. It means quietly but ferociously arguing about who gets which space to take their next call in because you live in a one-bedroom apartment on the sixth floor.
And then it means, after the work day is “done”, eating dinner in your office, winding down in your office, having sex in your office, socializing in your office and somehow going to sleep in your office.
In other words, there is too much happening in one space – and it’s killing a lot of people’s mental health. (Although I don’t think many want to admit it.)
Even if you live in a huge house with ample indoor and outdoor space, there is a beauty to “coming home” which I believe we’ve essentially lost.
The commute can allow you time to decompress, to shake off a meeting that didn’t go well or rationalize a work related worry.
Sharing space in the office with other people allows us to connect to each other. It helps us form our tribes. That’s essential for a sense of community, security and, quite frankly, eradicates the boredom that comes from spending every single work day with yourself.
Last year, I came across a co-working space called Shack15 online. I was becoming genuinely depressed and burnt out by WFH. I went back and forth on the prospect of paying to work in a common area. But a few days ago, I decided to invest the money because WFH was killing my mental state.
Now, a few days into this new routine of leaving my apartment and coming to separate space to work, I realize what I’ve been grieving since March 2020: the in-between moments.
Life is a delicate string of “in-between” memories. It’s seeing something shocking as you emerge from the subway, it’s watching the water by the San Francisco ferry building hit the port. It’s the sound of a parent reprimanding their child in Book Passage; it’s the smell of coffee brewing at Red Bay Coffee. It is the receptionist of your office building saying hello when you return from lunch.
WFH offers advantages.
But working in the world offers something else: poetry.