The point of no return

In the civil war between those of us who yearn for the hallway serendipity they got around the office coffee machine, and the ones who unlocked a more productive and joyful way of working from their homes, there can be no winner.

The notion that this debate is reconcilable, that there is a mythical “hybrid” solution that checks all the boxes, that with enough thoughtful compromise we can put this conflict behind us, is blindly foolish, and chasing it is a distraction.

That doesn’t mean we can’t all win, it just means we can’t all work together. The sooner we start leaning into that reality, the sooner we can get on with our lives.

Like probably every one of you reading this, I walked out of an office building in March of 2020, but for me it would also be the last time I would. I exchanged an hour-long commute and a frankly chaotic, distracting open office for close to zero commute, the exact working conditions I prefer, and more time with my family. I was high on flexibility, addicted to the hard, intravenous drug of choice.

As the return began, some folks I worked with started going in every day. In many ways, those of us who were staying home were betraying them, as we forced them to have us up on a screen to talk to us, shattering their dreams of being face-to-face again, and complaining endlessly about the shitty conference room audio or video (will we ever get that right?)

How do we resolve a conflict between groups of people with mutually exclusive preferences for how they like to work? The in-person group wants the energy and “serendipity” and empathetic human connection of physical interaction. The remote group wants the flexibility, convenience, comfort, and efficiencies that modern collaborative tech has made possible.

It’s not purely a matter of personal preferences, either. My son started public kindergarten in 2022, and it would be rational to assume that school schedules were specifically designed to necessitate a billion-dollar childcare industry for parents with no way to assemble the jigsaw puzzle of their daily calendars. As a remote worker, I don’t have to choose between walking my son to the bus stop and paying through the nose to shift that start time a couple of hours earlier.

Human connection is so powerful. Our tribal lizard brains will always prioritize real, human connections over anything else. It’s why salespeople take so many prospects and customers to dinners and sports events. It’s a ground truth that a social connection can hijack reason and objectivity, for better or worse.

I want you to think about it like this. A “hybrid workplace” is, by definition, a forced class struggle. If leaders—people with positional authority—see certain people in person with regularity, those people will enjoy advantages that their colleagues will not. Those remote colleagues may have childcare or other considerations making it difficult to thread that needle. Congratulations, you just implemented a new form of legal discrimination.

For some among us, joy is in whiteboarding and fist-bumping and random hallway chats. For others (myself included), joy is in the perfectly darkened office at the perfect temperature and expressing myself mainly through writing. These are not reconcilable positions, and I don’t want to work with a bunch of people who quietly resent me for mine. I’m sure the fist-bumpers feel the same way! (If you are one, comment below!)

Gordon Bethune, CEO of Continental Airlines, said “[Y]ou can’t have a good product without people who like coming to work. It just can’t be done.” The more we try to force everyone toward some middle ground, some milquetoast compromise, some mediocre settlement, the more our work product will suffer.

I feel so fortunate to have found a place to work that checks all of my boxes. We all make small compromises in our jobs, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that with enough compromise we can “solve” this conflict.

The pre-pandemic workplace robbed a lot of people (incidentally, mostly women) of opportunity, and we shouldn’t want to go back there. So let’s not go back, because backwards is the wrong direction to be facing. Let’s go forward, toward a world of choice, yes, but also of understanding.

Now, go fist bump someone. Or just 🤜🤛. You do you.

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