'We are having rolling nervous breakdowns'

[brooklynite]

Politico

MANY WORKERS ARE DESPERATE TO GET BACK TO THE OFFICE — In Zoom meetings and socially distant conference rooms all over Wall Street, senior executives are trying to map out a post-Covid world. Or at least a late-Covid world. A big piece of these discussions is figuring out how many of the tens of millions of employees currently working remotely need to return to the office.

At first, these talks drifted to both the sustainability aspects and cost-saving benefits of bringing back as few people as possible. Less real estate costs. Great for the bottom line! Less building electricity use and less pollution from commuters. Environmentalists will love it!

Those talks have changed.

A senior Wall Street executive deeply immersed in these talks told The Long Game that the calculus is now quite different, a fact that may be alleviating the worst fears of a corporate real estate meltdown and dashing hopes of a big cut in carbon emissions. The fact is: Many workers are desperate to get back to the office.

“What we’ve all found out the hard way the last five months is that we are working harder and it’s more intense and there are no breaks, or community. And it bleeds into weekends and you are kind of on 24/7,” the senior executive said, asking not to be named to discuss internal matters. “We are having rolling nervous breakdowns.”

[HotTeaBag]

1. Two things (though there are more probably) that contribute to the 'nervous breakdowns' alluded to

are that we are social animals by design and do better around other people, and a lot of companies have laid off quite a few people while asking those that remain to do more - I know people from the company that I was laid off from are all working 10-12 hour days now...not because of a higher workload, but because there are so few left to do the work at hand.

It's not sustainable.

[SoCalNative]

2. Not all of us are social animals

I would welcome never returning to the office. And as far as "working harder and it being more intense" and "bleeding into the weekends and you are kind of 24/7" I call bullshit. Put in your hours M-F and leave the computer off on the weekends.

[cwydro]

3. I've never been more happy to be retired.

And I agree with you that that’s nonsense.

When I was working, I’d have loved to work from home.

[crickets]

4. It's likely the pendulum will swing back and forth a few times

before equilibrium is reached. Various sectors of the workforce will settle out on a spectrum. It's not as though every company has to follow the exact same model going forward. It's going be a while before that happens, regardless.

[Johnny2X2X]

5. Been WFH since mid MArch

I love it so far. Still chat and message coworkers all day long to keep in touch. Work is less strenuous at home and the weeks go by fast.

Our execs were skeptical, but now sing the praises, we're meeting customer milestones and costs are reduced. We had big layoffs, but they probably would have been bigger without WFH.

Also, people are taking less time off because they aren't burnt out as much, so much so that corporate is sending messages to people that they should continue to use vacation time.

[SledDriver]

6. Also is that there is no "break" between work time and off hours times

Some people need that closure in a sense, like a daily commute provides.

Commute to work: get your game face on and psych yourself up for the day ahead.
Commute from work: wind down and like walking through a doorway, you change from a work perspective to a leisure perspective.

It's a new paradigm.