Let's make it work
HERE’S some gentle advice I’m tempted to give my millions of work-fromhome peers who won’t go back to their offices because they say they’re afraid of COVID-19: Get off your lazy butts and go back to the office!
You’re collecting 100 percent of your salary. You are obliged to perform 100 percent of the work. Not 50 percent, with the remaining time devoted to your kids, your cat and the latest 88part Hulu or Netflix series.
But it isn’t that simple, of course. In less cranky moments, I get that WFH isn’t just about the joys of a laptop-andkombucha lifestyle. It has legitimate advantages — like saving hours every day on commuting, which (at least in theory) lets us be more productive. I was surprised at just how much more time I had to work in the months before I returned to our Midtown office from the Upper East Side.
If I appreciated the extra daily 90 minutes afforded by skipping a short subway trip, and by not having to dress up, imagine how liberating it is to anyone faced with a daily twoor-more-hour schlep on commuter trains or on the road! To say nothing of the ease of picking up beer for the weekend and the kids after school.
Companies say they won’t order their workforces back to their desks until they’re safe from COVID-19. But for some employees, as for teachers-union loudmouths, it will never be safe enough.
Let’s get real. Offices — especially where staffers are vaccinated and safety “protocols” are in place — are much less crowded, and tons safer, than subways, restaurants, theaters and stores.
For the record: The actual risk of a vaccinated New Yorker contracting the virus on any given day is between 1 in 5,000 and 1 in 10,000. A lightning strike offers a greater chance of killing them than does COVID-19. The risk is surely even less inside an office where there are more rules than in the fine print of a Lotto card.
If work-from-homers truly feared getting sick on the job, they would even more assiduously avoid densely packed restaurants where unmasked strangers breathe in their faces.
They’d skip nightclubs, mask-free parties and events, like the recent ones for Fashion Week and the Metropolitan Museum of Art gala, which made it seem that the roaring 1990s were back.
Yet, they do not steer clear of such gatherings. The proof that nobody’s really worried about office safety is that our restaurants fill up earlier in the evening than in the past. Guess why.
Duh — it’s easier and more natural to eat at 6 or 7 than at 8 or 9 when you’re not coming from the office. Almost no one I know who eats out early and often has been to their desks or cubicles much since March of 2020.
Some WFH-ers swear they can’t wait to go back to the office. How they miss the camaraderie, the shared intensity, the desirable co-workers they’re not allowed to flirt with anymore!
But if they were truly desperate to get out of the house, they’d be clamoring for their bosses to bring them back.
No such clamor has been detected.
Frustrated bosses know the quality of work has fallen way off. But they’re either limited by corporate bean-counters whose goal is to unload space and cut costs, or simply afraid to have an honest conversation with the troops about why they drag their heels on wanting to come back.
Memo to those who say, “I don’t care if I never go back to the office,” and to companies that say, “We’ll get there when we get there” — the issue is bigger than you.
Indefinitely empty office buildings will doom this city. Without the fortune in tax revenue that the buildings generate, our $98.6 billion annual budget won’t be carried by parking-violation and unleashed-dog fines.
Tenants need to engage their employees on these issues more than they have. Or we’ll see an endless cycle of office-return postponements until companies say, “Enough! Let’s keep everyone home for good.”
Should that happen, and strip the value off thousands of office towers with a half-billion square feet and wreck the economy, don’t blame the banks. Don’t blame Trump, Biden, Dr. Fauci or China.
It’s all on us for not tackling the problem head-on, no matter how uncomfortable it might be.