Remote work has changed us, but for good?: Today So Far

• Remote work, and hybrid work, has certainly changed our office lives. For better or for worse? That depends on who you ask.
• A day after Gov. Inslee said he won't run for re-election, Attorney General Bob Ferguson said he's eying the office.

This post originally appeared in KUOW's Today So Far newsletter for May 2, 2023.

Well that didn't take long. Breaking news this morning. Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that he is forming an exploratory committee around a gubernatorial run. It comes a day after Gov. Jay Inslee announced he is not running for another term.

This is not the exactly same as announcing a campaign for governor. An "exploratory committee" is akin to saying, "I'm paying smart people to investigate whether or not this is a good idea, while also collecting as much money as I can." Still, Ferguson's name has long been tossed around as a potential Democratic successor to the governor's office. But he's not the only name in town. Read more here.

I found myself at a dinner party recently, practicing what I call, "not being weird." I find that I need to practice this more often these days. If I'm being honest, even before the pandemic forced many of us to socially isolate, I was a rather socially awkward fellow. Now, well, as I said, I need more practice.

Around the table was a cluster of others like me who are part of the pajamas-optional workforce. In fact, four of the five people at that table were working from home with jobs spanning billing, the video game industry, and local public radio. At KUOW, we've shifted into a more hybrid work schedule with some folks coming into the office a few days a week. You're likely to start hearing about similar work scenarios moving forward, alongside a debate over the merits and downsides of going back to the old ways. The times, they are a changin, or they continue to change. Exactly how has yet to be determined.

I've previously pointed to experts who argue that remote work and hybrid work are the new reality of 21st Century working, and many are trading office chit-chats with conversing with our dogs at home about whether or not pop culture references will be understood in the newsletter we're writing ... just me?

"You can vote for the future, or you can try to hold on to those old ways of working from the past, and then pay a consulting company in five years to tell you to get with the future. Those are your options," author Anne Helen Petersen told KUOW's Seattle Now last year.

On the other side of this issue are company leaders and managers who are pushing to get more employees back into the office. As KUOW's Monica Nickelsburg reports, the "era of unlimited remote work is over, at least for some major Seattle employers." But this next evolution to hybrid work isn't going smoothly for everybody.

Yesterday, Amazon began requiring its employees to come into its offices three days a week. Starbucks started a similar hybrid policy in January. But many employees are defying the requirement, and employers are finding it difficult to enforce such a policy.

Perhaps the pandemic shook things up a little more than previously expected. For example, recent school enrollment data indicates that a considerable number of people have moved their families out of the big cities and to Washington's more rural communities. That means a hefty commute is now added to their jobs as the call to come back to the office is issued. Another factor that employers have to face is that the work is getting done, and some folks are just as productive at home. On the other hand, there are some employees who crave being in the mix with colleagues. And then there are those of us whose dogs are just not as interested in carrying on the same conversations at our home desks as they once were ... despite the fact that I feed you and brush you every day with a spritz of lemongrass oil; the least you can do, Cosmo, is hear me out!

Where was I? Oh yeah.

Tensions around this issue go beyond my dog's increasingly snobby attitude. Over at Starbucks, some employees have petitioned the company to ease up on its three-day in-office policy. One Starbucks employee told KUOW that, when they do come into the office, they have to reserve a desk, since there are no assigned work spaces. As a result, “On busy days, you'll end up on a couch anyway, staring down at your laptop.” In other words, they're coming into the office for that HQ feel, only to plop down on a couch. Still, one upside is not having your dog sit at the other end of the couch, constantly judging your level of coffee consumption.

Back at the don’t-be-weird dinner party, opinions were divided. All the remote and hybrid jobs were different, and so were life circumstances. Personally, I probably like working from home way too much. I save money. I don't have to drive for an hour in traffic. It's easier to get work done. And I eat healthier, despite my home office colleague lecturing me about how I need to eat more (hey, individual rice crispy pieces count as tiny, calorie conscious snacks, in my opinion) and also pointing out that I'm wearing the same shirt as yesterday, even though it's clearly not the same shirt — yesterday's shirt had the starship Enterprise 1701-A on it, while today's is a Next Generation shirt featuring space cats (Which I'm admittedly wearing as a passive-aggressive feline offense to the overly critical office dog. The fact that this is entirely missed by him is all the more off putting).

Yet, across the dinner table from me was someone who is eager to get into the office and see people, talk things out, and collaborate. They like office life and the in-person experience. Next to them was someone who didn't mind either way. The big downer for them was all the office politics that have moved online — passive-aggressive emails, people making a big show on Slack (in front of managers) about fixing problems that weren't really problems (especially when someone else had a hand in the solution, too), things like that. Then there was a mom whose kid is now home schooled; a preferable situation for their family. Working from home allowed that situation to happen. All working from home, but with different experiences, and none of them had any advice for dealing with your elitist puppy who scares away the neighborhood squirrels when you're in the middle of a nutty lunch-break conversation.

It's folks like us who have changed the comings and goings of the region, to the delight and chagrin of others, depending on where you stand. In downtown Seattle, local shops and restaurants are eager for more office workers to come back to the area. There has recently been an uptick in foot traffic through South Lake Union, which local shops are celebrating. Yet, the pandemic move to remote and hybrid work appears to have prompted a shift in Seattle's outer neighborhoods where people began spending their dollars more locally. Retail space in Seattle's suburbs has a remarkably low vacancy rate.

Commuting has also evolved. Workers tend to be driving in on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Friday traffic has been delightfully light. Public transit has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels.

On the other side of this working relationship are the companies. That's where an "office whisperer" like decision-making consultant Gleb Tsipursky comes in. According to his assessment of the situation at Seattle's major companies, they've gone about this in-office move the wrong way. Check out his insights, and the rest of this story here. There were no insights, however, for reintegrating weirdos back into public life. People are a lot harder to talk to than dogs and squirrels.

One more thing. In case you missed it, April was National Poetry Month and our Poet in Chief Shin Yu Pai accomplished something remarkable — publishing the work of a local poet every day on KUOW.org. The series is called Poetry in Bloom and features a range of voices and styles. It really is a range. The last poem in the series was a haiku comic. Yeah, like a comic strip, but with poetic flare. There are 30 poets featured in this series, which is now online for your reading pleasure.

AS SEEN ON KUOW

Sgt. Michael Burtis in a pod of the Marysville Municipal Jail. He estimated that up to 90% of people housed there have some kind of substance use disorder. Dozens of cities in Washington state are considering new bans on possession or public use of illegal drugs. That’s after state legislators failed to reach an agreement on a new drug law in the final hours of the 2023 legislative session. Some of these jurisdictions are seeking guidance from the city of Marysville, which has had its own anti-drug ordinance for months. (Amy Radil / KUOW)

DID YOU KNOW?

A couple high school students from Camas, Wash., will certainly get in the yearbook this year after they arrived at prom in a tank.

Camas High School's prom was at the Portland Art Museum last Saturday. The school reserved a special parking lot for students. When Sherman Bynum heard that parking was secured, he started thinking about arriving in style. The junior teamed up with classmate Sam Tetro to raise $1,000 via a GoFundMe effort to rent an M3A1 Stuart tank.The tank is a WWII era military vehicle, owned by a local private collector. As far as tanks go, it's known to be a "light tank." More than 4,600 were built between May 1942 and February 1943 for the war effort.

The students made sure it was street legal in order to traverse downtown Portland roads. Led by Portland's famous Unipiper, the tank rolled to the museum and dropped off the high school students for prom. The students still have a senior prom to go to in 2024, so we'll have to wait and see how they top the tank.

ALSO ON OUR MINDS

The guy who ate a $120,000 banana in an art museum says he was just hungry

Installations by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan are famously provocative, but his signature work — a banana taped to a wall — fell prey to a basic impulse: the hunger it provoked in a South Korean college student.

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