the plague

Work changed when the pandemic hit in 2020. Here’s help navigating it.

my company is requiring us to travel because “they miss us”

A reader writes: My company’s headquarters are based out of a city where the Delta variant is currently climbing rapidly, and where travel restrictions have recently been added as a result. I am a remote employee based out of another part of the country, and over half of our department is remote as well. I’ve […]

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the people who’d rather quit than give up remote work

We’ve heard rumblings for a while now that workers are quitting, or threatening to quit, if they can’t continue to work from home. That’s because for many people remote work has been great—the lack of commute, flexible schedule, and more casual dress have provided a massive quality-of-life boon, to say nothing of the productivity increases […]

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how is the return to work supposed to work, exactly?

As a work-advice columnist, I’ve been able to track the evolution of the pandemic through my email: In the spring of last year, I was flooded with questions about companies that weren’t keeping people safe, the adjustment to working from home, and dealing with furloughs. Then it was coworkers who wouldn’t wear masks or keep […]

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am I the only one excited to return to the office?

A reader writes: On your blog, we’ve heard from people who’ve been working from home and are afraid to return to the office. We’ve also heard from people who’ve been going into work for all or most of the pandemic and find it hard to sympathize with those fears. But I’m wondering if there’s anyone […]

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people who haven’t been working from home feel invisible

As employers start to set timelines for bringing workers back to the office, they’re setting off waves of anxiety in some of their employees … which in turn is setting off some frustration and impatience among people who have been working on-site all along. Many of these workers resent that people upset about returning didn’t […]

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people who have been at work all along are exhausted

We’ve talked a lot lately about how anxious many people feel over returning to their offices later this year — and how much of that stems from a break in trust in the people and institutions that have shown they can’t be counted on to protect us. But plenty of people won’t be returning to […]

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people are freaked out about going back to their offices

Many workplaces that went fully remote last year are starting to set timelines for bringing people back to the office, and their employees are not happy. As reopening initiatives gather steam, I’ve been flooded with letters from people viewing these plans with deep suspicion — largely, I suspect, because in the past year, we’ve had […]

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