Why Returning to the Office isn’t Really the Best Policy

When you first get back into the office, you realize why you didn’t want to return at all.

Jacob K Thomas
4 min readJul 1, 2022
Photo by Dcstudio on Freepik

It’s been 3 months or 90 days since the big return to the office. To say that the two days in my week that I’ve had to get up and go in has been a feat like no other is a complete understatement. The return to the office just isn’t fun.

The biggest issue you realize during this entire return to the office is how time really does get sucked from you. On the flip side, you realize that the time you are doing random things while at home, that’s the same time you are doing the “collaboration” or having that oh-so-missed water cooler conversation. The difference between the two is clear, at least to me.

The periods of random talking to a colleague might not actually be for you. Those moments are actually for other people. The return to the office for a lot of people who didn’t want to return isn’t about them. It’s about the people that wanted them back. It’s crazy when you realize how all these things work.

Your time in the office isn’t your time. It’s someone else’s time. When you do get to return to the safe space of your home, you can relax. If you are like me, there have been times when you have worked longer just because you…

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Jacob K Thomas

Writer. Cook. Traveler. Photographer. Featured on the Food Network and newspapers around America. https://jacobkthomas.com/