It looks like everything is trending back to normal. The White House made their announcement that it is time to “get back to normal” and employers responded resoundingly. Mandates were lifted just about everywhere and employers, specifically Fortune 500 companies, began their push for some resemblance of “return to the office”.
Obviously, many people are upset. A common retort to this is “surging COVID cases in my area” or something akin. My point is – COVID cases don't need to be the end all be all justification to wanting to remain WFH.
It is okay to say that you don't want to return to the office because, simply, you don't want to. We as employees have dramatically changed the way we work and adapted quickly to a WFH environment many of us were never exposed to. Many of us lost our jobs due to COVID and worked hard to get an opportunity that would allow us to work from home safely.
The benefits of working from home allow us more time with our partners, our animals, our kids. We can do chores in between work calls instead of engaging in “water-cooler talk”. We save money on gas, we save money on food, we save time.
All the while, every major statistic shows that our productivity has gone up. Those who left their employer to find a fully WFH one now feel fleeced as there is a push to get back.
Our lives have gotten dramatically better with working from home. We are past having to cite COVID cases as the reason we don't want to return.
We don't want to return because our lives have gotten better and our happiness isn't predicated on a morning cup of joe with coworkers.