But now some executives are throwing open their office doors, propelled by easing Covid restrictions and dismissing cases. Office occupancy across the country reached a pandemic peak of 40 percent in December, fell due to the Omicron variant and then started to rise again, to 38 percent this month, according to data from security firm Kastle. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, American Express, Meta, Microsoft, Ford Motor and Citigroup are just a handful of the companies that are starting to cut back employees.
When more than 700 people responded to The Times’ recent questions about returning to their office, as well as interviews with more than two dozen of them, there were countless reasons why people preferred working from home, in addition to concerns about Covid safety. They mentioned sunlight, sweatpants, quality time with kids, quality time with cats, more hours to read and run, space to hide the fear of a miserable day or year. But the most discussed was the culture in the workplace.
“There’s not much point going back to the office if we’re just going back to the old boys’ club,” said Keren Gifford, 37, an information technology worker in Pittsburgh who hasn’t had to return to her office yet. “What a relief not to have to go in day after day, week after week and fail to make friends and have fun.”
Many, like Ms. Gifford, realized they felt like they had spent their careers in spaces built for someone else. Take something as simple as temperature. Most building thermostats follow a model developed in the 1960s that, among other things, takes into account the resting metabolism of a 40-year-old man who weighs 154 pounds, according to a study published in Nature Climate Change. That forced women to spend their prepandemic years filling cubicles with scarves, space heaters and blankets they could dig into “like a burrito.”
Some even kept their desks stocked with fingerless gloves, such as Marissa Stein, 37, an executive at an environmental nonprofit. Once Ms. Stein started working remotely, she was able to set her home temperature to 68 degrees, a compromise between her husband’s colder preferences and hers.
“Sometimes I’ll sneak it up to 70 if my husband isn’t paying attention,” she said.
But that’s just the tiniest example of how the office was physically designed to meet the needs of a very specific type of employee.
