I've lived the excesses of over-funded startups - I don't need the catered breakfasts and lunches, I don't need the endless snacks and drinks, I don't need the fancy desk chairs or fancy desks - I need to not get deathly ill several times a year.
That's the absolute #1 top reason why I won't go back to an office. It's not just about covid - it's about all viruses and illnesses that coworkers spread around the office. Heck no I don't want any of that in my life anymore. No thank you.
Any thoughts on how this happened? Did not have this experience in a diverse 40-year job history
A friend of mine gives tours at a museum of modern art; he says what you say: it's almost a part of the job to get sick at least once per year, typically in flu season in winter.
Employers should be forces to either guarantee there only a very small and stable team of people you meet on a daily basis -- or pay employees premium for the risk they incur because of diseases.
The alternative is to live like people live in Japan where everyone wears a mask all the time during flu season. But people in the west are often too lazy and "individual" for that. I don't really like to be overly broad and generalize, but the COVID stats prove it clearly: https://pandem-ic.com/japan-and-us-are-worlds-apart-on-pande...
/rant over/
"Companies should pay an employees a stipend for the risk of..... human contact!"
I already lament the world where parents are fined and sometimes jailed for letting their kids exist independent of surveillance, and we do not need to take further steps into isolation and atomization
Casual and constant exposure to infectious agents (natural ones, not those transmitted over TCP/IP) develops and maintains an immune response. It's not just the brain wired to have interactions with others, it's the whole gestalt.
It is mainly the long air sharing I believe that can be a difference. You still go to the same toilettes and touch the same doorhandles.
you have a room to be converted to an office, but not everybody is this lucky
This even without accounting for career related advantages when physically being in the office - building professional network, serendipitous discovery of undocumented information.
I said “had” because admittedly now I’m a corner case. My wife and I nomad around the US 7 months a year staying in mostly extended stay hotels and the other 5 months (October-March) we “snowbird” in our home in Florida that’s rented out when we aren’t there to cover the mortgage.