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Brigid Bergin: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, a politics reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist Newsroom, in for Brian who's off today. If you're lucky enough to have worked from home in the past year, the grand experiment of remote work may soon be coming to a close as more and more offices are setting return dates for employees.

As much as many of us want to see our coworkers and are excited for in-person collaboration, it's hard to deny that the freedom from the office has been a bit liberating and it might not be a bad idea to bring some of that freedom back to work post-pandemic. With me now is staff writer with The Atlantic, Amanda Mull, her latest piece is called There's a Perfect Number of Days to Work from Home and It's 2. Welcome back to WNYC, Amanda.

Amanda Mull: Thank you for having me.

Brigid Bergin: In your new article, you mentioned that the experience of the past year is not at all a good barometer of what your remote future work could be. What would remote work outside of a pandemic look like?

Amanda Mull: It can look like a lot of different things. I have done pretty much every permutation of fully remote, fully in office, and then all kinds of different hybrids over the course of my career. My experience with that is that working remote can be different things for different people, which is the beauty of it. If you are in the office a couple of days a week and at home a couple of days a week, your ability to tailor your work from home experience to you really expands. You don't necessarily have to work from home. First of all, you can work from a coffee shop. You can get together with a couple of friends and work in one of their apartments to have a social office instead of your professional office.

You can use those days to travel a little bit to extend a weekend trip and work from a hotel room or an Airbnb for a day to get some of that travel activity out of the way so you're already in your weekend destination and you can work from there. It can look like a zillion different things once a lot of the rest of the world opens up a little bit more and we go back to a place where you can it in coffee shops safely and you can gather with other people safely.

Brigid Bergin: A lot of different physical arrangements you can make. With that in mind, you advocate for the baseline of three days in the office and two at home or some other location. Why is that the perfect ratio in your opinion?

Amanda Mull: I think when we're dealing with this transition period right now where a lot of employers have not really announced what work is going to be like in the near future. A lot of employees are trying to decide what they found valuable about being remote and what they found valuable and missed about being in the office.

I think it's a good idea to start negotiating at three days in the office, two at home because that tells your employer that, "Hey, we're still going to be in the office most of the time. You're not going to go weeks and weeks without seeing me. If you give me two days to work from home, I get a couple of hours back on my commute. I've been productive during the pandemic. The office has been productive during the pandemic, so why don't we start with that and see how it goes?"

I think that that is a really good starting point to ease into this conversation. It's something that I think you can broadly get a lot of people on board with, even if they like being in the office, even if they like being at home. It's a little bit for everybody and it gives you a good chunk of time in both scenarios every week. Then once you get to that point, once everybody is on board, you can then try out the experience, see if your need maybe one day at one place or the other for your personal maximum productivity, and your coworkers can do the same. It's like a theme in variation type of situation with three-two as the baseline

Brigid Bergin: In this scenario, does everyone take the same two days, or do they rotate, and do you have to coordinate with your colleagues? How do you envision it working?

Amanda Mull: It really depends on the workplace and the kind of work that you and your colleagues are engaged in. The reason that I think that all work from home or all office doesn't work for most people is that, within any particular workplace, any particular office, exists a vast continuum of different types of work people are doing. If you and the people you work with generally are doing a more heads-down technical type of thing, if you're coding, things like that, then maybe you work from home mostly, and you don't really have to coordinate it with anybody but your supervisor.

If you are engaged in a type of work that requires a lot of sociality, both with your co-workers and with outside clients, sales, things like that, then you and your team are going to have to coordinate a little bit more heavily and a little bit more actively. I think that just talking to your coworkers, and talking about boundaries, and talking about the experience of the last year, and what was valuable, and what was helpful gives you an opportunity from that three-two baseline to see what you actually need as a workplace, as a team, as a company. Then depending on the type of work you do, you can change it from there.

For some teams, that will probably be a planned three-two, where everybody takes the same days out of the office. For other types of work, like the type of work I do, there's no reason that my coworkers who are working on different stories than I am should come in on the days that I'm coming in. It's a different modality to work in. It just depends on individual needs.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to hear about your individual needs. Employers and employees, if you worked from home this past year, where are you now in the process of going back to the office? Call us at (646) 435-7280, or are you back in the office already, or do you have a return date of when you know you will be fully back, and what's your perfect work from home to office ratio and why? We also want to hear from you if there are things you didn't think you'd miss about being out of the office. Do you actually really like your commute or your lunch break? What surprised you this year about working from home and has it made you think differently about working in the office?

If you're a boss, how do you feel about remote work? Do you think your employees need to be there and give you the best product when they are with you in the office or when they're home? How are you thinking about this decision about allowing your team to be home and in the office? The number is (646) 435-7280. Lastly, we also want to hear from you if you're one of the 80,000 city employees back in the office this week in New York City. How's it going to be back? Do you really feel like you are back? How does it feel, especially if you are among the group of people who didn't want to go back full time?

The number one more time is (646) 435-7280, we want to hear your work from home versus work from the office ratios. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian Lehrer and my guest is Atlantic staff writer, Amanda Mull on her latest article, which is called There's a Perfect Number of Days to Work from Home and It's 2. Amanda, you also discuss things you miss about being in the office, including your commute. Who misses their commute? That seems like something that we were all of a sudden complaining about before the original shutdown. Did the sudden loss due to the pandemic put things in perspective for you? What makes your commute better than the rest of ours?

Amanda Mull: This is something that I didn't realize that I was missing until I came across a piece of research that suggested that fully 50% of people missed their commute. At first, my reaction was the same as yours. I was like, "How could anybody miss their commute?" Then I started to think about it and I was like, "I wish my commute was shorter than it is." Back when we were going to the office, I wish I could have cut my commute in half, or at least down by a third.

Having the time to transition from home mode to work mode and having the opportunity to do that, just passively while I listened to a podcast, while I don't have to actively answer emails or look at my phone or do anything else was I think psychologically helpful to me. Part of the big reason that I don't think offices as a concept aren't going anywhere is that there's a lot of people who benefit from the psychological remove of having a separate place to work versus a separate place to conduct their personal life.

I think that that separation is important and you transition between those two realms on your commute. There are definitely commutes that are onerous, that are detrimental to people's lives that should be shorter if we lived in a fairer society. I think having 20 minutes, 30 minutes, even a little bit longer to move between the two brain spaces that you're supposed to occupy as a person can be really helpful to people.

Brigid Bergin: I think you're helping us reframe this narrative for our listeners out there who hate commuting. I hate commuting. There's the transition and that aspect of it, perhaps, for some parents of small children, it might be that time of quiet and maybe being able to read or listen to a podcast. What else do you like about your commute?

Amanda Mull: I like being able to see other people. That's one of the greatest things about New York City, is getting to go outside and just see all kinds of different people out in the world doing their own things on their own commutes, conducting their own lives. I find that really energy-giving and recharging. Being able to experience vicariously, that sort of energy is really helpful to me.

Being stuck in my apartment by myself, you just don't get any of that ambient sidewalk city energy that I think is such a valuable part of New York City. That might not ring as true for people who commute by cars or who live in the suburbs and work in the suburbs. Especially in city life, you just lose a lot of that texture of everyday life that makes living in a city so enjoyable.

Brigid Bergen: It's energizing people watching that you're describing. I was struck by, you used the words humiliating and infantilizing to describe the five-day-a-week office structure that most Americans still adhere to. Those are really strong words. Why pick humiliating and infantilizing?

Amanda Mull: If you think about it, being forced to ask permission to see your doctor or ask permission to stay at home if your child is sick, or just being forced to ask permission for any of the totally understandable, totally reasonable necessities of conducting a human life is really not that different from being forced to when you're in third grade, raise your hand to ask if you can go to the bathroom. It's infantilizing, it's dehumanizing. The idea is that you have to ask permission to live a human life outside of your employer's purview is just really backwards. We give employers far too much power to decide how we conduct our personal lives in this country.

Having a baseline work-from-home expectation, I think, lets people take some of that power and control back from their employers because if it's expected that you will work from home part of the week, then you don't have to plead your case before your supervisor that your kid has the sniffles, and, "Please, can I have the day off? Please, can I have the day off to accept a delivery I've been expecting," or something like that. The idea that it is good and normal and reasonable for us to have to plead our case before our employers in order to conduct so much normal stuff in our everyday lives is just completely backwards to me, and it really is infantilizing.

Brigid Bergen: Let's hear from some of our callers. Natalia in Queens, welcome to WNYC. What's your perfect--

Natalia: Thank you. I love this. This is awesome. I'm single, I don't qualify for-- A lot of my coworkers have children. I think it's really benefited them to be able to be home if they're sick to just be able to help older parents that they're taking care of. I have gained a ton of weight because my commute, even though I live in Queens, but I work by City Hall.

It's been wonderful to be able to go to work and it's 11,000 steps a day. There's a mental health aspect and there's a physical health aspect to just not moving as much and not interacting as much. I worked for the city. Our agency fought really hard to only be back one day a week because of all the parents and all that. We are expected to be back more days a week in the coming months.

Brigid Bergen: How hard was the adjustment, Natalia? I hear you on the steps. I wear a Fitbit and it can be embarrassing when you work from home to see how few steps you get in and how many you get just by being a New Yorker going about your daily life. It's completely different. Were you hesitant before you actually went back?

Natalia: Not at all. I actually have been asking permission as soon as more people started getting vaccinated to come into the office, but I am not common with my coworkers. There's been a lot of pushback, and people not really feeling comfortable, even if they're vaccinated because they're worried about bringing the virus home to their family who's not vaccinated. I think I'm one of the few that's not resistant to the idea of going back, but I would say maybe half are not wanting to come back.

Brigid Bergen: Natalia, thanks so much for calling, and thanks for what you do for the city of New York. I know we have some pro commute callers, believe it or not, everybody. Lynn, welcome to WNYC. I hear you love your commute. Tell us why?

Lynn: Reading. In a word, reading. I am an autodidact. I think I've learned so much more in my life from all the voluminous reading that I've done than I did in college. I just think that I would never have the time to do it if I didn't live in Washington Heights and have an office on 26th Street, I just have a long commute, and boy, do I enjoy being able to have that uninterrupted A train time to read and read and read.

Brigid Bergen: You have the advantage of getting on that A train pretty early. You're probably likely to get a seat where you can read, is that right?

Lynn: Always. Yes, because I'm at the top of the line. It's a special time and I just stack it up. I always have a bag full of books and magazines and keeping up with magazines and the New York Times is a heavy load. There's a lot of reading to be done and I appreciate the train for that. It's perfect.

Brigid Bergen: Lynn, thank you so much for calling in and giving us another pro commuter perspective, very valuable to have. Let's talk to Sophia in Leonia, New Jersey. Sophia, welcome to WNYC.

Sophia: Hi. I would say that I definitely do not miss the commute at all. I normally drive to my office in the Bronx. I drive over the GW Bridge, which is awful every morning. I don't miss it at all. Also, I work in an open office with cubicles. I'm a lawyer. If you do any real thinking, I need quiet. I would find that I use noise cancellation headphones, but at home, I don't have to do that, it's great. Then, I actually had a baby early in the pandemic. I get to spend a lot of time at home with him, which has been wonderful.

Brigid Bergen: That is definitely an advantage. What is your ideal ratio? Are you back in the office? Are you able to split some time between home and work now?

Sophia: For the moment, our office is mostly closed, except for essential staff that have to be there. They're taking a very relaxed approach to reopening. It's more like a process. They're very understanding of employees and situations where if your kids are Zooming in for school, they've been very understanding. It's been great. They recently did a workplace survey asking us whether we wanted to go back in. We'll see what happens.

Brigid Bergen: Sophia, thank you so much for calling. We're going to have to leave it there with Amanda Mull, staff writer for The Atlantic. Make sure to check out her new article. There's a Perfect Number of Days to Work from Home and It's 2. This has been the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent, filling in for Brian today. Thanks so much for listening.

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