Monday, Microsoft — the first major American employer to send its workers home as COVID bore down in March 2020 — informed its Washington State employees that March 2022 will usher in a return to the office for many. Here’s hoping that more workers and businesses in New York City follow that lead.
No, this doesn’t mean that all remote or hybrid work should end. Executives in the c-suites should get the memo: People appreciate and have come to rely on the freedom from the cubicle they have gained these past two years. We don’t begrudge anyone less time commuting and more time with their kids. If companies try too hard to drag everyone back in without accommodating legitimate requests for flexibility, they’ll lose talent en masse.
But employees must understand that engaging in person with colleagues, at least for part of the week, offers irreplaceable benefits. Add to that the undeniable fact that if New York City sees the long-term hollowing out of Midtown, Downtown and other swaths once populated by commuters, tax collections will crater, leaving city government desperate to fill a multi-billion-dollar hole. We don’t weep for the titans of commercial real estate, but for many thousands of small businesses that will permanently implode, and a subway and commuter rail system that will suffer from inattention and disinvestment.
All those who banged on pots and pans to support essential workers during the depths of COVID should spare a thought for the newsstand workers and bartenders and coffee cart guys and waitresses and barbers and cabbies desperate for business to return.
The omicron spike is subsiding; Gov. Kathy Hochul rightly says that, for our overwhelmingly vaccinated population, it’s now safe to go maskless indoors. She and Mayor Eric Adams — who understands he must ensure crime and quality-of-life concerns in Midtown and Downtown are more effectively addressed — know that New York City without vibrant commercial corridors risks becoming, over time, like Detroit without the Big Three automakers, or like a human body without a vital organ.
