The Work-from-Home Reckoning to Come
When Will Companies or the Government Compensate New Costs to Employees?
Almost everyone loves working from home. Pajama bottoms during Zoom calls, freedom to tend to housework and parenting as needed, no wasting time on chitchat by the water cooler.
Most companies love it too. Workers left to their own devices turned out, by and large, not to be shirking their duties. They rose to the occasion and did their jobs. In many cases, they were even more efficient. Oh, and companies are now saving gazillions of dollars — on commercial leases that once ate a huge chunk of revenue, on the utility bills they once paid monthly, and even on the daily coffee, toilet paper, and occasional lunches they once provided.
Employees now shoulder most of those costs in our work-from-home world. We are paying more to heat and cool our homes all day every day, to keep our lights and laptops on, to expand our internet capacity for those Zoom calls. We’re also firmly on the hook for softer expenses that used to come with traditional office work, like that daily coffee, the filtered water, the cans of soda, those occasional lunches, and, yes, even the toilet paper.
