Meet the people who work fully remote—and hate it

It’s an envy-inducing scene, until you listen to what he’s saying. “Working remote, it allowed me to move to Hawaii," the Seattle native acknowledges, but “there’s a lot of social negatives…One of the costs is loneliness." Being on a computer screen all day, Woo says, feels like “being a captive animal in the zoo. You know, like a captive human."

Five years after the pandemic shutdown, we’re in the midst of a major back-to-the-office push. Companies from AT&T to Chipotle are cracking down on remote work, as is the Trump administration, which has threatened to fire federal employees who don’t show up five days a week.

Employees, for the most part, are furious, fighting back with petitions and lawsuits. More than 90% of Amazon professionals in a recent survey objected to the company’s demand for five days a week on premises. A recent Pew survey found that almost half of employees say they’d likely look for a new job if their employer eliminated remote options.

But lost in the crowd is a small, sad cohort that just wants their cubicles back. Most are stranded at home either because their physical office no longer exists or their position in the org chart has been designated remote. Reddit is filled with threads from this lonely crowd, with topics like “Working from home has ruined me," “I absolutely hate working from home" and LinkedIn rant, “I HATE WORKING FROM HOME! There, I said it," went viral, racking up thousands of comments.

‘I know I’m the weird one,’ says Damien Peters, who misses office life now that he works fully remote.

Just 3% of white collar employees want to return to the office five days a week, an Advanced Workplace Associates poll found. “I know I’m the weird one," laughs engineer Damien Peters, 41, of Silver Spring, Md., the managing partner of a fully remote consulting firm. He gets too easily distracted by “chores I can attend to, taxes I can do," and misses the camaraderie with colleagues. “I’m quite introverted and a bit antisocial, but I don’t like not seeing anyone," he says. He realizes that he is an outlier, even in his own home: “My wife is fully remote, and she loves it passionately."

Paige Shaw, 47, an Orlando insurance professional who went remote during the pandemic, hated it so much that she quit her job. She’s now in an on-premises role, where she relishes everything about office life—the colleagues to chitchat with, the free food for celebrations, the corridors she can roam when she needs a break. She even likes the commute, which she uses to plan her day in the mornings and to unwind in the evenings, taking “the scenic route" on local roads. “My industry is stressful, and you need to compartmentalize," she says.

Ellyn Rose says it’s hard to socialize in the evening when friends who work in offices just want to go home.

Some unhappy remote workers complain that the isolation crushes their social skills. Travis Woo says weekends with friends are awkward when “you’re not socially warmed up" from the week. Ellyn Rose, 58, a remote senior project control engineer in Kirkland, Wash., tries to see friends on weekday evenings, but those with on-premises jobs just want to chill out at home. “I feel like my dog when I used to come home: ‘Can we play, can we play?’ But they already had their social fix for their day."

In pre-pandemic days, getting an occasional day to work at home was seen as a gift, a glorious break from the daily grind. “I loved my Fridays working at home. It was a treat," says Amy Aronoff Blumkin, a senior marketing executive. She enjoyed doing early-morning workouts instead of commuting to New York from her New Jersey home.

But now, working remotely for a Washington, D.C., nonprofit, the novelty has worn thin. “I miss the creativity, I miss the popping into someone’s office to say, ‘I have a question’ rather than setting up a Zoom call," says Blumkin, chief growth officer for the National Council of Jewish Women. It’s more difficult to forge relationships, to act quickly and to mentor younger employees. She looks forward to her periodic visits to headquarters, with its bustling energy. “Most of my closest friends have been people who I met at work, the people who get me through and who were at my wedding," she says. “You don’t have that now."

Lonely remote employees try all sorts of hacks to re-create office vibes. New York City journalist Nelson Wang, 54, who spent the majority of his 30-year career working in a newsroom, has become an expert at sussing out a rotating set of locales, among them his apartment building’s common room, neighborhood coffee shops and the office of a publication where he freelances.

Nelson Wang tries to recreate office vibes by working in his apartment building’s common room.

But even when remote workers show up in person, there’s no guarantee anyone will be there. IT professional Ryan Daniels tried going into his office even though his position is classified as remote. “It was worse than being at home," he says. “It was a ghost town. I thought if something happened to me here, it would take a couple of days for people to find me." He then rented a co-working space on his own dime, “but there are rarely any people in there" either.

Those who are itching to go back to the office don’t get a lot of sympathy. When a remote worker wrote on a Reddit post that “my depression has steadily increased," one commenter chided him for “wasting a spot" for someone more deserving. When another remote worker confessed, “I now dread logging in, I feel so isolated, the days feel draining and I’m just unhappy," an irate commenter shot back: “Everyone I know that was forced back to an office hates their lives right now. Someone complaining about work from home is unbelievable."

Still, even those pining for the office don’t necessarily wish for five days a week chained to their desks. Many would prefer a hybrid schedule, which more than half of Americans with remote-capable jobs already enjoy, Gallup found. Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom has found that hybrid work is equally productive and makes employees happier, with quit rates declining by 35%. Even Shaw, the Orlando insurance professional who loves the office, still works one day a week at home: “It’s more efficient for me, and it’s more efficient for my employer."

Oahu’s Woo, for his part, has given up the fully remote life. He first moved to the island in 2017 while working remotely in the videogame industry, but a year ago, he says, “I found myself not missing the office but missing socializing during the day." He pivoted into running a few small online businesses and now works part time at a marine tourism company, ferrying visitors to look at dolphins and whales. “It’s not an office setting," he concedes, but at least “I have a bunch of co-workers now."

Joanne Lipman is the former chief content officer of Gannett and editor in chief of USA Today. She is the author of “Next! The Power of Reinvention in Life and Work."