 Hello and welcome everyone to a future tense debate. This is very exciting today. We are debating the very timely proposition of we need to rush back to the office. Notice we're not doing this in person from the office yet, but we're going to we're fixing to rush back to the office or the prop the motion is that we need to do that. And so I know this is a topic that is one of the most timely things that I know informally people are talking about in our different organizations. I do think it's important at the outset to stipulate and recognize that this is in some ways a somewhat privileged conversation there are you know 60 it's estimated that 60% of people in our economy do not have the luxury of having this debate. They are the nature of their jobs means that they have been working in place even for many of them even throughout the pandemic and obviously there are sort of the heroes of this of this time whether it's people working in grocery stores or distributing our packages or obviously you know doctors and people in the medical profession. Having said that though, there are 10s and 10s and millions of people who, you know, tended to go to an office every day and any number of different kind of jobs and professions and we had this incredible dynamic social cultural experiment of having to work remotely during this period of time, enabled by a lot of the great technological trends that we look at at future tense and so hence this question of well we, you know, a lot of us seem to be able to work remotely. Do we need to rethink this idea of going to an office every day from nine to five so very excited for this. I should have introduced myself the outset I'm Andres Martinez I'm the editorial director of future tense which is a partnership between New America Arizona State University and slate magazine. I want to really dive into this debate quickly, and I'll introduce at the outset are other participants I'm just going to be the traffic cop moderator here. But arguing for the motion that we must rush back to the office is Henry Grubar who's a staff writer at slate, who writes about architecture real estate transportation environment. And he is a fantastic person to have in this, because I always love hearing his opinions and also he is the editor of forthcoming book on the future of transportation. And there's a fascinating link obviously between the way in which our transportation systems are designed to get us to offices and it's an interesting question about what happens if that's if there's a big rethink there. And also for the motion is Katie Wu who's a staff writer for the Atlantic. I've been a huge fan of your science writing in this incredibly important time for science journalism so congratulations Katie. She's also been a science report at the New York Times, a staff writer for Nova tax and an early career fellow at the open notebook. So, welcome Katie arguing against the motion that we must rush back to work is my current still at New America colleague Bridget Schulte who is an award winning writer and journalist, she directs the better life lab and good life initiative in New America. Bridget, long before the pandemic wrote a fantastic book about how we manage our time and how we're overwhelmed title of the book, in terms of the life work balance and that's obviously a huge part of this debate on the question of whether we need to continue to go to an office and on team on the same team as Bridget her teammate is actually Willens is an assistant professor at the Harvard Business School, who does a lot of work on employee well being. So some fascinating stuff about like happiness and well being which is tied to productivity obviously her research has appeared variety of leading journals and her first book time smart how to reclaim your life and live a happier life was published last October. And let's get started. So we're going to have two minutes at the outset for all of our debaters to argue born against the motion. And we're going to start with Katie Wu in favor of the motion. All right, so I will start this off by saying that I do on a deep and personal level want everyone to follow their bliss, but I desperately miss the concept of an office. I have been working at home for the entirety of the pandemic and gosh I don't think I have sat this continuously my entire life except for like maybe the months after which I was born. I can't prove that, but I have really been craving the office because I really need some physical separation between what is work and what is home. I have a very small apartment with my partner and three very codependent cats. My office which my office which I am in right now is also our guest bedroom, my partner's home gym, our cats playground and it is, it's a lot when my husband and I are both working at home, it can be really tough for us to both work at the same time. And so I've been really missing having that space to go back to and say, here's the space in which I am working. I am not doing any of my personal things no one can barge in and say, please help me wash the dishes please feed the cats or someone has puked all over the floor and you need to clean it up right now. I really missed being able to do that that also means that if I come home from the office, I'm able to turn off my work brain and say, this is my personal time. Otherwise I become a workaholic because I am never more than a few feet away from my desk and my work is always calling to me. I also feel like I have stopped kind of appreciating the comfort of home because I am here all the time I can do pretty much anything at any point in my life. My office, my conceptual office has offered me the stability of being able to say, hey, I'm here I'm working, and then I get to go home and enjoy what that home is now everything is squashed together and I thought it was Tuesday until a few minutes. So my sense of time is completely broken. I will qualify all this by saying that I am deeply introverted and so this is not necessarily me saying that I want to force everyone to mingle and make small talk which is an absolute punishment, but two minutes are up so we're going to talk here but obviously plenty more time to return to some of that and now we have Ashley against the motion. Great. Thanks. So it's clear and we're not trying to argue that the widespread shift to remote work has not been without challenges over the past year though. I also want to make the argument that the shift has the potential to offer a major silver lining. So for many of us daily commuting to the office has become a ritual of the past. We are alone eliminating the daily commute save workers around 90 million hours each week, which is the time saving equivalent of nearly one billion full work days since the pandemic began. These numbers suggest that sustained remote and hybrid models of work may provide employees with the chance to reclaim their most precious and limited resource their time. Other models of work could continue to save billions of hours worldwide with potential benefits for something that is near dear to my heart, employee stress and subjective well being. But it's up to us to spend that time well and it's up to organizations to help employees better manage the availability of time that remote and hybrid models afford. Again, remote work has had its challenges boundaries are blurry hours are longer emails are incessant at all hours of the day and night if they weren't before they're even more like that now. And the opportunity for social interactions and innovation were scarce. Despite these challenges, though, we want to argue that now is not the time to rush back to the office and to our old broken models of work. Instead now is the perfect opportunity to make slow intentional deliberate decisions about how to recreate a model of work that respects all workers regardless of job type, and helps more of us get what we crave the most. We are not here to argue that remote models are a panacea for the challenges of modern work. Instead, we're here to argue for something bigger. We need to learn from the challenges of the past year and use this moment as a paradigm shift to reimagine our relationship with work before we end up worse than where we started. Thanks Ashley. Now, Henry. Thanks Andreas. I'm glad you drew attention in your introduction to the fact that the discussion of remote work is mostly about white collar workers. But I would argue it'd be a mistake to limit our focus today to the situation in which we find ourselves, which is to say, sitting in our houses and computers. This debate remote work, you know, good for whom it's perhaps good for white collar workers, but it's definitely bad for the ecosystem that is built up around downtown office work. Office work is a huge economic force supports millions of blue collar workers and transportation restaurants office work from secretarial roles to cooks to cleaners. And those jobs have vanished. Some have been replaced by a fairly I think in there's consensus is a pretty inhumane delivery economy in the suburbs, staff by underpaid workers who might just get a few minutes of human interaction and so I don't think there's any reason to lionize the big property owners who manage downtown office buildings, but CBD's are huge tax generators for cities to generate jobs to generate taxes, and essentially then the office economy is a huge redistribution machine it suburban workers go in and big city budgets come out which essentially is a way of distributing suburbs effort to isolate themselves from the problems of big cities back into social welfare programs that affect workers so I think that if you're opting out of this system as a worker you need to reckon with the fallout that's happening in the place you used to go and the predicament for for the workers who now find themselves out of jobs, all mass I mean we're talking in cities like New York and Chicago. Still sky high unemployment rate so perhaps it's not our job as workers to advocate so strongly for the return to the office but certainly for political leaders. It's essential that people get back as soon as possible. Thanks Henry Bridget here. Thanks for everyone who's gone before me, Henry you make some really great points. But what I would argue is we really can't go back to the way things were. And that's not just for those of us who have the privilege really of being able to be in our homes and work remotely and talking to our computers as you say, but that is also for those low wage and hourly workers. I think that you know what Ashley and I are talking about is we need to not go back to the way things were we can't for anybody. And we need to use this as an opportunity to really reimagine work itself and not just whether you're in the office or because again we're remote work certainly has its has has issues as we've all been talking about, you know, but very much about the about those essential workers. Why do we have low wage work in the United States, you know there's all this talk about oh you know we need to cut off unemployment pandemic benefits because people, you know are to quote unquote lazy and they won't go back to the office. Why on earth would you choose to go back to a $9 an hour wage job, you know when your unemployment benefits are finally giving you a living wage. We live in a country where before the pandemic. You could not afford a two bedroom apartment in any city on a minimum wage job. So I hear what you're saying Henry about about making sure that there is opportunity, you know, for those, you know, essential hourly workers. We need to even think bigger than that I don't think rushing back to the office is going to be better for anybody. Just the way that we used to work if you just look at work stress and health is something that I look into. There was a meta analysis of more than 200 studies done. And what the what the researchers found is that the way we worked before the pandemic and that includes everyone across socioeconomic spectrum was actually the fifth leading cause of death in the United States. And the pandemic work stress from, you know, we think about, you know, falling off of a ladder or going down into a coal mine or sort of being the danger of work. Thanks Bridget. Get back to my points later on a roll. Okay, so now we're going to have a free for all. And we're going to flush a lot of this out, but I do want to have a poll. I want to hear from all of you watching this. We want to set a benchmark of where you're coming from. What side would you be on before we really have it out here and then we want to kind of gauge where we are at the end of this. So it's time to rush back to the office that's our motion. Do you agree with that proposition do you disagree. I'm just getting a phone call from scam likely. Or are you not sure. So I'll give you a minute to vote. And we can't vote. I'm neutral here as a referee. Okay, so a couple more seconds and now can we let's see the results. So I'm not controlling this. Okay. So we have a lot of people on the fence, which is great. And then we have a lot of people who are coming into this on team Bridget and Ashley. So that's like a lot of pressure on you guys it's like you have to protect this this lead or these massive expectations. But but let's get into this. So I want to actually, I want to start with you just. I think one of the things that you and Bridget Bo talked about was like, why do we want to go back to that, you know, kind of broken system and, and, you know, this is sort of working right in terms of, for a lot of us we are able to use these technologies like we're doing right here today on these screens to get things done and we've been productive and we have more flexibility, etc, etc. One question I have though is like, is this is this really sustainable, or is this the, the, the months of the pandemic weren't wasn't that a continuation of the fact that people had been working together in person I mean could you imagine that three, five, 10 years from now, having productive organizations if people have never imbued that workplace culture, have those relationships. It's just sort of, you know, being able to pull it off because of the that foundation that we had in the in the in the actual workspace that we shared prior to the pandemic. Great. So I think you're bringing up a really important point and something I want to push back against we're not saying that the way we did remote work over the last year is the way that remote work should and could be done forever in three and five and 10 years. But what we are saying is now is a great opportunity to learn from the challenges of the past year, some of which you identified in that exact question. The challenges of learning and development of building relationships of these virtual virtual hallway conversations not really occurring right. What is an informal spontaneous social interaction when we're all Skyping in from our houses like those things do not exist in a completely remote environment. We begin to learn from and build forward with those challenges as opportunities in mind right so we can think about if we are going to go back to a hybrid model of working that doesn't force workers into the office five days a week but encourages them to have their autonomy and flexibility over their time which we know is important for subjective well being, which helps workers navigate personal and work demands simultaneously. Then what do we need to do well maybe we need to have on sites when people are on boarding, maybe we need to have one concerted coordinated day a week where everyone on one team is in an office together. Absolutely there are challenges with the way that we've operated in the last year because we're in a reactive mode, but now we have the opportunity before rushing back into the way things were to pause and say if we could be proactive and build forward better. What would that look like. In the intro you talk you were talking about we need to make slow intentional deliberate decisions about this return to work and it is true that it's worth noting that we've rushed back to do many of the things we we were doing you know when the all clear sort of sounded and depending on where you live. We've rushed back to a lot of our normal activities but we've not rushed back to offices by and large. But, Henry Katie I don't know if you want to chime in here in terms of like this sort of squishy like some people need to show up some days. What does that mean for somebody starting off their career and in people who are well established might not be in the office like what does that look like over time. Yeah, there are a few points I would like to make here actually and the first is that I feel like you know that this discussion is so complicated that I feel like we're having multiple conversations at once. There is, I think a difference between discussing the benefit of having a distinct like office space in which people are gathering to work and perform their work, and having a very frank and important discussion about work culture in America. The two are necessarily like so inextricably woven together that we can't tackle the work culture issue, while still providing like office space and encouraging people to go back into it and understanding the benefits that that can have. So I mean I agree with so much of what Ashley and Bridget were saying, but I guess I sort of push back against the notion that we're saying you know. Maybe it's the framing of rushing back to the office that sounds regressive and like we're trying to return to our old work habits writ large, having an office with typical office culture. I would love to see a future version of the office where it's not regressive. The second thing is I'm kind of in exactly the situation that you described, I actually started two new jobs during the pandemic. I've met exactly zero of my coworkers and both jobs. And it's been really difficult for me I did all my onboarding online I didn't meet anyone, and I still feel like I don't have a good grasp of what my coworkers are like I have no idea how tall any of them are it's just bizarre. I mean I like, especially as a working journalist you know so much of my job has hinged on knowing people seeing them experiencing them in three dimensions and being able to use multiple of my senses to engage with them at once. I miss having that level of humanity. There's also research that shows that you know people and really across the tree of life, animals are more productive when they get like stimulation from their environment, going into new environments that literally builds new brain tissue. And I feel like I have been missing that a lot as someone who's been hold up in the same room for a very long time. Bridget you wanted to chime in. I just wanted to jump in and you know, Katie there's no question that the you know human beings we are social creatures and we crave and need that sense of, you know there's that sense of belonging and being together. And so that's what I think why, why Ashley and I are we're not arguing about like oh let's all just hold up in our homes forever, you know but really kind of rethinking what does that time in the office look like and how to be more intentional about it. But I did want to push back against one of the points that you made that you know that at the the office and return to office is somehow separate from our larger work culture conversation. And I would really disagree with that and particularly for you know in this type of kind of professional setting. There are so many studies that show you know when you look at say inequality gender inequality racial inequality that we have these norms these kind of what are called ideal worker norms that the best workers work all the time that they're in the that they're answering emails at the at all hours, you know that they're always on that they put work first, and that those workers tend to be not surprisingly white men and then it then since since they were able to kind of like conform to this ideal worker culture. The, I mean the research shows that you have you're more likely to be promoted you're more likely to be seen as committed and dedicated. You know if you have these ideal worker traits and if women actually try to work that way. They are punished, because there are these also sort of competing notions that women do care work and so that you know it's okay that you work but you better put your family first. And so I would say that office culture FaceTime culture long work hours culture is really very much at the heart of what drives a lot of inequality at work. But Bridget, isn't there a danger that the pushing against a return to the office is only going to magnify these inequalities. If you have hybrid spaces. Isn't it good. Are we just going to be double doubling down on favoring the ideal worker who actually is in the office and the people who ought to be hybrid are going to I mean, I think you're taking this dysfunction and this these inequalities that we need to maybe just doubling down on them. And also there's another, there's another form of inequality. Isn't there. I mean, the office sometimes can be like a great, you know, it's a it's a level playing field and compared to school sometimes in terms of, well, let me explain like, I think if we can work remotely, we don't have the same condition situations you know there's the sort of young office worker who might be sharing a cramped apartment and you're asking, you know, or you're asking those persons to I mean I know places that are saying like great we don't even have to rent office space, and then somebody who's you know, 25 trying to get by and DC or New York or at being asked to work from like their bed essentially right, and maybe their internet connection isn't so great it's kind of like what we saw in schooling right suddenly you weren't all sharing the same space, you were, you know, back in your environment might reflect challenges that are, but but in the, you know, the question you raise I think is a really good one about the perception of an ideal worker and if you have this sort of hybrid situation might it not make things worse. Well, very briefly, I want to push back against that one because absolutely it could absolutely make things worse if managers are the ones and bosses are the ones that go back to work, and they perpetuate that culture. And if you look at there is a recent study or recent survey out of the UK that was actually sort of troubling, asking people who plans to go back to the office and who plans to work hybrid or remote and not surprisingly, sadly, because of our sort of our care and gendered care systems women and mothers were saying they would more likely to be working remotely and men and fathers were more likely to say they would go back to work. If that happens, and if managers prioritize that and are going to face time in the office and are not aware of it and intentionally designing against it, then absolutely it could it could make things worse that is, this is where we're at this pivot point of challenge and opportunity you cannot ignore that that could absolutely happen if you don't plan for it. And just really briefly Ashley had a really great point and some of the things talking about, you know the other point that you made about junior staff so I don't want to be going ahead and cede my time to Ashley to answer that point. Yeah, so what we actually sees in the virtual environment junior employees feel more empowered, we're all small people on the same small screens and so junior employees are more visible in the context of remote work to the extent that we're all in the virtual spaces. So we've been seeing in our data that employees feel more empowered to speak up to share their opinions in a virtual setting they have more interaction time with senior managers now there are some gaps again this is not perfect. So we do see that more junior people might be in meetings but they might have less understanding of what's going on in the meeting because of again these informal interactions are not going on they can't over here a conversation in the hallway from their managers. I do agree that, you know, as we move into however we end up with our, our models of work that we can proactively design against some of these biases that we know exists both within and within the virtual environment and outside of it. Henry you want to weigh in here on how great this is for junior staff. I don't think it's very great at all. We are slate has its first softball game coming up next week against Rolling Stone and frankly I'm not even sure I'm going to recognize the people who show up at the field, let alone know who bats righty who bats lefty who can play shortstop and who can play right field. So, I think we've been coasting to some extent on the team bonds that were formed in the pre pandemic period. And as those begin to fray I think the shortcomings of this model are going to become apparent I share under his concerns about the inequalities they're going to stem from hybrid work where the people who show up get rewarded and the people who don't get passed over for assignments responsibilities and promotions. I would also counter the idea that working from home somehow leads to a better work life balance on that hasn't been my experience minus been closer to Katie's emails coming in at all hours of the night, unless we're going to adopt a system like the police or Francis where you know you're not allowed to respond to your work email after 9pm on a Friday, then I see this. Actually, I mean I think there's some research that supports this to I've seen two studies one suggesting that. They're saving billions of hours in commuting time, as Ashley says but where's that time going. One study I read suggested that a third of it is going to work, while two thirds are going to other work like activities such as chores and childcare. And there's a use cargo working paper that just came out last month that says we're actually working two hours more every day. Although there's been no change in output so so this is a study that suggests that workers are actually being less productive, they're in more meetings and they have less time to focus. Yes, there are serious problems with work culture with how much we work with the way we deal with childcare in this country. But to some extent I feel like the office is being made a scapegoat for these problems and just because for some workers not going to the office becomes an answer to the childcare problems does not fix the childcare issue for society at large right like at least 50% of American workers are not working from home they're going to work and they still have childcare problems so for white collar workers to say, well this is a favorable arrangement for us because it fixes this glaring this enormous hole in the safety net. To me that's them opting for a personal solution to the childcare issue, rather than focusing on on societal change which is what we need it's not the office's fault in short. Henry thinking about when you're talking about maybe we should have laws that prohibit us from looking at emails at certain times. It reminded me I had a boss who would send me emails over the weekend and the subject line would say do not open until Monday, which is the most terrifying emails I've ever received right. I wanted to. I was I was fascinated that you in your opening were making the case that we should all, you know, spend an hour a day or however long it I think on average people spend an hour a day commuting right people go to an office. I think that's the census average, but you were saying like we must continue to do this, among other reasons because we have sort of these like stranded costs is investment in the infrastructure and in the sort of central business. You know, commercial real estate and downtown areas and it's a way to for people who have moved to the suburbs to pay into the, you know, city coffers and all that. I was also thinking about, you know, what what is the future of comedy in our pop culture if we don't have a shared workplace because I feel like 90% of all great sitcoms throughout history have been about a workplace but that's that's a separate issue. On your point, I, I mean that's that's that's an interesting argument but at what point if something is not working and I mean, I think I do think that a lot of people have realized, wow, I have so much more time because I don't have. I mean that that hour is an average right for some people. It can be two hours a day that they spend in trying to get to and from the office and they discovered that they can be do the work remotely and have that flexibility and have more time to pursue other interests or do more work or take care of family. Take their kids to practice or adjust their schedules accordingly. Like at what point is, is that sort of a strange reason for tens of millions of Americans year after year to do this thing because that's kind of like the way we have physically and I mean, Andres the problem is not with the office the problem is with the commute right and the problem with commute is that we've made it impossible for people to live close to where they work because of restrictive housing laws so let's not again blame the office for a problem that the society, you know, it doesn't need to be this way and again I'm not saying workers are going to choose themselves to opt into the commute out of some sense of altruism towards buying a sad death salad at the, you know, lunch place near their office I'm saying if you support full on remote work, you need to reckon with the consequences because Bridget can say, sure, the system was rotten before we need to build a new world, but the new world we're building is not janitors and, you know, office assistants and people who make lunch, leveling up to better jobs, it's the sales associate at a downtown department store, going from a people facing job she's loved for 20 years to working around packages in is in an Amazon warehouse that is the societal change that's taking place. And if you favor remote work on societal basis, you need to reckon with the consequences in terms of the shift for blue collar workers who also depend on this system that we've created. So actually you're fine with these consequences and with the death of our inner cities. How could you I'm arguing for something much more marginal than what some of these counterpoints are suggesting right so we know that job control job flexibility results oriented workplaces things that put the autonomy and control in the hands of workers themselves that provides some sense of psychological control over the workday even if it's that's when you get an afternoon off, as opposed to being stuck in the office all day every day five days a week can have psychological benefits. And so what I'm really arguing for is something that is more of a hybrid model as we move forward, less of a dichotomous black and white, we should absolutely be fully remote. I'm suggesting by one of my colleagues Raj Chudahari that when when workplaces offer the opportunity to go to remote work employees live closer to their families they commute less they admit admit less carbon emissions they have a higher quality of life, but you still do need to be involved for some of these effects of workers needing to be in the office sometimes to socialize or to do trainings and and so I'm not suggesting the death of the office we may need offices or meeting spaces where employees can get together and share ideas. And that can happen in the context of the infrastructure that exists, but I am suggesting that going back to a lot of the points that were made. We don't need to necessarily be nine to nine in an office every single day with commutes and congestion and all of the issues related to subjective well being and carbon emissions that come along with that need to be thinking more open in a more open minded way about going, what going back looks like and if we just go back. If we start to go back five days a week then nothing will change our work models will stay stagnant will go back to exactly the way that we were doing things before, and I'm arguing that that is not the right approach. So, Katie. Yeah, I wanted to ask you. We seem to be wrestling with is the office of scapegoat for all sorts of other problems or might it be almost like a solution for a lot of problems and obviously that's a work we're we're projecting a lot on on one type of office when workplaces don't differ a great deal but but please feel free to react to what's what's been you know said and assert it but also I'm just curious like if you seeing that the office and have shared physical workplace can can address a lot of the, the dysfunctionality and Bridget had been talking about. I mean, I, I agree with Ashley I would love to see some flexibility but I mean I, I think I am trying to extract, again, office and the culture that is often associated with the office as Henry was pointing out so well before. I'm also fine with, like, people being able to choose the work environment that's going to be most productive for them, but I think demonizing the office is going to strip some people of that choice. If we are going to put all options on the table we want to create a favorable environment in as many venues as possible. And I think turning the office into a scapegoat is going to limit the options for how people do well like I don't want to feel guilty about wanting to go back to the office. I don't want to feel guilty about going back to a space where my coworkers and I can see each other in person and build collaboratively. I think one thing I was thinking about earlier is, I think Bridget made some really. Actually, both Bridget and Ashley were talking a little bit about the roles of gender and how you know, culture and who shows up in the office are going to end up colliding this is something that I've thought a great deal about and I've had some experiences in the opposite direction. I think there is, I think, you know, having meetings on zoom, or I could envision hybrid meetings where some people are on zoom and other people are, you know, gathered into a conference room and all in the same zoom. It's been really hard for me to feel like I can be vocal in meetings. I have very, very often been the only woman of color in zoom meetings, and I feel weird and tokenized and even more two dimensional that I already literally am on a screen. It's just a very bizarre environment in which to pipe up I can't read anyone's body language I can't read the room. And I think as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about environments and science and as a former scientist myself. Science is one of those fields in which there is an especially enormous representation problem. And I feel like people who are marginalized tokenized and underrepresented in science may have an easier time when they are able to see their allies in a room with them and feel like they actually have a sense of togetherness and start to make those changes in person. That's something that matters a lot to me and I'm not saying that can't be done with some of the adjustments that we're talking about here, but I would argue that for some people in person work in an office could be conducive to that. Roger, do you want to respond to that. Yeah, no, I'd love to jump in. You know, I think that the point is I don't think that what what either Ashley and I are arguing about is, is in any way demonizing the office. It's really about reimagining the office. You know, I think that, you know, this is the United States is America it's all that choice right and you know Katie you even started out with like I want everyone to follow their bliss. You know, I think that that's been part of what we're really talking about is that workers, you know, all the workers the blue collar and the sales and service folks that you're talking about Henry and that we've been talking about, as well as remote workers, have not been able to follow their bliss, you know, and some of it is because we have been really tied to a nine to five in the office. And all of the other services that build up around it and and Henry as you know, like with future of work and automation discussions. I mean, sadly, it's not just whether people choose to go to the office or not that those, you know, the jobs are changing and shifting and that we all need to be aware of that. And, you know, and honestly going back to an office isn't going to fix the child care system either. I think this is an opportunity to recognize all the things that do not work. I think the pandemic has showed that so horrifically, just all of the systems that are broken from childcare we don't have paid family medical leave you know the work culture and office. So I think that it's, you know what we're talking about is reimagining all of those systems and work being one of them as well. Bridget, I think one danger. I mean, it would be nice. First of all, you all are such nice debaters. You know, and we could all end on a note of agreeing to follow our bliss but we also have to be realistic about if I'm if I'm a hugely flexible employer and I, I've read actually work and I really want to allow every employee to be his or her best self and and I can follow their bliss and 85% of my workforce says I'm good working remotely. And then for some people they, they, you know, they don't. I might not be demonizing office and, but there might not be an office left because the economics might not make sense if I realize that 85% so that it, it, it could end up being all or nothing in a lot of workplaces or maybe you know, a we work space downtown for, you know, some people to show up and maybe they'll just be alone or maybe they'll be rewarded for being the ideal worker so I think realistically in some, in many cases, it will. I mean, ideally, a lot of places and obviously banks might be different than Silicon Valley firms etc etc. So in an academic setting we do have the luxury of having a fair amount of flexibility I think I think media tends to as well, but in some cases it might be hard to empower everybody to have their ideal blissful scenario because you're either going to have a prevailing office culture and physical shared space or not depending on where the kind of consensus lands. This is from Mia Armstrong, who's asking about the ability of young people to in a you know junior level staff in this sort of hybrid remote environment to set boundaries and Mia was saying in some ways it's more difficult for them. It's not really about like how this is empowering, but if it's hard for you as a junior staffer to recognize and impose boundaries when you're in an office setting. When you're, you know, at at home working, it might even be harder. I don't know Ashley Bridget if you want to take that. I think this relates to a point that you've been bringing up in some of your comments to and that I did see in the Q&A is that it's not just up to the individual employee themselves to follow their bliss right so we need to be designing workplace practices and organizational policies that enable people to ask for more time or to to ask for the opportunity to work flexibly if that's what they'd like. And we have some data suggesting junior employees and women are especially unlikely to ask for more time, even in the context of adjustable deadlines at work that would clearly benefit the quality of their work because they're worried about the impression costs. We don't find any effect on managers impressions, but that doesn't mean over time that these ideal worker norms might not kick in and some backlash effects could occur. So thinking about how to build in policies as we are in this transition period, maybe there's a four day work week. Maybe there's KPIs for personal goals that you talk about at a collective level so it's not just up to every individual to set their own boundaries, but these are something that are managed at the level of the organization at the level of the manager. I think that's really where we need to start going is is not having these conversations around individual time management or individual choice but thinking at the organization level. How can we help employees better structure their time and how can we provide benefits that will help them protect time take control over their time, as opposed to kind of leaving it up to every individual to ask for what they need. Thanks Ashley this this is really flown by. And I know we've just scratched the surface, but I want to be mindful of y'all's time and our audience's time. So we have about five minutes, five, six minutes left. I want to quickly do a round of finished, you know, closing thoughts. I said we were going to each have three minutes but given where we are clockwise. Let's let's say, you know, 90 seconds. So you can take up the 90 seconds or not. But we could do the same order that we did at the outset. So this is this is your, your, your final say Katie. I don't, I hate this lot. I mean, really, I think we are converging on a lot of the same points. And that is probably where I would like to see this discussion and regardless that you know we have a lot of problems with work culture. We need to have discussions like these to move the conversation forward so I'm just very pleased that that's where this has landed. I'm still personally a fan of the idea of the office but I would never want to foist that onto someone else or tell someone else that that is the way to be productive. Or even that, you know, I have to issue an ultimatum and say like, if I won't work for you unless you put me in an office. The way to move this forward is to have some flexibility and and I guess the biggest takeaway from this is, I do want to return to the office but I don't want to go back to the way that offices were. If we could envision a future where offices are there as a really solid option and they are their benefits are laid out really clearly for people. And that would make it easier for people to see the office as a viable option in which to work productively however much they want to and hopefully set some boundaries for people who would like to go to work and then go home at the end of the day and be done with it. That was probably less than 90 seconds. Thanks, you're almost there. Ashley. I have to say, I mean, I agree. It's just exactly where I want the conversation to be at this point that we're kind of in this pivotal moment where in this liminal space we have the opportunity to really pause and reset. And I really just want to emphasize again going back to something I talked about earlier is now is the perfect opportunity to press pause to run time related experiments within the context of our organizations. So that we don't just go back to inertia and the way things were, we need to create new models of work that respect personal time that are more flexible and none, you know, no one there's going to be no one size fits all solution. There's going to be something that does need to have happen these conversations need to happen at a policy level at an organizational level at an individual level. And I would just say that I think we should all use this moment of opportunity to experiment and innovate to create the future work, not just to default back into the way things were. I also as a social psychologist want to advocate that the way to make really big changes within the context of any organization is through small simple steps. Maybe it's creating communication norms, maybe it's, it is finding people who work during their paid vacation which I've seen startups do it's been very effective in the US to get people to actually take a break. Maybe it's by making five days a week optional, whatever the solution. I think starting soon, starting now and starting small will help a lot in actually enacting some of the changes that I think all of us would like to see moving forward. Thank you. Henry. Sure. Well, I just want to take a stand against Ashley and Bridget abolishing offices and preventing us from ever seeing our coworkers again. I think hybrid work, you know, in serious I think hybrid work is is probably the inevitable outcome of all this and I do think it's going to perpetuate inequalities between those who show up and those who don't and I think that's a shame and what is, that's the way out of that I think it's a more formalized structure which means, you know, requiring some amount of office participation, just to make sure we can, we can smooth out those, those inequalities that that emerge from some people working time and then some people choosing to work from home. And then the larger point I would say is that it's not the fault of the office that we have severe housing affordability problems that create long commutes. It's not the fault of the office that we have a totally rotten child care system that leaves working parents in the lurch. And it's not the fault of the office that we have real problems with work life balance and, and bad bosses, and few worker problems that we have a lot of problems with work life balance and, and I think that's one of the reasons I think that we have a lot of problems with work life balance and, and I think that's one of the reasons I think those are all separate issues and let's deal with them head on, rather than say, if we get rid of the office then those problems are going to go away. Thank you Bridget. Okay, well thank you so much this has been a great conversation. And Henry as you know Ashley and I are not arguing to get rid of the office, nor do I want to live in your horrific totalitarian office only state. But I'm just making the point that this really is, we had this is an unprecedented moment we have never been here before we've never really had conversations like this before. And we've never had the opportunity to really look for transformation, not just tweaks around the edges or, you know, or little things here and there and maybe it's the little things as Ashley said that lead to bigger things. But this is a huge moment where we can talk about systems like the crummy childcare system like the fact that we have no paid family leave like the fact that we do not support our families in this country, that we have chosen systems that perpetuate poverty that we have no worker voice and no worker power and we seem to be okay with that that we have grotesque inequality. This is an opportunity to be rethinking all of those systems and work is one of those systems. It shapes our lives, it shapes our identity, it shapes our time. We give so much of ourselves to work. This is a real opportunity to think about how do we make work work for us for the workers and that's not just the people who have the privilege of being in an office. It's not just the people who are delivering the packages or the, you know, the crappification of American jobs over the last couple of decades this is an opportunity to rethink, frankly, capitalism and you know the, the, the, the preferencing profits over stakeholders and people. So this is really an opportunity to like make time is up. Thanks. Let's throw up the, the, the poll question once more for the audience and this is a chance to for you to answer the question again if you're for or against the motion. Do we, do we still have that. There we go. And again, it's okay to have changed your mind that's that's we, you know, we're open to new ideas to argumentation we just want to see gauge the room as as we're finishing. So do you agree or disagree that it's time to rush back to the office we had a lot of people who weren't sure so maybe some of you were swayed by one team or the other. All right, let's, let's see the results. Okay. So, so I think Katie and Henry technically might have won the debate because there were more people agree but again, you were the underdogs going in I think it was like 14% were on your side and now it's 20% so incremental progress there. So this has been great, really appreciate all of you doing this with us. I realized that these are complex there's so much so much that Tom pack here and we were just getting started and you know I would have loved to pursue a lot of the themes that you brought up with each one of the hours at a time. So I think one thing that we would love to do. If we can indulge you with one more favor to our four debaters. If you could just email us any links to things that you would like, you know you would have loved us anybody watching this to read, or to watch, you know, we can we'll put them together will curate them and share with folks and we'll, we'll, we'll say who recommended what because I think this is such a rich subject with so many different angles and themes so if we could just sort of compile, you know, follow up reading or viewing that relates to this question of the future of work and our return or not to the office but really thank you guys for doing this with us and it's been really fun.