Workers long for peace and quiet in noisy offices amid RTO push

Since her employer mandated a return to the office, Alex quickly found herself missing the peace and quiet she had once taken for granted while working from home. As someone who works in healthcare communications, she spends much of her day handling sensitive information and taking confidential calls. But in the office, finding a private space to do that can feel impossible. “Being in the office made it easy to overshare but not do more work,” Alex tells Fast Company. She asked that her real name not be used, so she wouldn’t be identifiable to her employer. “It just feels like almost anything but work is happening.” Her managers are often not in the office when she is, with in-person meetings frequently replaced by Zoom calls. Meanwhile, the workplace itself often feels more social than productive. “It’s a comedy of competing priorities,” she says. “I’ll be talking to someone about the worst day of their lives and right outside my door, somebody’s talking about their dad’s colonoscopy again.” More than three years since the start of the return-to-office era with “The Great Return” of 2023, workers and employers remain locked in a debate about productivity and stolen time. Beneath it all is the sense that many workers believe modern offices no longer support the way they actually work. Some are questioning whether open-plan offices designed around visibility and collaboration still fit the realities of their day-to-day jobs that are filled with Zoom meetings and Slack messages. “I’ve just been kind of confused about what the goal is,” Alex says. “It feels like me coming into the office is almost more about demonstrating that we’re using the space rather than that we’re using it well.” Taylor Glissman, an account executive in the PR industry, experienced a different version of the same problem when her previous employer shifted from fully remote work to a strict RTO policy. While she enjoyed spending time with colleagues and h