Employee meets no colleagues when told to return to office, starts working remotely again and gets a raise: 'I decided to just stop'

Ally Perry • Writer and Editor

Jun 10, 2026 7:45 PM EDT

What's the benefit of office work if there is nobody else around to work with?

A large proportion of jobs that exist today can be done comfortably outside of a formal workplace, but that doesn't stop employers from deciding that their email-sending, spreadsheet-analyzing workers absolutely must be back in the office for one reason or another. They have to make those high rental costs worth it, and also make it easier to spy on you.

One of the biggest complaints many employees have about the modern workplace is that there is such a large demand to return to the office after long periods of successfully being able to do their job at home. No doubt about it, there can be some genuine benefits to working directly with coworkers in this manner, but it can hardly be argued to be necessary in a lot of cases. Still, many companies are not interested in giving their workers a choice.

Countless employees in this position dream that they could sneak in an odd WFH day or week without facing punishment for it. The flexibility and lack of commute truly take so much of the stress off working, after all, and most people do not want to feel like their entire lives are dedicated to their jobs.

via Clay Banks (Unsplash+)

_{^{A model representing an employee lying on a couch and working from home on his laptop}}
An employee had worked from home for their job for several years, and had been told that there would be an expectation for them to return to the office at some point when they secured the role. Sure enough, it was eventually requested that they start working from the office.
While they initially complied, they were baffled to find that none of their colleagues seemed to be in the same position as they were. After working in an empty office for some time, they decided to move away from the workplace and start working from home again. The company didn't seem to notice, and even rewarded them with a raise.
I stopped going to the office and they gave me a raise.

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via Clay Banks (Unsplash+)

_{^{A representation of a couch in a living room with a laptop placed on the coffee table in front of it}}
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