After months of a pandemic, will we ever return to offices?

I've worked in offices since I was 21: In newsrooms. In one cubicle among hundreds of other cubicles. In a converted warehouse with four offices. In my own office among dozens of cubicles.

But always in offices.

For the past seven months, I've worked from home and like many Americans, I am not eager to return.

That was one takeaway from a survey taken in late summer. The Wells Fargo/Gallup survey showed that 42 percent of workers surveyed had a positive view of working remotely (from home), while only 14 percent didn't like it. A similar survey in June showed that about one-third of workers would prefer to never return to their office, while more than 70 percent said they'd like to work from home at least twice a week.

One thing the pandemic taught office workers: Working from home is pretty good.

A caveat: Many people don't work in offices. Many people work in retail or food service or some other area and they either were deemed "essential  workers" and had to show up despite the pandemic and/or lost their jobs. Not everybody has an office gig and if you don't, this is probably irritating.

Sorry.

But I suspect many people had a similar experience to mine. Once the quarantine started, the first few weeks were weird. We were home, remotely logging onto an office server. Our work laptops were on the kitchen table or in a rarely-used office or in the middle of a chaotic bustle of kids and activity.

It didn't seem normal. Work was harder because there were more distractions. We were anxious about COVID-19. We wanted normal.

I remember asking co-workers when they thought we'd return to the office. I said May 1. Others said April. Someone said June. Someone said August and I laughed at her.

As time passed, working from home became normal. Mornings were less busy, with no commute. Business casual took on a new meaning (T-shirts and shorts every day). Zoom calls, Skype calls, IMs and emails took the place of breakroom conversations and staff meetings.

At our home, Mrs. Brad – who probably wondered if she could survive spending all day at home with an twitchy, active extrovert – got into her own pattern of work (away from me). We adjusted.

It's been seven months. It seems normal.

The COVID-19 pandemic has permanently changed life. Going forward, we'll no longer find it unusual if someone wears a mask in public. We will take it seriously when a new threat is announced. We'll use technology to meet with other people.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference will be how we office workers work. After years of startups and high-tech companies giving employees the opportunity to work from home a day or two a week, we've discovered that most of us can be just as productive at home as at the office.

Working from home makes sense.

In 2021, it will be harder for our bosses to insist we need to be in the office to be productive. In fact, they may realize it's a good deal to let people work from  home and have smaller in-person offices.

The American workplace may be in the middle of a revolutionary change. All it took was a global pandemic, the advancement of technology and a few months to get used to it.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.