This week, New York City entered Phase 2 of its reopening. Restaurant tables have sprouted on the streets. Masked customers are getting their feral hair trimmed by masked barbers. And workers are—slowly, gingerly—returning to the office.
 
Not all workers, though. The New York Times reports that the city has hardly returned to its bustling, “I’m walkin’ here,” pre-pandemic status quo. The sidewalks in Manhattan have kept their desolate air. Many shops are still boarded up, perhaps never to return. There are, for once, plenty of seats available in the subway cars. 
 
It is entirely possible that the pandemic will permanently change workers’ relationship to the workplace. This is especially true of the white-collar workforce that has quickly adapted to the remote Zoom model, and even more true of the wealthier Wall Street workforce that has abandoned its glassy towers for places far from the pandemic’s former epicenter. As the Times reported earlier this year, executives at Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley have determined that “it is highly unlikely that all their workers will ever return to those buildings.”
 
If palatial office spaces in the nerve center of global capitalism were not central to the financial industry’s core mission of making more money for itself, then what purpose did they serve? Sophie Madeline Dess, a former temporary receptionist at some of these financial institutions, has written a first-person account for The New Republic that attempts to answer that question:
 
Most people were content to ignore me. This is likely because while my presence was clear, my use-value was essentially invisible. The employees had other people at the company who really took care of them. The executive secretaries and other administrative staff were often remarkably protective of the men they “supported”—the corporate lingo for “served.” At one institution, the office manager had me organize snacks according to her favorite employee’s preferences. At the end of the day, I was to covertly place specific mini-boxes of cereal (two Apple Jacks and one Special K Original) at the respective desks of her three favorite businessmen. If nondairy butter was running low, I was to put it in her “special place” so that her favorite lactose-intolerant could find it and spread it on his toast. Certain employees had their needs so fully anticipated that it’s doubtful they still felt them.…
 
The last time I requested work as a temp was on March 8. On occasion, I do wonder how the employees are faring without their mini-cereals and dairy-free butter, without the workplace built to edify their souls, to assure them, No, look, you deserve it!

Things are slowly getting back to normal, here in New York. But Dess’s article suggests that some things are better left to the past.

—Ryu Spaeth, features editor