Discussion of "Out of Office" by guest writer Valerie Livingston

This month’s post is by guest writer Valerie Livingston, a Business Librarian in the Business & Career Center – a discussion of questions on changing workplace norms raised by the book “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home”, especially as they pertain to librarians. 

By now the notion of remote work has become so commonplace and absorbed into the culture that it seems almost quaint to label it as such. And yet, for many of us “working remotely” remains a goal and conduit for more of that precious resource: time and grander vista or even exotic locales; and, for others remote work something isolating and more demanding, something incessant from which to escape. In Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen's thoughtful 2021 book, Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home, the subject is tackled by a couple who are both writers. As freelance writers, they were able to make the leap toward working remotely from Montana a while back and pre-Pandemic, and were, by 2020, already discovering some of its costs and benefits.  

Of course, working in a public library is a special case as we oftentimes cannot work from home, and yet more and more we serve freelancers and jobseekers and yes, remote workers who use our spaces and technology, and for whom the library often becomes a source of community.  

The book aims to detail and project, and in many cases promote a future in which the shift in paradigm to remote and hybrid offices is bigger and more conducive to a work life balance. From this vantage point it is possible to observe what Warzel and Petersen view remote work’s “promises to liberate workers,” as well as how “…in practice it capitalizes on the total collapse of work-life balance…where work has taken on such a place of primacy in our lives that it has subsumed our identities, diluted our friendships, and disconnected us from our communities.” Is it not true that in American culture we build a temple to Work? 

The authors of Out of Office focus primarily on a few essential questions: “How many days we’d like to be in the office, for how long, and for what purpose?” and the underlying value of work culture, community, and technology. The most potentially liberating question Warzel and Petersen pose to workers and supervisors alike is, “what do you actually like to do?”  

As a librarian this is a complex question. We are a [sometimes] odd self-selecting group of individuals, and some of us veer toward identifying as introverts. And yet, though we may feel that we chose to be surrounded by books and newspapers and archival material and electronic information and quiet, our work is often geared toward helping other people in person, over the phone, and virtually, to access information for various goals and purposes. Librarians also tend to like other librarians; human nature such that it is, this is never universally so, and yet being employed by a library and performing our quotidian tasks amongst others seeking knowledge and in various ways assisting those in the seeking of knowledge creates a unique physical environment and quietly collegial culture that may be hard to give up.        

The question Warzel and Petersen pose, of what one actually likes to do, is an apt one. In New York City, and in other urban centers, historically it is not so uncommon for a worker to choose a job simply because they liked the walk to work in the morning. I wonder how that might change in these changing times. 

Thank you, Valerie!

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Did you know that the Business & Career Center has a LibGuide on Job Interviews? It includes tips and advice for in-person and virtual interviews, and sample questions for different types of jobs.