Workers hate being in the office so much, many would rather get a root canal

The answer is yes, for some workers. More than one in four (26%) would rather get a root canal—the notoriously painful dental procedure—than work in their offices five days a week, according to job site Monster’s new Work Watch Report. Monster surveyed 1,806 U.S. workers across industries about the return to office in September 2022. 

Perhaps this shouldn’t be entirely surprising (if not a bit dramatic). Since lockdowns began to lift, the prospect of goading workers back into their cubicles became a debacle. Countless bosses remained intransigent, some even insisting remote work had no place in business, but workers remained resolute. 

That’s for good reason. Research shows most workers feel remote work improves their overall well-being. One big reason why: Full-time employees in the 10 largest U.S. cities lose an average of $5,679 a year commuting to work.

Now, we’ve arrived at something of a quasi-agreement with most companies operating on a hybrid model. As Monster put it in its report, flexible work isn’t the future; it’s the present. Nearly two in five workers (38%) went so far as to say they’d quit a job that mandated just one day onsite. 

The picture doesn’t quite line up on the managerial side. Just half of bosses believe hybrid work is going well, Monster found, and more than a third want employees in the office full-time. Those respondents are in good company with some of the nation’s most prominent CEOs.

Earlier this week, Disney CEO Bob Iger told employees they’re now expected to be in the office four days a week. “In a creative business like ours, nothing can replace the ability to connect, observe, and create with peers that comes from being physically together, nor the opportunity to grow professionally by learning from leaders and mentors,” Iger wrote in an internal memo. 

Some companies never gave up the fight, despite near-universal pushback. Indeed, 2022 may have been defined by the return-to-office war. Goldman Sachs demanded in-person work even before the vaccine rollout; CEO David Solomon said he believes in-office collaboration retains the bank’s “cultural foundation” and “brings people together.” And who could forget Twitter’s bombastic leader Elon Musk, who reversed the app’s “work from anywhere” policy after loudly proclaiming that remote workers are just pretending to work.

Just look at the state of America’s business districts—and the office buildings at 10% capacity—to get a sense of which side has the upper hand. 

“There are two kinds of companies: One is going to embrace work-from-anywhere, and the second is in denial—I feel those companies will lose their workforce,” Harvard Business School professor Raj Choudhury told Wired last week. 

For a recession-prone company worried about its bottom line, a mass exodus of workers will probably hurt worse than a cavity.